A Year by the Sea: Thoughts of an Unfinished Woman by Joan Anderson

A Year by the Sea was recommended to me by the founder/executive director of a wonderfully amazing cafe I frequent.  I'd spoken with her a bit about the transitions in my own life, about my divorce and the changes it was bringing to my life.  She is in a period of transition in her own marriage, not sure yet of what it will look like by the time it's all played out, and Joan Anderson's book has been meaningful to her.  (In fact, when I told her I'd picked it up, she said she was thinking of re-reading it.)

When Anderson's sons move out of the house and her husband gets a job in another state, she surprises herself by deciding not to join him, instead taking up residence in the family cottage on Cape Cod.  She doesn't know what this decision will bring, she simply knows that something must change.  I liked this book and have some tidbits to share.


*grief is the partner of change (p. 18)

*"'How are you doing?' he asks, a benign and yet loaded question.  If I say fine, and he is not fine, there will be hell to pay.  I'm finding that unhappy people despise hearing good news from the contented ones." (p. 40)

*"I suffer less pain alone, it seems, than in the presence of an indifferent partner."  (p. 48)

*"I've no choice now but to fall in love as soon as possible -- not with a man but with my immediate life and eventually myself.  I'm free to make my own decisions and equally free to take the consequences."  (p. 49)

*"To arrive where you are, to get there from where you are not, You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy."  (p. 61, quoted from Eliot's Four Quartets (East Coker))

*"Figuring we get to experience only seventy or eighty Christmases in a lifetime, I am determined to enjoy this one my way, no matter who is or isn't around.  I read somewhere that the Frenchwoman's role is to please others, but to please herself in the process!  This concept is new for me, that my own joy is my responsibility.  Only I can receive it, and, likewise, only I can allow others to take it away . . . I've had my fill of bleak midwinters and now set my sights on joy."  (p.72)

*" [speaking of monks who were trained to treat liturgical objects with respect] . . . I couldn't help but imagine what my world might be like if I looked at the human beings I was closest to as holy and treated them with that same sense of respect."  (p. 74-5)

*"How many people have I clung to or let cling to me long after it ceased to be a healthy thing to do?  Part of the freedom I feel today comes from letting go."  (p. 112)

*"It occurs to me that I will continue to know my children less if they think I want them to be more.  Seeking perfection is a terrible thing when it robs you of the truth.  I wonder if role-playing and being careful are the chief causes of loneliness."  (p. 143)