Customer Reviews

Forward From Here: Leaving Middle Age--and Other Unexpected Adventures

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

"Forward From Here" is written in good humor tinged with irony: anecdotes about aging, insights about the natural world and observations on how the 'dailiness' of our lives can help us outlast any despair. The author, Reeve Lindbergh, combines revelation and commercial instincts. but with the philosophizing that comes from maturity.

"Lindbergh" falls in the category of a never-to-be-forgotten name. At the age of five I was terrified by the stares of strangers in slow-moving vehicles, all because of the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby. Newsmen seized on the frightening, sorrowful story of the loss of the baby with a voracious appetite almost equal to today's media.

Reeve Lindbergh discusses her "fraught relationship" with her famous father. I am no psychologist but it has long seemed to me that explorers of this planet have a corner on certain personality traits. My own uncle who explored Antarctica in the late 20's & 30's, and much later as a climatologist in the Arctic, seemed to have a 'solitariness' not found in most men. Perhaps this develops as a bi-product of celebrity status?

The author learned thirty years after his death that "Lindy" - - the nation's hero & her famous father, had fathered three other families in Germany & elsewhere in Europe. The reader is confronted by the sad reality of selfishness, of which we are all guilty to a degree. Reeve Lindbergh writes of the "unutterable loneliness" her father must have endured in his later years. It is a moving experience to read her conclusions about her parent's flawed personality.

Readers will be equally moved and grateful for other chapters of her book. We can all wish to age with the grace that helps us "not to utter unkind words" - - and further, to "love the reality of wrinkles"!

Dear Reeve,

I am hoping that you read the Amazon.com reviews, because I know of no other way to reach you and tell you how much I loved your book.

I have to preface this review by telling you that I was a HUGE fan of your mother's writing, starting in the early 70's with her published diaries, and then on through her other works that had been published previously (Gift from the Sea, etc.) You clearly have her gift for accessing your innermost thoughts and feelings and expressing them so clearly and adroitly on paper. If there is a heaven, I'm sure she is looking down upon you with great pride. Perhaps to REALLY appreciate your writing, one must understand the history of the Lindbergh family - the secretiveness, shyness, and fear of publicity. All understandable, of course, in light of what your parents went through in the early 1930's.

I loved most of your essays - especially the ones about your brain tumor, getting older, and your friends and family. As I said, you have the gift of your mother's "immediacy" - showing the reader what is IN your thoughts, and not talking ABOUT them. Thank you for the chapter in which you reveal your reactions to the news of your father's other families - I had wondered for several years since the news broke about your step-siblings in Europe how you had reacted. Having read your other books ("No More Words" is my favorite), I had a sense that you would "step up to the plate" and face the issue head on, rather than retreat into bitterness and melancholy afterwards. I will not reveal your actions here (so that other readers may see for themselves first-hand how you handled it), but suffice it to say that your character and courage is displayed in full measure throughout the book.

I, too, miss your mother....but I still have her in her diaries and books, which I will treasure to the end of my life. I'm sure you feel about her as she felt in her diary "Locked Rooms and Open Doors" ,in talking about losing her sister, Elizabeth, when she quoted John Masefield's poem:

"But gathering as we stray a sense

Of Life so lovely and intense-

It lingers when we wander hence

That those who follow feel behind

Their backs when all before is blind

Our Joy, a rampart to the mind.

Thank you, Reeve, for the joy you have brought to my life, as a children's author, poet, and memorist. It's the greatest gift that any reader can receive.

Forward from Here is Reeve Lindbergh's best book yet. Funny, tender, compassionate, profound, Lindbergh reveals herself to be an accomplished and graceful writer--something you might already suspect if you have read her earlier books, Under a Wing (about growing up Lindbergh, with two extraordinary parents, Charles Lindbergh and Anne Morrow Lindbergh) and No More Words (about her mother's decline and death). In this book, Lindbergh (an author of books for children) explores the happiness and hazards she encounters as she journeys from middle age into her sixties--the "youth of old age." "I might as well enjoy the view as I travel along from my birth to death, inhabiting this being I call myself," she writes. "I may be a passenger on the journey, or I may be the vehicle itself, but I'm definitely not the driver. I'm here, but I'm not in charge."

Maybe, but she's not just along for the ride. In this collection of nineteen personal essays, she laughs at the pleasures of her rural Vermont life--the joys of reading, writing, raising lambs and boys and encountering turtles--and takes a sober look at the challenges of living in an aging body. The vanities of youth are gone (she quotes her beloved sister Anne, now dead of cancer: "After a certain age, there's only so good you can look.") and she is making "friends with reality." Not sure that she wants to wear purple, with a red hat that doesn't go, she looks back on a time when she wore lavender eyeshadow and white lipstick (do you remember doing that? I do) and laughs at herself. In fact, she knows that's the best thing to do: "laugh at myself when laughter is called for, weep when I need to, and feel all of it, every bit of it, as much as I can for as long as I can."

As far as feeling all of it goes, the most remarkable essay is the "Brain Tumor Diary," an account of the months (July 2006 through May 2007) when Lindbergh was dealing with a brain tumor--benign, thankfully, but large, intrusive, undeniably there, and needing to come out. It was a difficult time for her and her family. The saving graces were her writing and her focus on daily life: "Dailiness outlasts despair," she says. "For a while the rhythms of daily life may seem to be submerged, even drowned in disaster, but that is never true." The "Brain Tumor Diary" is a report from the front lines of daily life, lived in the face of possible disaster.

