These Precious Days: Essays

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Later that day we sat side by side on our yoga mats, Sooki’s head wrapped artfully in a scarf. With our hands on our shoulders we turned left and right, left and right, endlessly. You never know.” Then she looked at me, her face suddenly brightened by a plot twist. “She could work for Mother Teresa. If she really wanted to go to India and she wanted to serve the poor, that’s what she would do.” Her Covid story has a great twist, with a guest of a few days becoming the third member of her household, staying for months while bringing all sorts of new factors into the household, almost all of them surprisingly good.

In "Reading Kate DiCamillo," Patchett is surprised to discover that DiCamillo's children's books remind her of the beauty, mystery, and complexity of childhood.We were standing in the kitchen in the late afternoon, the time before dinner and between two yoga sessions. “I like myself here,” she said softly. In "What the American Academy of Arts and Letters Taught Me about Death," Patchett's induction into the Academy makes her realize the inevitability of death. It took a while to get the mushrooms. A friend who was well versed in the experience brought them over early in the morning on Memorial Day. I had interviews scheduled all day on Tuesday, Sooki had chemo on Wednesday, and my friends were leaving for California on Thursday. It was now or never. A heartfelt and witty collection of essays on everything from marriage and knitting to the inevitability of death' Guardian The days went on and I could feel Sooki slipping, hounded by her own indecision. Here she was an artist who lived with a writer. Here she was the person she had meant to be. One night after we’d finished our yoga and meditation, we were lying on our mats, staring up at the ceiling. Sparky had crawled onto my chest and gone to sleep. I asked Sooki if she had any interest in trying psilocybin.

Even as Sooki’s white count continued to hover in the neighborhood of nonexistent, her CA 19-9 cancer marker number (that unreliable indicator we relied on) was dropping. “Maybe it’s the trial,” she said, “but I think it could just as easily be the food and the yoga.” She had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer a year after we met. There was no reason for her to tell me this. We didn’t know each other, and for the most part our correspondence had come after this defining fact. Ours was an ephemeral connection common to the modern world. Except it was Sooki, and I liked her very much. She writes when she can, and always without a contract. “I never owe people work.” The writers she knows who are the most protective of their time are the least productive, she says. “I get the job done. I don’t procrastinate. Creativity, inspiration, all of those words that meant so much when I was 20. Now, I go to work. I show up in the morning. I’m going to get it done.” She knows she can write. “I’m not worried about if I can do this. It’s more can I have an idea that seems worth my time and worth your time. I have to think this really matters.” The essay “My Year of No Shopping” was self-explanatory based on the title. Through this life experiment, Patchett gained a greater appreciation for the value of experiences over material possessions and provided a sharp contrast for the current social attitude towards consumerism – something that prioritizes the accumulation of material goods over other forms of personal fulfillment. They told me the story later: How after they landed, when they were all standing together on the lawn outside the small airport, a police officer came and told them they had to disperse. Westchester was still a pandemic hot spot and there could be no congregating, even outside. Karl, being Karl, took the officer around the corner to explain the situation.But the flames are not just those of a global pandemic. Lara’s eldest daughter Emily, who plans to make her life on the farm, decides she is not going to have children because of the climate emergency. It is here that even Patchett’s optimism falters. “I can’t imagine going through this with young children. You’re not worrying just for yourself and your own life and a love for trees and birds and all that. You’re worrying about it for the people you love the most.” Sooki hadn’t lost weight but she was losing her ability to project her voice. It had been happening for a while. Sometimes I had to get right in front of her to hear what she was saying. “It’s so amazingly generous of Karl,” she whispered uncertainly. She kept to herself, sleeping and painting, trying to wrestle it out. “Of course I want to go. It’s just ...” Every day Sooki came upstairs looking spectacular—embroidered jeans, velvet tops, a different coat, a perfect scarf. No outfit ever showed up twice. “How is it possible?” I said as I complimented her again and again. “You must have Mary Poppins’s suitcase.” Three Fathers": Ann Patchett had three fathers because her mother had three marriages, two of which ended in divorce. At her sister's wedding, Ann realized all three of the men, who were never together for obvious reasons, would be in the same place at the same time. So she had her photo taken with them. One of the dads astutely observed to the other two, "You know what she's going to do, don't you? She's going to wait until the three of us are dead and then she's going to write about us. This is the picture that will run with the piece." He was right.

