Melanie Gideon > Quotes

“For the first half of your life each minute feels like a year, but for the second half, each year feels like a minute.”
― Melanie Gideon, Wife 22

“What was unspoken between us, what need never be explained or said, was that nobody would ever love us again like our mothers did. Yes, we would be loved, by our fathers, our friends, our siblings, our aunts and uncles and grandparents and spouses--and our children if we chose to have them--but never would we experience that kind of unconditional, nothing-you-can-do-will-turn-me-away-from-you kind of mother love.”
― Melanie Gideon, Wife 22

“All I have to say is - run, dive, pitch a tent... Spend hours on the phone with your best friend.... Wear bikinis. Drink tequila. Wake up in the morning happy for no good reason.... Lie in the grass, dream of your future, of your imperfect life & your imperfect marriage to your imperfect true love.... Because what else is there? Honestly, there's nothing else. Nothing else matters.”
― Melanie Gideon, Wife 22

“When I'm in pain I want everyone I love on the island with me, sitting around the fire, getting drunk on coconut milk, banging out a plan.”
― Melanie Gideon, Wife 22

“And no, I am not capable of experiencing the present with the same sort of attention to detail. But once the present becomes the past I seem to have no problem attending to it obsessively. : )”
― Melanie Gideon, Wife 22

“A misstep many make: they mistake darkness for meaning. They think light is easy. They think light will find a way through the crack in the door by itself. But it doesn't - you have to open the door & let it in.”
― Melanie Gideon Wife 22

“Why do you always think the sky is falling? Maybe the sky is calling, not falling.”
― Melanie Gideon, The Slippery Year: A Meditation on Happily Ever After

“Reasercher 101,
I do not long for the old, unreachable days. When I'm plugged in I can go anywhere, do and learn anything. Today, for instance, I visited a tiny library in Portugal. I learned how the Shakers weave baskets and I discovered my best friend in middle school loves blood-orange sorbet. Okay, I also learned that a certain pop star actually believes she's a fairy, an honest-to-goodness fairy from the fey people, but my point is access. Access to information. I don't even have to look out my window to see what the eather is like. I can have the weather delivered every morning to my phone. What could be better?
Sincerely,
Wife 22

Wife 22,
Getting caught in the rain?
All the best,
Researcher 101”
― Melanie Gideon, Wife 22

“It was August and the fields were high with corn. In the orchard the last of the peaches clung to their branches and the apples were showing their first pinkish blush. The vegetable garden overflowed with produce: peppers, green beans, zucchini, tomatoes, cucumbers, and squash.”
― Melanie Gideon, Valley of the Moon

“Slowness seems to be a key element in living a rich life. I don't mean rich in the sense of money. I mean rich in the ability to feel things as they're happening, to not constantly be thinking of the next thing.”
― Melanie Gideon, Wife 22

“We might miss the days of being unreachable.”
― Melanie Gideon, Wife 22

“No matter where I went, no matter how far I drifted, no matter how long I was gone, you would come after me and bring me home.”
― Melanie Gideon, Wife 22

“The Oreo cookie invented, the Titanic sinks, Spanish flu, Prohibition, women granted the right to vote, Lindbergh flies solo across the Atlantic, penicillin invented, stock market crashes, the Depression, Amelia Earhart, the atom is split, Prohibition ends, Golden Gate Bridge is built, Pearl Harbor, D-Day, the Korean War, Disneyland, Rosa Parks, Laika the dog is shot into space, hula hoops, birth control pill invented, Bay of Pigs, Marilyn Monroe dies, JFK killed, MLK has a dream, Vietnam War, Star Trek, MLK killed, RFK killed, Woodstock, the Beatles (George, Ringo, John, and Paul) break up, Watergate, the Vietnam War ends, Nixon resigns, Earth Day, Fiddler on the Roof, Olga Korbut, Patty Hearst, Transcendental Meditation, the ERA, The Six Million Dollar Man.
"Bloody hell," I said when she was done.
"I know. It must be a lot to take in."
"It's unfathomable. A Brit named his son Ringo Starr?"
She looked pleasantly surprised: she'd thought I had no sense of humor.
"Well, I think his real name was Richard Starkey.”
― Melanie Gideon, Valley of the Moon

