Richard W. shared a post on April 6, 2023
Matzoh Brei for Jan!

Matzoh Brei for Jan!

The Secret Ingredient Makes It the Best!

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes, 5 seconds

“Honey, I’m feeling pretty hungry,” Jan said as I handed her the morning medication.

As her loving husband and caregiver, I asked what she had in mind. “I’m really in the mood for some Matzoh Brei,” she replied.

I wasn’t sure how to make it, so I headed downstairs to find a recipe.

“Wait a minute, you’ve never made Matzoh Brei before and you don’t even like it,” she reminded me. Jan quickly jotted down a recipe for me to follow.

In the kitchen, I followed her instructions step by step, with the only change I put in all my love into the Matzoh Brei. After some time, I went back upstairs and served her breakfast. I said, “Here you go, my love. Do you require anything else?”

Jan was in the middle of a call and shook her head negatively, so I quietly left the room and headed downstairs. As I reached the first floor, I overheard Jan exclaiming, “Wow, this is the best Matzoh Brei I’ve ever had!

I smiled as I continued to our living room, remembering my grandmother’s lesson. Following Jan’s directions, I prepared the Matzoh Brei and added the secret ingredient – love!

I received the news that I hoped never to hear two years ago today.

“I’m sorry to say this, but the only option for Janice is hospice,” Dr. Strair said.

Hearing those words, my stomach flipped, and I felt like it had jumped out of the window. The call had been about planning for Jan’s recovery, but now we were discussing her death.

Today, 24 months later, I still can’t eat Matzoh Brei, but my love for Jan remains strong.

I’ve learned that love never dies, and I take it one day at a time. Even though I miss Jan, I strive to share her passion for life and kindle the light from her effervescent smiles to repair the world.

Love is the elusive yet essential ingredient that makes life complete and fulfilling.

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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Jan and Ana

Home for Hospice

I must focus all my attention on Jan, who will come home for hospice care. Although resources are limited, I will give Jan my utmost love and support.
Richard W. Brown April 8, 2022

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Such a Fun Age

Read: October 2021

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Such a Fun Age

by Kiley Reid

Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid. Although many reviewers highly rated this book, I was unsure it was the book for me. However, once I started reading, I could not stop. It is “a striking and surprising debut novel from a compelling new voice. Such a Fun Age is a big-hearted story about race and privilege, set around a young Black babysitter, her well-intentioned employer, and a surprising connection that threatens to undo them both.

Alix Chamberlain is a woman who gets what she wants and has made a living with her confidence-driven brand, showing other women how to do the same. So she is shocked when her babysitter, Emira Tucker, is confronted while watching the Chamberlains’ toddler one night, walking the aisles of their local high-end supermarket. The store’s security guard, seeing a young Black woman out late with a White child, accuses Emira of kidnapping two-year-old Briar. A small crowd gathers, a bystander films everything, and Emira is furious and humiliated. Alix resolves to make things right.

But Emira herself is aimless, broke, and wary of Alix’s desire to help. At 25, she is about to lose her health insurance and has no idea what to do with her life. When the video of Emira unearths someone from Alix’s past, both women find themselves on a crash course that will upend everything they think they know about themselves and each other.

With empathy and piercing social commentary, Such a Fun Ageexplores the stickiness of transactional relationships, what it means to make someone “family”, and the complicated reality of being a grown-up. It is a searing debut for our times.

When race and privilege are paramount issues, this book is a first step to understanding the intersectionality of the issues and addressing them. I recommend this book with our reservation.

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Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

Read: October 2021

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Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

by Katherine May

Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May is “an intimate, revelatory book exploring the ways we can care for and repair ourselves when life knocks us down.”

Two quotes that resonated with me were:

That’s what grief is – a yearning for that one last moment of contact that would settle everything.

We are in the habit of imagining our lives to be linear, a long march from birth to death in which we mass our powers, only to surrender them again, all the while slowly losing our youthful beauty. This is a brutal untruth. Life meanders through the woods. We have seasons when we flourish and seasons when the leaves fall upon us, revealing our bare bones. Given time they grow again.

May writes in a clear voice that conveys the importance of accepting the cycles of life instead of fighting them.

Sometimes you slip through the cracks: unforeseen circumstances like an abrupt illness, the death of a loved one, a breakup, or a job loss can derail a life. These periods of dislocation can be lonely and unexpected. For May, her husband fell ill, her son stopped attending school, and her own medical issues led her to leave a demanding job. Wintering explores how she not only endured this painful time but embraced the singular opportunities it offered.

A moving personal narrative shot through with lessons from literature, mythology, and the natural world, May’s story offers instruction on the transformative power of rest and retreat. Illumination emerges from many sources: solstice celebrations and dormice hibernation, C.S. Lewis and Sylvia Plath swimming in icy waters, and sailing arctic seas.

Ultimately Wintering invites us to change how we relate to our own fallow times. May models an active acceptance of sadness and finds nourishment in deep retreat, joy in the serene beauty of winter, and encouragement in understanding life as cyclical, not linear. A secular mystic, May forms a guiding philosophy for transforming the hardships that arise before the ushering in of a new season.

I recommend this book without reservation.

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 Human Stain: A Novel

Read: September 2024

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The Human Stain: A Novel

by Philip Roth

Today, I started reading The Human Stain: A Novel by Philip Roth. This book is considered a masterpiece and has earned its place among The New York Times’ 100 Best Books of the 21st Century. The story takes place in 1998, a significant year marked by a presidential impeachment that affected the entire nation. In a peaceful New England town, the respected classics professor Coleman Silk is forced into retirement due to false accusations of racism by his colleagues.