The Midnight Library: Enter the extraordinary Midnight Library, a realm where countless books unveil the lives Nora Seed could have lived. This gripping novel challenges her to unearth the essence of true fulfillment, igniting a profound exploration of regrets, choices, and the meaning of a life well lived. It made me think of something our neighbor Jennie had said. Jennie and I walked our dogs together after dinner, and Sooki came with us most nights, unless she had a phone call to return, unless she wasn’t feeling up to it. “Do you ever miss being alone in your house?” she asked me once. “Just you and Karl?”Any story that starts will also end.' As a writer, Ann Patchett knows what the outcome of her fiction will be. Life, however, often takes turns we do not see coming. Patchett ponders this as she explores family, friendship, marriage, failure, success, and what it all means. Ann Patchett's These Precious Days is a collection of 24 titled essays, including an introduction and epilogue. Over the course of the collection, Patchett employs a range of forms, tenses, and linguistic stylings. The following summary streamlines Patchett's authorial range, employing the present tense and a linear mode of explanation. She starts with the semi-hilarious tale of her three fathers, her birth father and her mother's two subsequent husbands. While her own father actively discouraged her pursuit of a career in writing, her stepfather, a very successful surgeon, envied her choice - not to mention her success. She tells delicious stories of the many bad novels which he churned out, some of which she had to sell (if not tout) in her Nashville bookstore - even though they were uniformly dreadful. I was leaving for Virginia. In bed the night before, I asked Karl, “How do you think this is going?” Patchett has ended up with a doctor and pilot, Karl, her second husband, who has a bit of a plane obsession. “Flight Plan” is about the two flying together and her worries that he’ll have an accident. When she has a close call herself by not closing the plane’s door properly, she realizes that there isn’t really anything we can do to ensure total safety.

A literary alchemist, Patchett plumbs the depths of her experiences to create gold: engaging and moving pieces that are both self-portrait and landscape, each vibrant with emotion and rich in insight. Turning her writer's eye on her own experiences, she transforms the private into the universal, providing us all a way to look at our own worlds anew, and reminds how fleeting and enigmatic life can be. I wasn’t sure why I was negotiating my character’s future with my friend, but there I was, listening. Did my character want to be a nun? If you're an Ann Patchett fan, this is a must-read. If you've never heard of Ann Patchett, you still need to read this, but first treat yourself to one or two of her novels. I highly recommend "The Dutch House" and "Bel Canto." Karl said she should send him her records if she wanted to, and that he would talk to Johanna Bendell, an oncologist at the hospital where he works. He said they were running more trials for pancreatic cancer than Sloan Kettering. This afternoon she is expecting American novelist Helen Ellis, whom she will take out for an early dinner at 4.30pm, ahead of interviewing her at the bookshop this evening. Ellis will stay the night, “because everybody sleeps at my house,” she says. “It means you always have a clean house.”She went inside to see for herself. She wasn’t about to tell me she looked good, but it was clear what I was talking about. There was a delicacy about her that was well-suited to baldness. I said, “I have access to every article of clothing I own and I couldn’t pull myself together to look as good as you do going to chemo.” How does this experience change their perception of tattoos and the significance they hold? How does it highlight the impact of external circumstances on our interpretations of symbols or actions? In "There Are No Children Here," Patchett presents a series of fragments regarding her decision not to have children. Together, these fragments explore the complexities of conveying one's reasons for not parenting. I always feel performing art is the most difficult art form to execute (Yes, you can say I am Biased, but then I have lived that life to understand it better)