“But mostly there was the ease that came from not having to pretend you had ever recovered. The world wanted you to go on. The world needed you to go on. But the Mumble Jumbles understood that the loss soundtrack was always playing in the background. Sometimes it was on mute, and sometimes it was blasting away on ten, making you deaf.”
― Melanie Gideon Wife 22

“But my advice is—have the courage to let your marriage be some fiery country in the throes of revolution where each of you speaks a different dialect and sometimes you can barely understand each other but it doesn’t matter because, well, each of you is fighting. Fighting for each other.”
― Melanie Gideon, Wife 22

“It seems like we've gotten to the point where our experiences, our memories--our entire lives, actually--aren't real unless we post about them online. I wonder if we might miss the days of being unreasonable.”
― Melanie Gideon

“I long for a richer life with him. I know it's possible. People out there are living richer lives. Couples are making moussaka together while the Oscar Peterson channel plays on Pandora. They're shopping at farmers' markets. Of course they're shopping very slowly (slowness seems to be a key element in living a rich life),visiting all the stalls, sampling stone fruit, sniffing herbs,sitting on a stoop eating vegan scones. I don't mean rich in the sense of money. I mean rich in the ability to feel things as they're happening, to not constantly be thinking of the next thing.”
― Melanie Gideon Wife 22

“She loved rhubarb pie. She loved the morning sun. She loved drying the sheets on the clothesline, even in the dead of winter. She loved a good pot of jasmine tea. She loved orange rinds and gossip and peacock feathers. She loved plums."
"Plums. Greengage plums?"
"Yes, greengage plums.”
― Melanie Gideon, Valley of the Moon

“Was he even planning on coming to meet me? Or did he change his mind at the last minute? Did he decide he liked me better at a distance? That meeting the real me would ruin his fantasy? And what about my fantasy? That there was a real man out there who saw me. A man who couldn’t stop thinking about me. A man who made me feel like a woman worthy of being obsessed about.”
― Melanie Gideon, Wife 22

“When I was a child, my father forbade me to read science fiction or fantasy. Trash of the highest order, he said. He didn't want me muddying up my young, impressionable mind with crap. If it wasn't worthy of being reviewed in the Times, it did not make it onto our bookshelves.
So while my classmates gleefully dove into The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, A Wrinkle in Time, and The Borrowers, I was stuck reading Old Yeller.
My saving grace- I was the most popular girl in my class. That's not saying much; it was easy to be popular at that age. All you had to do was wear your hair in French braids, tell your friends your parents let you drink grape soda every night at dinner, and take any dare. I stood in a bucket of hot water for five minutes without having to pee. I ate four New York System wieners (with onions) in one sitting. I cut my own bangs and- bam!- I was queen of the class.
As a result I was invited on sleepovers practically every weekend, and it was there that I cheated. I skipped the séances and the Ouija board. I crept into my sleeping bag with a flashlight, zipped it up tight, and pored through those contraband books. I fell into Narnia. I tessered with Meg and Charles Wallace; I lived under the floorboards with Arrietty and Pod.
I think it was precisely because those books were forbidden that they lived on in me long past the time that they should have. For whatever reason, I didn't outgrow them. I was constantly on the lookout for the secret portal, the unmarked door that would lead me to another world.
I never thought I would actually find it.”
― Melanie Gideon, Valley of the Moon

“Scene: wedding day, as father gives away the bride
"Off you go, honey."

****”
― Melanie Gideon

“There comes a time in every mother’s life when it becomes very clear that your child is a much better person than you are, but you’re not allowed to say this because then where would you go from there—admitting such a thing to a nine-year-old?”
― Melanie Gideon, The Slippery Year: A Meditation on Happily Ever After

“When you finally found me, sobbing at the base of pine tree, you made me a promise I'll never forget. No matter where I went, no matter how far I drifted, no matter how long I was gone, you would come after me and bring me home. It was the most romantic thing a man had ever said to me. Which makes it all the more difficult for me to come to term with the fact that twenty years later we've drifted from one another again. Profligate drifting. Senseless drifting. As if we had all the daylight left in the world to make to the top of Tuckerman. If this sounds like a goodbye letter, I'm sorry. I'm not sure it's goodbye. It's more of a warning. You should probably look at your watch. You should probably say to yourself, Alice has been gone for a very long time. You should probably come and find me.”
― Melanie Gideon, Wife 22

“Me: I can have the weather delivered every morning to my phone by weather.com. What could be better?

