This week I’m reading Some Luck, by Jane Smiley. This is the promised start of a trilogy about a Midwestern farming family.
This is ground she’s plowed before, of course (pun unapologetically intended) in A Thousand Acresamong other works. I can’t say I exactly enjoyed A Thousand Acres (so grim, and that was at the good moments), but some of its images resonated so deeply that I can still conjure them up in an instant all these many years later.
There is so much I admire about Smiley. I admire that she writes from something other than a modern urban sensibility. I admire her deep understanding of and empathy with ordinary people in the heartland. And I so admire her output! What a body of work she has. And somehow managed to have four husbands along the way! I don’t know how anyone could navigate the rapids of marriage, divorce, courtship and remarriage multiple times and still be able to steer her work to such fabulous completion. I wonder if maybe a new husband is just what one needs to keep that creative battery charged.
I jest. And speaking of Some Luck, I’m well aware that it’s only by luck that I’ve managed to stay happily married to one man all these years. It would be nice to think that the secret to our success is that we’re such wonderful people, but I won’t delude myself. My husband and I like to say that our marriage succeeds because one of us is a saint, but we’re never sure which one.
We were married in Anchorage, and for our anniversary this year we returned to the scene of the crime. We felt the giddiness of newlyweds as we went galloping around the city in search of the street corner where we met, the restaurant where we first dined together, the apartment building where we first lived together, the courthouse where we got married, and the hotel where we had our wedding luncheon. Well, the street corner was under repair, the restaurant was closed, and the courthouse had moved. But to paraphrase Elton John, we’re still standing, better than we ever did, looking like true survivors, feeling like little kids.
