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Zippy #2
She Got Up Off the Couch: And Other Heroic Acts from Mooreland, Indiana
Picking up where A Girl Named Zippy left off, Haven Kimmel crafts a tender portrait of her mother, a modestly heroic woman who took the odds that life gave her and somehow managed to win. When we last saw Zippy, she was oblivious to the storm that was brewing in her home. Her mother, Delonda, had literally just gotten up off the couch and ridden her rickety bicycle down the road. Her dad was off somewhere, gambling or "working." And Zippy was lost in her own fabulous world of exploring the fringes of Moorland, Indiana. Increasingly frustrated with the limitations of her small-town, married-with-children life, Delonda decides first to learn how to drive a car, even though she won't have access to one. Next, she applies to the local college, eventually graduating with honors at age forty. We happily follow Zippy from one story to another, but we know this is really her mother's book: the poignant tale of a strong woman who found a way to save herself and set a proud example for her daughter.
8 pages, Audio CD
First published December 1, 2005
104 people are currently reading
7487 people want to read
About the author
Haven Kimmel
17 books563 followersHaven Kimmel was born in New Castle, Indiana, and was raised in Mooreland, Indiana, the focus of her bestselling memoir, A Girl Named Zippy: Growing up Small in Mooreland, Indiana .
Kimmel earned her undergraduate degree in English and creative writing from Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana and a graduate degree from North Carolina State University, where she studied with novelist Lee Smith. She also attended seminary at the Earlham School of Religion in Richmond, Indiana.
She lives in Durham, North Carolina.
Kimmel earned her undergraduate degree in English and creative writing from Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana and a graduate degree from North Carolina State University, where she studied with novelist Lee Smith. She also attended seminary at the Earlham School of Religion in Richmond, Indiana.
She lives in Durham, North Carolina.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,097 reviews
August 1, 2020
Reading Road Trip 2020
Current location: Indiana
When Haven Kimmel published her first memoir, A Girl Named Zippy, in 2001, my sister, my mother, and I were flabbergasted. We could not believe that a woman from a dinky small town near each of my parents' dinky small towns had written a New York Times bestseller.
You've got to understand how uncommon this is! My people are all Hoosiers; my parents were raised in towns so small, there isn't even a traffic light in them. They could have thrown rocks and hit Haven Kimmel's house, if they'd wanted some entertainment.
But, Haven Kimmel wouldn't have lived in that house yet. She isn't the age of my parents; she's my sister's age, and just 6 years older than I am.
And this. . . well, this just makes her second memoir, She Got Up Off the Couch even better for me. Both the setting and the time period are so very familiar to me.
My siblings and I weren't raised in Indiana. My father was relocated for work before our lives began and we grew up in the fast-paced world of South Florida, but every summer of my life, starting at the age of 12, was spent with the Indiana grandmothers. The pace slowed down quickly, believe me, and so much of my young character was formed by having these two worlds influence me.
Haven Kimmel (known as “Zippy” in her youth) did not have such a balance. She had only the small town of Mooreland to shape her.
She also had a difficult task here, in writing this memoir. She's from a town so small and a church community so intimate, she needed to depict the residents of her little world in an honest and fair way, while keeping the reader assured that she was being truthful. She was also placed in the challenging position of having to reveal more about her own family than she did in her first memoir.
Truth is. . . her family was poor, her father was perpetually unemployed, her mother was morbidly obese and heartbreakingly depressed. They rarely had running water, they never invited anyone to their decrepit and rodent-infested house, and Zippy often had to be fed by the neighbors.
Zippy's life was far from perfect, but this is a memoir filled with grace. Honestly, I don't know how she did it, but she managed to avoid throwing anyone under the bus, and yet managed to convey enough truth so you know what's what, as you're reading it.
I'll be honest. This is an inconsistent memoir that runs hot and cold. There were some chapters that I just couldn't read fast enough, and others that I thought were weighty and unnecessary.
But, all in all, I enjoyed Kimmel's second memoir about 10 times more than I did The Glass Castle, though I did find similarities between Ms. Kimmel's and Ms. Walls's blind acceptance of their parents. I can't help but think that there are leftover vestiges of the old adage of “be a good girl and smile” here, and that does grate on my nerves, but perhaps these two women just have a different threshold for madness than I do. Or, perhaps they forgive more easily, or have more grace?
The best part, and I mean the best part, of this memoir (especially during a pandemic) was being transported to my favorite time on earth: the 1970s. Ms. Himmel took me back quickly with her pop culture references, her music play lists, and her bad school pictures. I know the 70s were a rough time for a lot of adults, but, for a lot of kids, they were Heaven on Earth.
The song that began was “If,” by Bread, a song I already found so painfully beautiful I couldn't add it to my record collection at home. If a face could launch a thousand ships, then where am I to go?
Current location: Indiana
When Haven Kimmel published her first memoir, A Girl Named Zippy, in 2001, my sister, my mother, and I were flabbergasted. We could not believe that a woman from a dinky small town near each of my parents' dinky small towns had written a New York Times bestseller.