This accusation triggers a series of events that bring to light shocking revelations about Coleman, revelations that carry a profound societal significance. Coleman Silk harbors a secret, a secret that is not about his affair with Faunia Farley, a woman half his age with a troubled past, or the alleged racism that led to his downfall at the college where he was once a respected dean. It’s not even about misogyny, despite Professor Delphine Roux’s attempts to portray him as such. Coleman’s true secret, a secret he has guarded for fifty years from everyone in his life, including his wife, children, colleagues, and friends, is a defining aspect of his character and his relationships.

The Human Stain is a compelling portrayal of 1990s America, a time of clashing moralities and ideological divisions. Through public denunciations and rituals of purification, it delves into how the nation’s destiny and the ‘human stain’ that marks human nature shape the lives of postwar Americans. This potent and captivating novel is a fitting continuation of Philip Roth‘s earlier works, each set in a distinct historical period.

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A Feather in the Water

Read: July 2022

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A Feather on the Water

by Lindsay Jayne Ashford

A Feather on the Water by Lindsay Jayne Ashford is an excellent historical fiction of the post-was era for displaced people. I highly recommend it. The tagline reads, “for three women in postwar Germany, 1945 is a time of hope—lost and found.” I have always enjoyed historical fiction, and A Feather on the Water seemed like a perfect choice.

The opening paragraphs confirmed my decision, as Martha, one of the three women, escapes from her abusive husband in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Martha and the two other characters, Delphine and Kitty, come to life with Ms. Ashford’s gifted pen.

Like a feather in the water, our lives continue despite the trials and tribulations we must confront.

The Goodreads summary provides an overview.

Just weeks after World War II ends, three women from different corners of the world arrive in Germany to run a displaced-persons camp. They long to help rebuild shattered lives—including their own.

For Martha, going to Germany provides an opportunity to escape Brooklyn and a violent marriage. Arriving from England is orphaned Kitty. She hopes working at the camp will bring her closer to her parents, last seen before the war began. For Delphine, Paris has been a city of ghosts after her husband and son died in Dachau. Working at the camp is her chance to find meaning again by helping other victims of Hitler’s regime.

Charged with the care of more than two thousand camp residents, Martha, Delphine, and Kitty draw on each other’s strength to endure and to give hope when all seems lost. Among these strangers and survivors, they might find the love and closure they need to heal their hearts and leave their troubled pasts behind.

The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. 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 missing hours

Read: February 2022

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The Missing Hours

by Julia Dahl

The Missing Hours by Julia Dahl is a novel I chose to read as I was looking for something different from the recent books I have read, and a fellow reader recommended this one. The Missing Hours is a novel about obsession, privilege, and the explosive consequences of one violent act. Like a bomb exploding, the ripple effects of the novel’s primary event impact the victim and her family, friends, and the larger community.

A trigger warning to all readers, the violent act in the novel is a sexual assault that is filmed and shared. Claudia, the victim, has no memory initially of what happened. She had been drinking and wearing clothes that she liked to wear. None of her choices is an excuse for those who victimized her.

She cannot remember what happened until a friend receives the video.

Being wealthy and social media savvy, she is aware that reporting the assault before or after the video is released would only allow her to be re-victimized. Her choices and how she seeks to secure justice make this a book I enjoyed and highly recommended.

This is the Goodreads overview.

From a distance, Claudia Castro has it all: a famous family, a trust fund, thousands of Instagram followers, and a spot in NYU’s first-year class. But look closer, and things are messier: her parents are separating, she’s just been humiliated by a sleazy documentary, and her sister is about to have a baby with a man she barely knows.

Claudia starts the school year resolved to find a path toward something positive, maybe even meaningful – and then, one drunken night, everything changes. Reeling, her memory hazy, Claudia cuts herself off from her family, seeking solace in a new friendship. But when the rest of school comes back from spring break, Claudia is missing.

Suddenly, the whole city is trying to piece together the hours of that terrible night.

From the critically acclaimed author of Invisible City and Conviction, The Missing Hours is a novel about obsession, privilege, and the explosive consequences of one violent act.

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Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow: A Novel

Read: July 2024

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Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow: A Novel

by Gabrielle Zevin

I delved into the pages of “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow: A Novel” by Gabrielle Zevin. The narrative unfolds the lives of Sam and Sadie, two college friends who evolve into creative partners in video game design. Their journey is a tapestry of fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and a form of immortality, all woven into a unique love story that captivated me like no other.

This love story uniquely portrays the challenges and triumphs of a relationship in the context of their shared creative endeavors.

On a bitter-cold day in December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees Sadie Green amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn’t heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom.

These friends, who have been close since childhood, take bold steps, borrow money, and seek favors. Even before they graduate from college, they have birthed their first blockbuster, Ichigo. In a blink, the world is at their feet. Sam and Sadie, not yet twenty-five, are shining with brilliance, success, and wealth. But these attributes can’t shield them from their emotional rollercoaster of creative aspirations and the heartbreaks that come with it.

Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Gabrielle Zevin‘s Tomorrow, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow provides a profound exploration of the diverse nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our deep-seated need to connect: to be loved and to love. It’s a journey that will make you reflect on your life and relationships.

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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