Richard W. shared a stream on April 4, 2023
House Guest

Resizing for My New Life!

Apartment 3B is Perfect for Me!

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes, 8 seconds

“Wow, your apartment looks so nice,” said Mike as he walked into my new home.

I had not had visitors to my home except when Nick visited me. It was lovely to have my family visiting for a family birthday celebration.

“It is so light and airy. Everything looks like it fits perfectly,” said Elyssa, my daughter-in-law.

I nodded in agreement.

I know you and Mom had to let go of a lot of furniture when you moved, and it looks like you had to allow even more go this time. But you have made this feel like a home.”

Standing before the ceremonial shovel, Nick and I mentioned that a TaskRabbit person had installed it and the photos.

“Hugo and Ana helped me determine what I could keep and helped me find a new home for items I no longer needed,” I explained as my lips began to shake.

“It looks so lovely you could rent it as an AIRBNB.”

I laughed.

“I need a place to live that meets my needs and keeps your mom’s spirit and love with me.”

As we had dinner, I remembered when Jan and I moved to Cranford in May 2018, we expected to live here for two years and then buy a condo.

Our plans did not work out, but moving from a three-bedroom ranch to a walkable downtown was more critical than we understood then.

If we had stayed where we lived, I am unsure how I would have survived without Jan. Overwhelmed and adrift, I would have been too attached to material things and lost like a kid in a candy store.

Instead, I am centered in overlapping communities where I can walk daily and live interdependently with my neighbors.

I will forever be grateful that Jan and I moved here, as living in supportive communities has been critical in managing my grief.

Jan’s love transformed me the day we met. Her love continues to shower me with her undying support and allows me to live fully, albeit alone, in Apartment 3B!

The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

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I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.

Flowers Convert Apartment 3B Into a Home

Flowers Convert 3B Into a Home

Thanks to my friend Deb, I have made a giant step in making Apartment 3B my home! Deb, a master gardener and a member of the Hanson Park Conservancy and the Green Thumb Garden Club, helped me select the plants, and she re-potted them.
Richard W. Brown September 28, 2022

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The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

Read: November 2023

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The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

by James McBride

I started reading The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store: A Novel by James McBride today. It’s the seventy-first book I’ve read this year and the two hundredth since January 1, 2019. The novel’s narrative begins in 1972 when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development. They were surprised to find a skeleton at the bottom of the well. The identity of the skeleton and how it ended up there were long-held secrets that the residents of Chicken Hill kept.

Jewish immigrants and African Americans lived together in this run-down neighborhood and shared their aspirations and hardships. Moshe and Chona Ludlow resided in Chicken Hill when Moshe integrated his theatre, and Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. When the state officials searched for a deaf boy to institutionalize him, it was Chona and Nate Timblin, the Black janitor at Moshe’s theatre and the unofficial leader of the Black community on Chicken Hill, who collaborated to keep the boy safe.

As the stories of these characters intertwine and develop, it becomes evident how much the individuals living on the outskirts of white, Christian America struggle to survive and what they must do to make it through. As the truth is ultimately disclosed regarding the events that occurred on Chicken Hill, including the involvement of the town’s white establishment, McBride illustrates to us that, even in the darkest of times, love and community – the very essence of heaven and earth – help us endure.

Bringing his masterly storytelling skills and deep faith in humanity to The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, James McBride has written a novel as compassionate as Deacon King Kong and as inventive as The Good Lord Bird.

The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Regarding gifts made this month, I will match dollar for dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

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I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.

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The Book of V

Read: October 2021

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The Book of V

by Anna Solomon

The Book of V by Anna Solomon is a book that I may not have read at another time in my life, and I did find it to be a book that I could not stop reading.

Goodreads summarizes its plot.

Anna Solomon’s kaleidoscopic novel intertwines the lives of a Brooklyn mother in 2016, a senator’s wife in 1970s Washington, D.C., and the Bible’s Queen Esther, whose stories of sex, power and desire overlap and ultimately converge—showing how women’s roles have and have not changed over thousands of years.

Being Jewish, I knew the story of Queen Esther, although this version added new layers of the story that I did not know. The book’s illumination that women’s roles have not changed over thousands of years was something I knew but did not fully understand.

The three characters are very vivid and weave a story that is worth reading.

Lily is a mother and a daughter. And a second wife. And a writer, maybe? Or she was going to be, before she had children. Now, in her rented Brooklyn apartment, she’s grappling with her sexual and intellectual desires while also trying to manage her roles as a mother and a wife.

Vivian Barr seems to be the perfect political wife, dedicated to helping her charismatic and ambitious husband find success in Watergate-era Washington D.C. But one night he demands a humiliating favor, and her refusal to obey changes the course of her life—along with the lives of others.

Esther is a fiercely independent young woman in ancient Persia, where she and her uncle’s tribe live a tenuous existence outside the palace walls. When an innocent mistake results in devastating consequences for her people, she is offered up as a sacrifice to please the king, in the hopes that she will save them all.

I recommend this book.

