A Memoir of Growth and Pain – You Could Make This Place Beautiful by Maggie Smith

This memoir by poet Maggie Smith relates the history of her marriage, her divorce, and journey to find some level of peace and acceptance. It is beautifully written, yet at times almost excruciatingly painful to read. She shares just enough of her life so that we have a sketch of the arc of the relationship from its beginning and onward as it unravels, the failed linchpin of that being when she discovers her husband's betrayal, and then its following and complete destruction. 

She writes eloquently of her loving relationship with her two young children, her closeness with her family, and with friends. Preoccupied with motherhood, and with her evolving success as a published writer, she does not recognize how the marriage is deconstructing until much later, when, as the divorce proceeds and is completed, she has the distance to realize how it was coming apart long before she discovered her husband's unfaithfulness.

Smith is respectful enough of her ex-husband in her portrayal, considering that he was the cheater, and once separated from Smith, moved 500 miles away from his young children, so that parenting became even more primarily her responsibility.

Even though I am agewise a peer of Smith's mother, I can recognize my younger self in past relationships that ended unhappily, though I suspect it doesn't matter how old one is in such situations. In those too, the signs were there for Smith as they were for me, though in the midst of things, they went unread. Tolstoy wrote in Anna Karenina, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.", but that could easily be rephrased to happy marriages or relationships. Happy relationships are not often examined, it is the unhappy ones that plague us with doubt, disappointment, sadness, and anger.

Smith's mother tells her how unexpected the marriage's breakup was to her and the rest of Smith's family. She cites Smith's fortieth birthday, when Smith's husband presented her with a handwritten list of the 40 things he loved about her. Not only has that piece of paper disappeared, but Smith has no memory of it. Some reviewers have expressed disbelief about Smith's forgetting it and its loss, but I understand it – like so many poignant reminders of other times, in her pain she has destroyed it and excised the memory. She mentions in another passage how she now understands why people cut their past significant others out of photos or outright destroy them: of course you do, when the pain is greatest, you try to remove its source, and hold on only to the good pieces of memory.

I found this book by reading a post in "Oldster", a Substack edited by the journalist and editor Sari Botton, and when I went to the library to borrow it, I found it prominently displayed...perhaps a bit of the serendipity in life that Smith mentions in her writing. Who knows? Maggie Smith in "Oldster" 

Examined Lives – Summer Roommates by Holly Chamberlin

This was an enjoyable novel about, for a change, older women. The four women ranged from their fifties into their seventies. While it is presented as a "beach read", it is really more than that, examining aging, friendship, intimate relationships, family conflicts, and personal and professional growth.

Sandra, 74, lives in a small coastal Maine town, the kind of place where everyone knows everybody else, in a large well-cared-for gracious home. She is widowed, her two grown children live far away, and her best friend has developed dementia. Other than the loneliness that comes with those circumstances, her life is a good one, with the companionship of her recently adopted cat, Clovis. But after a winter feeling isolated and rather lonely, she decides to try renting rooms to compatible single women to see how that might out on a more permanent basis – following the expanding current trend in group living for older adults.

Her daughter, a lawyer, is concerned for her safety and that she won't be taken advantage of, but her son is more supportive and encouraging. Sandra carefully vets the candidates with the help of a trusted realtor. She chooses Mary, a 60-something recently retired lawyer from New York; Amanda, a teacher in her 50s from Boston who has decided to take a vacation from her long-term relationship; and on a gut feeling that the realtor tries to dissuade her from, Patty, going on 70, who is adrift after a life of low-paying jobs and poor decisions about money and men, and is reluctantly living with her sister and brother-in-law. There is something about her, though, that touches Sandra, and she accepts her, giving her the smallest, least expensive room, and making accommodations for weekly payment instead of upfront as the others have made.

There are disagreements and misunderstandings, but over the summer, the four get to know one another, form connections, and perhaps more importantly come to terms with themselves and their individual issues. 

I enjoyed the author's examination of the concerns of older women, on aging and sexism, and coping with concerns about healthcare and dementia. These are very real things that many older people are struggling with or worrying about. I did feel that the characters, aside from Patty, were a little bland. I would liked a little more ethnicity in the mix as well, but for other readers, they are probably diverse enough. On the whole it is a good read, thoughtful but not overly demanding. I'll look for this author's work again.