101: Getting caught in the rain?

"I can't beleive it. The nerve of him. The Pina Colada song?" I shriek.
"My God, that's clever," says Bunny. "I guess he was tired of his lady; they'd been together too long." She winks at me and I scowl back at her.”
― Melanie Gideon Wife 22

“As I walked through the fog, back into the future, I made a list of everything I wanted to bring back with me: the heartbreaking indigo of a Greengage night sky, the sugared almonds I'd eaten in the dining hall, the hawing sound Fancy made when she laughed, the smells of freshly cut clover, sponge cake, and loam, Martha's steady gaze, the swish of my borrowed skirt.”
― Melanie Gideon, Valley of the Moon

“I was enchanted as soon as I stepped off the train. As were the hundreds of others who got off the train with me who were now in the process of climbing into buggies and wagons, en route to the dozens of resorts, enclaves, and tent campgrounds in the area, where they would soak up the sun, get drunk on Cabernet, swim and picnic in the druidy redwood groves while reciting Shakespeare.
I climbed into a wagon and was driven off by a Mr. Lars Magnusson to view the old Olson farm. We traveled a mile or so into the hills, past oak glens, brooks, and pools of water, past manzanitas, madrones, and trees dripping with Spanish moss. Sonoma Mountain was to the west; its shadow cast everything in a soft purple light. When we finally reached the farm and I saw the luscious valley spread out in front of me, I knew this was it. Greengage. It would be a home for me and Martha at first, but I hoped it would soon be something more. A tribute to my mother and her ideals; a community in which she would have flourished, where she would have lived a good long life.
Greengage.The burbling creek that ran smack down the middle of the property. The prune, apple, and almond orchards: the fields of wheat, potatoes, and melons. The pastures for cows and sheep. The chicken house and pigsty. The gentle, sloping hills, mounds that looked like God's knuckles, where I would one day plant a vineyard.”
― Melanie Gideon, Valley of the Moon

“It's called a Horologium Florae," Martha explained later that afternoon. She'd dug a large circle in the grass. The circle was sectioned off into twelve wedges.
"A flower clock. It was first hypothesized by a Swedish botanist in the 1700s. You plant a dozen flowers, each of them programmed to open and close at a specific hour. At the one o'clock section you plant a flower whose blooms open at one. At the two o'clock section you plant a flower whose blooms open at two. The blooms tell you what time it is. Like a sundial, only with flowers. Of course, I'll have to wait until summer to plant, but I wanted to mark out the space before the first frost."
She pointed at each section in turn: "Goatsbeard there, then morning glory, then hawkweed, then purple poppy mallow. Then, I'm sorry to say, I'll have to use lettuce- there's nothing else that will bloom at that hour. On to swamp rose mallow and marsh sowthistle. Then flameflower and hawkbit.”
― Melanie Gideon, Valley of the Moon

“There’s this strange phenomenon. An hour after you’ve put your children to sleep, the ways in which you have wronged them sprawl out on your chest, all two hundred and fifty pounds of them, and suck the breath right out of you. It works the same way with gratitude. An hour after your family has left the house, you love them with a piercing intensity that was nowhere to be found when you were scraping egg yolk off their breakfast dishes. Your hope is to one day feel this way about them when they’re in the room. This is a pretty lofty goal.”
― Melanie Gideon, The Slippery Year: A Meditation on Happily Ever After

“I think I’d rather be beautiful. Beautiful makes evolving into any sort of a person with morals and character very difficult.”
― Melanie Gideon, Wife 22

“I'd never forget the smell of the orchard. It was imprinted on me like the scent of my mother's Aliage perfume. Overly sweet, musty, blossomy, leaves-turning, fruit-ripening.”
― Melanie Gideon, Valley of the Moon