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The Hunter: A Novel

Read: March 2024

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The Hunter: A Novel

by Tana French

Today, I began reading “The Hunter: A Novel” by Tana French, often called the Queen of Irish crime fiction. The story takes place in a small village in the West of Ireland during a hot summer. Two men arrive, one returning home and the other seeking riches. However, one of them is also seeking death.

Cal Hooper is a retired Chicago police officer who moved to rural Ireland for a peaceful life. He has built a relationship with a local woman named Lena and has been mentoring Trey Reddy, a troubled teenager on a better path. But when Trey’s long-lost father returns, accompanied by an English millionaire and a plan to find gold in the townland, everything they have built is threatened. Cal and Lena are willing to do whatever it takes to protect Trey, but Trey is not interested in protection. What she wants is revenge.

This novel, written by the acclaimed author described by The New York Times as “in a class by herself,” tells a nuanced and atmospheric tale about what we are willing to do for our loved ones, what we will do for revenge, and what we may have to sacrifice when the two collide.

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Move Like Water: My Story of the Sea

Read: October 2023

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Move Like Water: My Story of the Sea

by Hannah Stowe

I recently started reading a book called “Move Like Water: My Story of the Sea” by Hannah Stowe. It’s a captivating book that immerses you in a world of water, whales, storms, and starlight, allowing you to experience what it’s like to sail for weeks and live life to a new rhythm.

Hannah Stowe, a marine biologist and sailor in her mid-twenties, grew up on the Pembrokeshire coast of Wales, where she fell asleep to the sound of the lighthouse beam. Drawing upon her experiences sailing tens of thousands of miles in various seas, including the North Sea, North Atlantic, Mediterranean, Celtic Sea, and the Caribbean, she explores the human connection to the wild waters. Stowe ponders why she and others are drawn to life at sea and what we can learn from the water around us.

Stowe intertwines her narrative and illustrations with stories of six keystone marine creatures: the fire crow, sperm whale, wandering albatross, humpback whale, shearwater, and barnacle. Through these stories, she invites readers to fall in love with the sea and its inhabitants and to discover the majesty, wonder, and fragility of the underwater world.

If you enjoy the works of Rachel Carson and Annie Dillard, then “Move Like Water: My Story of the Sea” is a must-read. It’s an inspiring and heartfelt tribute to the sea, a testimony to pursuing and achieving a dream, and an unforgettable introduction to a talented new nature writer.

The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

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I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.

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The Immortal Irishman

Read: October 2019

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The Immortal Irishman

by Timothy Egan

 

The Immortal Irishman: The Irish Revolutionary Who Became an American Hero by Timothy Egan is a book I started reading as The Worst Hard Timesincluded the first fifty pages.

I often only read a few pages and then return the book to the e-library. The Immortal Irishman was not the case, and I could not stop reading and borrowed the book immediately.

I had never heard of Thomas Francis Meagher or his life in Ireland or America. The story was fascinating, unique, and essential.

The Irish-American story, with all its twists and triumphs, is told through the improbable life of one man. A dashing young orator during the Great Famine of the 1840s, in which a million of his Irish countrymen died, Thomas Francis Meagher led a failed uprising against British rule, for which he was banished to a Tasmanian prison colony. He escaped and six months later was heralded in the streets of New York – the revolutionary hero, back from the dead, at the dawn of the great Irish immigration to America.

Meagher’s rebirth in America included his leading the newly formed Irish Brigade from New York in many of the fiercest battles of the Civil War – Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg. Twice shot from his horse while leading charges, left for dead in the Virginia mud, Meagher’s dream was that Irish-American troops, seasoned by war, would return to Ireland and liberate their homeland from British rule.

The hero’s last chapter, as territorial governor of Montana, was a romantic quest for a true home in the far frontier. His death has long been a mystery to which Egan brings haunting, colorful new evidence.

I recommend this book.

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I'll Come to You: A Novel

Read: January 2025

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I’ll Come to You: A Novel

by Rebecca Kauffman

I began reading “I’ll Come to You: A Novel” by Rebecca Kauffman today. This sweeping and compact novel explores themes of intimacy, memory, loss, grief, and reconciliation. It delves into the wonder, terror, frustration, fear, and magic of confronting the unknowable in the world and within ourselves. The New York Times recommended it as one of six books to read this week.

I’ll Come to You is a modern and classic story of a family that follows intersecting lives throughout 1995, centered around the anticipation and arrival of a child. Through empathy, insight, and humor, Rebecca Kauffman delves into overlapping narratives: a couple struggling to conceive, which has both softened and hardened their relationship; a woman whose husband of forty years has left her without explaining why; and the man who is disastrously trying to win her affection. Additionally, there’s a couple in denial about an impending health crisis and their son, who is awkwardly navigating middle age while unable to stop lying.

Ultimately, these storylines build to a dramatic and harrowing climax. With heart, wit, and courage, the characters confront challenges that test and define their family bonds.

When you purchase a book through one of my links, I earn a small commission that helps support my passion for reading. This contribution allows me to buy even more books to share with you, creating an incredible cycle of discovering great reads together! Your support truly makes a difference!

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