When I saw Elizabeth Edwards at a book-signing at Quail Ridge Books last week, I was so impressed that I felt compelled to blog about the experience even though I had only finished about half of the book. As it happens, I had reached the point in the book just before she really starts getting into the details of the political race of 2004, so by that point in the book, I already felt that I knew her, having read of her childhood, the tragic death of their son Wade and her ways of dealing and not dealing with her grief.
Saving Graces was written by Elizabeth Edwards, not by a ghost-writer, not for political gain and not for her own self-aggrandizement. The Saving Graces of the title are all of the people...including friends, family and strangers...who lifted her up and gave her hope in the face of the death of her son as well as her battle with breast cancer. It is not a book about her so much as a book about how people are inherently good and are willing to reach out and be kind...and it's apparent from meeting her that she returns the favor at every opportunity.
When I saw Elizabeth take the podium at Quail Ridge Books last week, I saw not a potential First Lady or the consummate political wife, but a woman like the rest of us who laughs at her own imperfections, speaks candidly and connects on a personal level with every person with whom she comes in contact. This attitude, this "realness", shines through in her book when she tells of having to stop at a Goodwill store on the campaign trail to get something to wear, of bristling at getting special treatment when getting chemo by virtue of her fame and of getting her hairbrush stuck in her hair just minutes before a speaking appearance and having to get help to get it out and get on stage.
I voted for John Edwards in 2004...well, I guess I voted for John Kerry...but a big part of that decision was my respect and admiration for John Edwards and a deep-down belief that his Two Americas was really the crux of the issues facing our country today. Hillary Clinton has had my vote since she stumped with Bill in her headband and pageboy haircut in 1992. So, my decision is not made for the upcoming primaries...and Elizabeth Edwards' book doesn't change that fact because it is not written to convince voters to vote for her husband. Her abiding love and deep respect and belief in her husband comes through when she mentions him, but she's not out to get votes...she's out to reach people in the way that her Saving Graces reached out to her.
Special moments in the book for me included:
- Elizabeth touched on this in her talk at QRB, telling of her childhood, much of which was spent in Japan since she was the daughter of a military pilot. She tells of Toshiko who was brought to their home to teach her and her sister Japanese dance and music. She was to have been a geisha, an "esteemed career, she returned home for a last visit with her family - in Hiroshima. While she was home the atomic bomb fell on her town. Seventy thousand were killed that day, her chest was blown off, and her life was blown apart." Those were Elizabeth's words and a well-meaning young editor changed the final sentence to something much less vivid. With veiled contempt, Elizabeth told of her insistence that the editor return the prose to the words that most vividly captured the severity of the impact of the bomb on Hiroshima and on Toshiko personally. I love people who believe in their words, believe in the power of how they are put together and passionately believe it makes a difference.
- Her children served both as priorities and as instant perspective, "After learning from Jack that he could cross the pool with his head above water and from Emma Claire that Kerry had picked Daddy, I begged off breakfast..." In their world, both accomplishments had equal weight.
- At a house party in Minnesota, she saw stenciled on the wall and felt it important to include in the book: "Fear less, hope more; whine less, breathe more; talk less, say more; hate less, love more; and all good things are yours." How simple, how concise and how universal!
- As she detailed the different ways that letter writers approached her, she noted, "The connective tissue of the net they wove for me -- and for themselves -- was that much stronger because the threads were so different from one another." Having been part of and saved by the safety net of family, friends I see every day, friends I talk to only occasionally and friends I have made on the internet without ever meeting them, this struck a chord with me.
- During her battle with cancer and struggles with chemotherapy, she received thousands of letters and valiantly tried to personally answer each one. "So for as long as I could write -- and at one point it became too hard -- I signed the letters we had drafted and I wrote a personal note of thanks on the bottom of each. But it was finally too hard, as my hands cramped and my fingers became swollen....Now I have started again, despite the lymphedema, despite some neuropathy that has dulled the nerves in my right hand, and I will write -- as slowly as I need to -- for as long as it takes." That made the personalized note in her impeccable, yet artistic, handwriting in my book even more special:
And finally, during her talk last week, I learned that, like me, she is a grammarphile...and I could somehow picture her in her minivan correcting her children's friends when they would say, "Tommy and me..." Yes, if you are going to be friends with my children and spend time in my company, your grammar is going to be corrected. I'm unable to help myself. And like the cherry on top, in her book she mentions Anne Lamott and her wonderful book, Grace Eventually. I felt a special kinship with Elizabeth Edwards for the things we share and for the things she has gracefully and sincerely shared with the world through her writing.
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