Apology to Three Elizabeths, Third Try

I have not read Eat, Pray, Love,  About this I have been foolishly proud,  And I should apologize.

I must first apologize to Elizabeth Gilbert. Somehow I've been okay with mocking Elizabeth Gilbert for some time.  I absolutely could not stomach the premise of Eat, Pray, Love (and honestly, when described as a memoir of a woman getting over a bad divorce by eating her way through Italy until she finds herself by falling in love with a Brazilian in Bali, it does sound repulsively entitled and simplistic).  But I should have learned long ago that people are more than a plot synopsis, and in this case, not only was the book recommended by one of my best friends, but I've also had ample evidence that Elizabeth Gilbert was more than Eat, Pray, Love.  Among other things, she wrote one of my favorite adult novels of the last few years (Signature of All Things, which I discussed here) and I found her political commentary spot on.  Yet I was smugly not a fan,

I should have noticed some cognitive dissonance when I discussed Signature with my sister-in-law.  When I mentioned that Signature was great in spite of the author, SiL asked if she'd given up her perfect life on the farm.  Once I realized that SiL was talking about Barbara Kingsolver and was still annoyed with Barbara Kingsolver seemed to be enjoying preserving food, I became defensive.  Barbara Kingsolver (Animal Dreams, The Lacuna, The Bean Trees . . . among my very favorite authors) was so different than Elizabeth Gilbert ("just run away and meet the right new man and everything will be okay!"). But SiL had actually read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and Pigs in Heaven while I was basing my disdain on what?  The fact that the book sold well?

Which brings us to Elizabeth Hagan.  Rev, Hagan (a.k.a Pastor Elizabeth) was an interim preacher at my church in Oklahoma.  I always thought that she was great for our church, but I was unsure if I liked her, perhaps because I was unsure if she liked me.  I'm older than she is, but in the context of the church we fell into the same small demographic group. We were the only two young (humor me), blonde (humor both of us), smiley, professional women in the congregation, and we may have been uncharacteristically stiff with each other,

After Elizabeth moved on from our church, we became Facebook friends and I started following her blog and her writing.  She's great!  I'm ashamed that that surprised me.  As I was recommending her thoughts on something recently (why Mother's Day and Independence Day shouldn't be celebrated as church holidays), it occurred to me that I may have missed out on a deeper friendship because of petty envy.  As if there isn't always room for more thoughtful smiling women in the world. [Rev, Hagan has a newborn and is working on a new book, so probably will never read this, but if she does: Elizabeth, I'm sorry I that I was surprised to find your writing so good and I'm sorry if my insecurities prevented us from becoming better friends,]

So as part of some compensatory act, penance for judging women harshly for being able to fun things that I'm not (in other words, for doing just what I wrote against doing here), I paid extra close attention to Elizabeth Hagan's recent book suggestions and checked out Elizabeth Gilbert's Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage (keep humoring me, somehow this makes sense in my mind).

Committed is wonderful (more on that in a moment).  Which made me think that I should apologize to the aforementioned Elizabeths and also to my best friend E, who not only stood in line to get me a signed copy of Signature of All Things, but who also told me, years ago, that I would enjoy Eat, Pray, Love.  E, I'm sorry I didn't listen to you the first time.  You know me quite well and I should know that.

About Committed:  For about a week and a half, I spoke to anyone who would listen (mostly The Mister and My Mother) about Committed.  It is the most thoughtful discussion of marriage I have encountered, and fun reading as well.  Like Anne Lamott's Operating Instructions, I think everyone should read it, but like Operating Instructions, I have no idea to whom I would recommend it.  A happily married woman has no place giving a book about a happily [if reluctantly] married woman to a single or less-than-happily married friend, and the recently engages probably don't want to hear it, just like the recently pregnant don't want to about the the struggles of having a newborn and actual parents of newborns are too sleep deprived to read Operating Instructions and recognize it for the humorous masterpiece it is.

Eleven years two hours and six miles from
the point of public commitment. 

Withing a period of two weeks, I read both Anne Lamott's Some Assembly Required: A Journey of My Son't First Son and Committed,  Both authors have a core subject and both take some rather lengthy tangents (Lamott considerably more so).  In each case, I wondered, "Does anyone really want to read about your travels in the middle of a book about . . . ?" and in both cases, the writing is so good that my answer is "Yes!"  Yes, I wanted to know about Lamott's insecurities and weird trip to India and Gilbert's bad times in Cambodia*, just because they are so skillful with words.  I hope someday to be so skillful.  I need to practice.  Thanks for putting up with my practice.

And, as far as personally committed goes, The Mister and I recently celebrated our eleventh anniversary (steel and fashion jewelry!) by attending a wedding and going shopping together for spatulas.  As you can see from the image, we even color coordinated.  This fact was shockingly much commented upon.

*Okay, not only does Liz (we are suddenly on a first-name basis) have great skill with words and fun taste in subject matter, she is the sister of Catherine Gilbert Murdock, author of the fabulous Dairy Queen YA novel.  I would be embarrassed by how much that raises E. Gilbert in my esteem, if I didn't think it happened the other way more often.