It’s been over a year since my book club last met.
I was sitting on my friend’s couch in her living room. The lamps were on, offering a glowing dim light that made me feel relaxed and at home. There was a candle burning in the corner, and her husband and kids were nestled safely upstairs, leaving us ladies all alone. There was wine on the coffee table, surrounded by snacks. A plate of cheese and crackers, a small chocolate cake, homemade bread. Evidence of time well spent. Forks clinked against the plates as we began to chatter about our days.
Five women sat around the room. The youngest, barely thirty, was sitting on the couch with me, just to my right. My neighbor sat in the chair to my left. She helped convince me this group should be a thing. My midwife of sorts—she helped me birth this group that’s become so precious to me.
Next to her sat our host, who’s really more like a sister to me. She was my very first friend in Massachusetts. She helped me visualize this group, helped me dream it, helped conceive it. She named it and claimed it and is my partner in all this. Across the room sat a middle-age woman whose children are all grown. She gives me a glimpse of what life might look like ten years from now. We were missing our oldest member. I missed her voice that night—having just turned seventy, she has a perspective the rest of us don’t, and I always learn something new from what she has to share.
This is my book club—The Woebegone Literary Society. There are a few other people that pop in here and there, but if I had to define a core group, this would be it. I had big dreams for this group. Dreams that it would become more than just a book club. Dreams that it would become a family. We met every month for only a year. And if I could go back to that last gathering in February 2020, I would never let it end.
I can remember it as if it were only yesterday. We were discussing Peace Like a River, by Leif Enger and I still don’t know if I liked it or not. The book, that is. I was sitting in my favorite spot on my friend’s leather couch, right next to the lamp. My legs were curled up in a crosslegged position and I was slouched back—my chiropractor would have been appalled. We talked about what it must have been like to be the main character: this young kid who felt bullied. What it must have felt like to feel as though you were being robbed. How it must have felt for there to be no other choice but to kill the bully. Or maybe he did have a choice—did he choose the right one?
We talked about how they ran, how they sought an escape. We talked about what it meant to go after the ones we love. We tiptoed around harder conversations about our world, touching on politics, but not really digging in. In that moment, I longed for more. I wanted to talk about how impossible some decisions feel. I wanted to talk about how we respond to fear, and how sometimes we make a decision that turns out to be wrong, but in the moment feels exactly right. I wanted to know the impossible decisions each one of us had faced, but no one seemed ready to go down that path. Our friendships were still too new, I think, to really dig in to the ways we’ve felt stuck or wanted to escape. Or maybe we weren’t ready to be honest with ourselves. Public introspection can be incredibly hard, especially in a room of book-loving introverts. I wanted to talk about forgiveness and social justice and the prison system, and all the problems of the world—but there was just not enough time.
We ate food. We drank wine. At the end of the night, our host made tea. As I sat in that room I felt like my dream was starting to take root. I looked at each face around me and felt deep gratitude that we had all been brought together—with all of our differences.
It’s not that we had long meaningful discussions. Sometimes we did, but we rarely strayed from the questions on our page to talk about the challenges we were facing in our own lives. But we were on that path. After a year of reading together, sharing snacks together, drinking wine and tea together, we were becoming more than just a book club.
We were becoming friends.
Years ago I read The Reading Group by Elizabeth Noble and this dream was first imagined in my mind. One day, I thought, I will have a book club like this. A book club made up of women from different places, with differing perspectives. Women of all ages, who start out talking about books, but end up being so much more.
A group of women that walk together through the hard times. A place to go where there are no walls—a safe space to say whatever is on your mind. A place where you feel free to disagree. Without any fear that they will kick you out. Women who help you be a better woman. Women who help you be a better friend.
The pandemic ruined my book club dream. We haven’t met in a year and now my worries aren’t “how do we pick a book?” but instead “how do we pick up where we left off?”
How do we get back to that point where we all feel comfortable being ourselves? Has our time apart changed all that?
I contemplated trying to host a gathering in the summer, back when the infection rates were low, but I just didn’t have the mental energy for that. I was afraid of planning anything, for fear that it would be cancelled. I held so much disappointment for so many months that hibernation felt like the only right choice. I ignored my desire to see them. Because let’s face it, by summer, I really could care less about a book. It was the group of people that I missed. I read books and wondered what they might think, then buried my sorrow and moved on, giving thanks that we were all healthy and alive, and knowing that one day we would meet again.
By summer, it had been months since I saw anyone outside my house. With all of our trips canceled, all our plans on hold, I was doing a lot of reading. And although I longed to talk about the books I had been digging into, I mostly just longed for conversation about anything at all. I longed for the chance to sit around and share snacks with these women I had been growing to love. I longed to talk about what we had been doing and how we were spending our time. I knew Zoom was an option, but I had shunned off technology. If I couldn’t be with them in person, I didn’t want to be with them at all. Zoom always left me feeling half empty. It was a stark reminder of all that I was missing; of all we couldn’t have. The whole point of book club is to gather together. The book is a tool—an avenue towards conversation. A way to get people to open up about what they are thinking. I just couldn’t bring myself to try that on a screen.
Late in February, I decided Covid would hold us captive no longer. I’ve gone more than a year without my Woebies. Without this group of women that were making my dream a reality. Without this group of women that had become my friends.
And that year has been far too long.
I invited them to an outdoor gathering on a Saturday afternoon in late May. Surely by then it will be nice enough to sit outside. We can talk about a book, and how life has been over the last fifteen months, and maybe pick up where we left off. It feels like a brave thing to do. Inside all I feel is fear.
What if they don’t miss Book Club the way I do? What if they don’t miss me? What if they aren’t ready yet? The fear of having to cancel isn’t really in my mind this time. By now we’re pretty good at outdoor gatherings, and not even a little rain can keep me from putting on rain gear and getting outside to see my people. So unless there’s a deluge, Book Club will happen. But will it feel the same? Or will it feel like our first meeting? A little shy, a little timid, a little unsure?
After a year of burying my head in the sand, I’m starting to wake up and dream a little once again.
