Listening Against the Stone: Selected Essays Hot

When I finished the last page of this book of essays, I wished that I could sit in a bakery eating toast and sipping tea, and ask the author about the couple she had shared a four-way sexual and intimate relationship with—“What happened to those people?” And, I wanted to ask, “So, are both of your parents still alive? How did they react when you were a hippie, running off to live in the hot springs?” And as we finished the tea and looked deeply into each other’s eyes, I’d ask her, “Why did you end up spending your life alone without a partner, a husband, or kids? Were there choices you wish you hadn’t made? Or, is it ‘all good’ now? Are you content with the life you live?”

Brenda Miller winds her way through her life, opening little boxes of memories and moments, taking them out and sharing them with the reader, then putting them in a drawer, and opening another delicate, fragile box. But the boxes are separate, unequal, and too fragile to embrace at times.

Some of the essays really linger with the reader hours after reading them, such as: “Next Year in Jerusalem”--an essay about the mixed feelings and emotions this San Fernando Valley, suburban, cheeseburger-eating Jew feels as she comes to Jerusalem for the first time after initially visiting and loving Jordan. All of her feelings about her heritage and a religion she has never embraced come to the forefront as she lays her head against the Wailing Wall.

In one essay near the end of the book, “Opalescent,” Ms. Miller glues together talks of stained glass panels, Marc Chagall’s art and how it changed after his life was shattered by the death of his beloved wife, and of two old friends of the author who are creating a patio and deck by pouring concrete into molds, then shattering the fresh, perfect concrete with sledgehammers and fitting it back together to create something new. This essay seems representative of how this book reads—a mosaic of the author’s life—little snippets of insight, people she has loved, animals that have tethered her heart, and small vignettes of her life that speak of grief and hope, disappointment and wonder, and loss and contentment. Like the broken and reconfigured patio, these essays are bound together revealing a fragile mosaic of the author’s life.

In one of my favorite essays, “Raging Waters” the author urges the children in her care to confront their personal fears each and every day. One of the little girls leads them up a giant water slide in, and Miller and the child roar down the slide together, vanquishing an old, forgotten fear and embracing joy and the sheer magnificence of being young and free again for a moment.

Other essays, however, like “Secret Machine,” failed to illuminate or illustrate any moment—for me it was obscure, irritating, and purposeless in its sharing.

Overall, reading this book was like being with a friend who shares deeply, yet obliquely, of her life and life choices. But at the end of the book, I wasn’t filled—my hunger had not been completely satisfied—the intimacy seemed a little hollow, a little distant, a little fragmented. Still, I had been touched seeing a life revealed.