Product Description

This journal offers a loving and poignant portrait of L'Engle's mother in old age that is more about living than dying.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #78999 in Books
• Published on: 1984-01-01
• Released on: 1984-01-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

From The Washington Post
"Anyone who has dealt with, or will soon deal with, the death of a parent will find some solace, understanding, and companionship in this perceptive book, which is, in the end, more about living than about dying."

Review
"This is the summer of the great-grandmother...This is the summer after her ninetieth birthday, the summer of the swift descent." In "Summer's Beginning," during the fourth four-generation summer at Crosswicks, her family's "two-hundred-and-some-year-old farmhouse" in Connecticut, Madeleine L'Engle cares for and contemplates her mother's life. There is her mother now, the great-grandmother with atherosclerosis who is often anxious, can't remember where she is, and needs constantly increasing care. There is "The Mother I Knew," a woman who had miscarriages all over the world before her treasured first child, Madeleine, was born, the mother who never ran out of stories to tell, or classical music to play on her piano. There is "The Mother I Did Not Know," the young woman who was born during the American Civil War to a Southern family fresh with bitter memories of "lost fathers and brothers and homes and money." Throughout this touching journal, memory, pain, respect, fear, and always the daily details of life in Crosswicks Lawns merge into a haunting and lovely chronicle of a lively home filled with pets, small children, visitors, helpers, and newlyweds, the home where Great-Grandmother lives. Until "Summer's End." -- For great reviews of books for girls, check out Let's Hear It for the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14. -- From 500 Great Books by Women; review by Jesse Larsen

Review

Customer Reviews

My Grandmother, too
I have lived with my grandmother for two and a half years, watching her slowly slip farther into senility. L'Engle's narrative of her mother's last summer connected with me -- it was helpful to hear another's struggles, and to know I am not the only one who has prayed for the death of a loved one.

My grandmother is gone: she was an artist, a world-traveller, a cook. Now, she does not know me, she doesn't remember her children (except my aunt who has been a constant in her life), she can't "do for herself" anymore. I just want her to have life back. I was touched by the way L'Engle put that --to be born again through death.

I also enjoyed hearing about the life of two fascinating and wonderful women, both L'Engle and her mother. The book is a substantial, warm, human look into L'Engle's thoughts and her family.

Essays on Family, aging, and caretaking.
Many middle aged women are the sandwich generation, caught in between caring for their children and their elderly mothers. L'Engle has written about being a mother and the meaning of family in her Crosswick Journal series. This one, however, is about the roots of the family, with its memories, and the passing of the generations. It is also about the heartbreaking labor and burden of caring for the elderly. But this memoir, which combines the stories of her ancestors' strengths in struggles, places these stories as a context in which one contemplates the problems of age, the struggles of feeding and caring for one at the end of life. The result is a satisfying string of essays into the eternal meaning of Family.

A story of strength and the importance of family history.
L'Engle confronts issues of death and dying in her experience of the death of her mother. But she also confronts issues of family history and the strength that the women in her family's history have exhibited. With each page I gained a greater respect for the trials that my ancestors have endured, and a greater curiosity to discover who my ancestors really were. The importance of story and passing on wisdom shines through L'Engle's account of her family experience. It explains why we should all feel compelled to pass on our history; to give our children deep roots so that they can understand themselves