In Doris Grumbach's memoir of the year she turned 70 (1988), we step largely into the life of her mind. She is indeed, very cerebral, contemplative and solitary. She is a great women of letters. She corresponds with many other writers and learned people. When this thoughtful memoir starts, oh, how she dreads turning 70. She wrestles with many issues of mortality, her own and that of others, perhaps most especially all the young men dying of AIDS. I was glad to see that by book's end, she has "grown more content" with whatever age she is. Ranging geographically from Washington DC, where she lives with her partner Sybil, to many east coast beach shores she visits to restore herself, to Mayan Mexico, Paris, Key West and New York City, it might seem Grumbach is a gadabout. But she carries her cloak of solitude wherever she goes, glorying in observing strangers and sea birds. Although she and Sybil (a librarian at the Library of Congress) own a bookstore and home together in DC, Doris longs for quieter, wider horizons and thus they rather suddenly buy a house in Maine. Well laced with quotations from other writers, in my hands, Coming Into The End Zone sprouted many small Post-It notes. I found quite a few fine fragments to add to my own quotation collection. And as well, a few passages of pure Grumbach I Knew I needed to save,among them this paragraph from page 27:"I chose to spend two weeks there (in Maine) because my sense of being alive depends on periodic exposure to the sea. I need to swim and float in it. I need to sit at its edge and watch its moody, heavy, unpredictable vastness. I must stroll its wrack to find treasures of stone, shell, bits of glass and wood, even, occasionally a piece of 'sea' porcelain which I fantasize as breakfast crockery from a shipwrecked schooner. The ocean restores to me an acceptance of the way the world is now, consoles me for my losses of faith, optimism, physical pleasure, great expectations, mother, sister, grandmother, and young, plague-ridden friends."Halfway through the book, I had the sudden urge to check the author's biography online and rejoiced to see that she is still alive! Here she was, worry about turning 70 when now she is deep into her 90s. And so I have more Grumbach memoirs to read. I felt a fine kinship with her solitude, love of the ocean and quirky curiosity about the written word. This book also made me want to pursue memoir writing. Maybe some day!
I picked this randomly out of one of my bookcases, and it turned out to fit well with the book I had just finished, Murakami's "What I Talk About When I Talk About Running". Not sure why she chose such a sports-referenced title, though, since the book is not about sports at all.Also a memoir/journal by a writer, Grumbach, too, struggles with getting older and the changes it brings to her life, especially physically. She too speaks often of the solitude necessary to write; she too did not begin writing until after she lived several other kinds of lives.While Murakami focuses his memoir on running, Grumbach often relates her musings to books, not only writing, but owning, collecting, reading, reviewing. As a lover of quotations, I appreciated the way she weaves them into the text of her experiences."I have to find my own way, like the wayfarer in Stephen Crane's poem who found the path to truth lined with knifelike weeds and mumbles: 'Doubtless there are other roads.'"And of course, turning 70, death looms. It is the late 1980's, and AIDS is a death sentence for both those she knows and the subjects of the newspaper's obituaries. Former teachers, friends, and contemporaries grow ill and die; the subject is hard for her to avoid, even as she finds many examples of people who live useful lives and come successfully to new vocations well after most choose to "retire".She looks around at the accumulations of her life and feels the urge to simplify.She and her partner leave their city life in Washington DC for coastal solitude in Maine. Can she make such a radical change in her 70's? As both Grumbach and Murakami conclude, although growing older does change many things, it does not need to keep anyone from pushing new boundaries and exploring different paths not yet fully defined.
