Bullets of a Summer Day, plus a Book Review

* Beloved and I walked this morning. It is incredibly humid and oppressive... thunderstorms on the way.

* Summer is rushing by as if hurrying to meet her chilly lover.

* Children grow so fast... and they have different tastes than I ... and they don't take my advice terribly seriously, either... and I can hurt them so carelessly, with a single sigh. And... I can hear the two of them singing in harmony, even as I type this... what wondrous love...

* Recurring dream: my mother is subjecting me to some kind of medical procedure... one with shame attached to it. A voice in my head asks, Whose body is this?

***

Beloved gave me this book, for my end of summer reading. I cannot remember devouring a book with such fierce pleasure in a long time. It is the story of a woman (a writer) whose husband (a Maine state trooper) is killed in a traffic collision. She decides to go to seminary, and winds up a chaplain for the Maine game wardens (no, it's not so that she can bless the moose). This memoir, in which she addresses her grief, her life as a single parent to four children, and her extraordinary call to ministry, is not sentimental or maudlin. She gently mocks the Plucky Widow archetype she so brilliantly embodies. She tells her story simply and clearly, and talks about her work, in which she is called upon to minister to families and officers as they await or participate in search and rescue and recovery missions. She has found her calling being with people who touch her in her place of deepest woundedness and loss, and at the same time enable her healing. And she's funny. I would be weeping and suddenly snorting with laughter within a single paragraph. Oh. Read it, I beg you.