The Lindberghs are no strangers to life on the front lines and in the public eye. Reeve and her siblings have had to deal with as many as fifty men who have claimed to be the Lindbergh child kidnapped in 1932. But there is more, and in her final essay, she writes movingly about the way she felt when she learned that her father, the picture of rectitude, a "stern arbiter of moral and ethical conduct," had three secret European families and seven children. Indignation, anger, rage at her father's deception and hypocrisy, shame--it's all there. But in the end, there is compassion, and even humor:

I certainly could have done with his [my father's] endless lectures on the Population Explosion...A man who fathered thirteen--I think, I still have to stop and count us!--children, haranguing one of his daughters about world population figures? Give me a break!

And in the end, knowing her father to be at once "deeply intelligent and incredibly energetic," and "angry, restless, opinionated...obsessed with his own ideas and concerns," she has to admit that the multiple families made a certain kind of sense: "No one woman could possibly have lived with him all the time."

"I'm hoping that as I get older I'll get braver," Lindbergh writes at the close of this splendid and moving book. I'm hoping that Lindbergh will take us with her as she bravely explores her future, forward from here, and that soon we'll be able to read the next chapter of her journey.

by Susan Wittig Albert

for Story Circle Book Reviews

reviewing books by, for, and about women

I always feel a book is worthwhile reading if you take something away from it that strikes a chord within you. Two things resonated with me. On page 26 she speaks of loss: "...I carry my lost loved ones with me...I have learned over the years that I can do this, that love continues beyond loss." Further on she says: "My experience has also made me understand that loss is inevitable, and that loss too, continues forever, right along with love." So beautifully stated and so true. The other bit of philosophy we could all profit from is: "I don't believe in 'rehearsing trouble,' advice given to me years ago ('Don't rehearse trouble, Reeve!') by Helen Wallace..." Everyone reads from their own perspective. Certainly Reeve Lingbergh has experienced life differently from me, but so have many of my friends. I cannot identify with everything in her book, but I think she is a person that would be nice to know.

I usually try to read at least one book per week and, also, listen

to one book on tape or CD . . . it was difficult to find the time to

do the listening while away, so this past week I instead managed

to read a second book . . . its review follows:

Turning sixty is something I can relate to, in that I'll be celebrating

that birthday next June.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh in FORWARD FROM HERE describes

how she went through a similar experience . . . as she enters

the period her mother once described as "the youth of old

age," the author details the many unexpected surprises

she has encountered.

Her observations were amusing at times, yet also

oh-so-insightful--such as this one:

* As I grew older and older, I got more used to the idea that death

would happen to everybody, including me, but that in my case it

would not happen for a very very very very long time. By the time it

happened, I hoped, I would be so old that it wouldn't bother me. This

is not quite true yet, but again, I think I may be getting there. I hope it

takes me a while longer. There's no need to rush.

As I journey on, I carry my lost loved ones with me: my sister, my mother,

and all the others. I have learned over the years that I can do this, that

love continues beyond loss. It continues not abstractly but intimately,

and it continues forever. My experience has also made me understand

that loss is inevitable, and that loss, too, continues forever, right along

with love.

I also liked what the author had to say about pets of all kinds . . . she

devotes two chapters to birds . . . however, it was this observation

about her dog that especially caught my attention:

* Many of our visitors, seeing that we had a dog, entered the house

with loud voices and waving hands, making a noisy fuss over him. This

kind of behavior just caused the poor dog to slink off into a corner

and stay there until the visitors left. Helen Wolff came in without

commotion and then sat quietly and drank her tea, like the well-behaved

guest that she was. The dog came over to greet her, eventually, sniffing

her hand and wagging his tail, probably grateful for her good manners. She

told me once that she felt it was better to let animals or children come

to her, if they wished to, rather than the other way around.

The part of FORWARD FROM HERE that most caught my attention

was Lindbergh's account of how she discovered thirty years after

the death of her father (famed aviator Charles Lindbergh) that

he had three secret families in Europe . . . upon this discovery,

she then went to meet them--discovering that her new extended

family was far more complicated than she had ever imagined.

Thanks to the author for making me at least consider leaving middle age an unexpected adventure! That point of view will take a bit of getting used to, I'm afraid. These well-written essays about one person's life observations are very comforting, enjoyable and optimistic. I can relate to many of her experiences and thoughts and appreciate her sharing them. I also enjoyed the humor especially in Chapter 17, "Living With the Dog". So true and the very last page of that chapter had me in tears from laughing so hard!

Well done, Reeve. And by the way, I think I'm in love with your husband! What a jewel!

I was so excited to see that Reeve Lindbergh had written another book!

I love her writings. I appreciate her for telling of her life and how she deals with the circumstances that come her way. So personable and down to earth. Everytime I sit down with her books, I feel I am visiting with an old friend.

This is one of the best books that I've ever read. I've ordered others for my friends.

What a pleasure to read! I am not quite finished with this Kindle book and the more I read it, the more I'm enjoying it. Lindbergh is a sensitive, thoughtful, writer and I can relate to her experiences on so many levels. I, too, am a woman of a certain age, a mother, grandmother, potential (me, not her) writer. Her perspective on life, the natural world, her family just drew me in and I found myself wishing she were my friend.

Thank you, Reeve, for a lovely reading experience. I'm recommending this for all my friends and if they don't buy it, they're getting a copy for their birthdays or Christmas/Chanukah.

Reeve Lindberg is a sensitive, wonderful writer. The subject she chose for these essays are pertinent to us over 60 and beyond. I'm recommending this book to all my lady friends.