You've got to understand how uncommon this is! My people are all Hoosiers; my parents were raised in towns so small, there isn't even a traffic light in them. They could have thrown rocks and hit Haven Kimmel's house, if they'd wanted some entertainment.
But, Haven Kimmel wouldn't have lived in that house yet. She isn't the age of my parents; she's my sister's age, and just 6 years older than I am.
And this. . . well, this just makes her second memoir, She Got Up Off the Couch even better for me. Both the setting and the time period are so very familiar to me.
My siblings and I weren't raised in Indiana. My father was relocated for work before our lives began and we grew up in the fast-paced world of South Florida, but every summer of my life, starting at the age of 12, was spent with the Indiana grandmothers. The pace slowed down quickly, believe me, and so much of my young character was formed by having these two worlds influence me.
Haven Kimmel (known as “Zippy” in her youth) did not have such a balance. She had only the small town of Mooreland to shape her.
She also had a difficult task here, in writing this memoir. She's from a town so small and a church community so intimate, she needed to depict the residents of her little world in an honest and fair way, while keeping the reader assured that she was being truthful. She was also placed in the challenging position of having to reveal more about her own family than she did in her first memoir.
Truth is. . . her family was poor, her father was perpetually unemployed, her mother was morbidly obese and heartbreakingly depressed. They rarely had running water, they never invited anyone to their decrepit and rodent-infested house, and Zippy often had to be fed by the neighbors.
Zippy's life was far from perfect, but this is a memoir filled with grace. Honestly, I don't know how she did it, but she managed to avoid throwing anyone under the bus, and yet managed to convey enough truth so you know what's what, as you're reading it.
I'll be honest. This is an inconsistent memoir that runs hot and cold. There were some chapters that I just couldn't read fast enough, and others that I thought were weighty and unnecessary.
But, all in all, I enjoyed Kimmel's second memoir about 10 times more than I did The Glass Castle, though I did find similarities between Ms. Kimmel's and Ms. Walls's blind acceptance of their parents. I can't help but think that there are leftover vestiges of the old adage of “be a good girl and smile” here, and that does grate on my nerves, but perhaps these two women just have a different threshold for madness than I do. Or, perhaps they forgive more easily, or have more grace?
The best part, and I mean the best part, of this memoir (especially during a pandemic) was being transported to my favorite time on earth: the 1970s. Ms. Himmel took me back quickly with her pop culture references, her music play lists, and her bad school pictures. I know the 70s were a rough time for a lot of adults, but, for a lot of kids, they were Heaven on Earth.
The song that began was “If,” by Bread, a song I already found so painfully beautiful I couldn't add it to my record collection at home. If a face could launch a thousand ships, then where am I to go?
January 31, 2011
This is a far darker book than Kimmel's first memoir, A Girl Named Zippy, and I loved it for that darkness, because while I'd sensed it simmering under the surface of that first book, it never quite broke through—Kimmel hewed closely to portraying her world as she felt it was when she was a young girl. And she was too young and too bright-eyed to quite put things together. So even though there were occasional questionable events, they never added up to an in-depth portrait. Kept Zippy frothy and fun and far from troubling.
The kid gloves come off in this book, however. As the author gets older, the fissures in her family we'd noted earlier begin to develop into full-on fault lines. Dad's drinking, mom's oppression, her brother's anger, and on and on—the earlier portrait of her family takes on a bleak side. Despite which the book is funny as all hell. Kimmel's love for her family comes through even when she's portraying them at their worst, and she manages to soft pedal harsh truths by approaching them from unconventional directions. You feel for all of these people, but especially for her mother, who really does get up off the couch and makes a life for herself. It's a grand, moving fight to be somebody. And thanks to mom, the memoir ends on a high note which is all the sweeter than anything in Zippy because it feels like it is earned, something fought for at a very high cost.
Not for everybody but one of my favorite books.
The kid gloves come off in this book, however. As the author gets older, the fissures in her family we'd noted earlier begin to develop into full-on fault lines. Dad's drinking, mom's oppression, her brother's anger, and on and on—the earlier portrait of her family takes on a bleak side. Despite which the book is funny as all hell. Kimmel's love for her family comes through even when she's portraying them at their worst, and she manages to soft pedal harsh truths by approaching them from unconventional directions. You feel for all of these people, but especially for her mother, who really does get up off the couch and makes a life for herself. It's a grand, moving fight to be somebody. And thanks to mom, the memoir ends on a high note which is all the sweeter than anything in Zippy because it feels like it is earned, something fought for at a very high cost.
Not for everybody but one of my favorite books.
August 17, 2010
This summer I seem to be stuck on reading memoirs of growing up in the Midwest in the 1970's. This is another good one. She Got Up Off the Couch is actually a follow-up to the author's earlier memoir, A Girl Named Zippy. I think I liked this one even better. Kimmel covers a lot of territory related to growing up in small-town Mooreland, Indiana, and she does so hilariously.
The title refers to her mother, who at age 40 got up off the couch and escaped "twenty four years of poverty and terror and ennui" by enrolling in college and succeeding in the face of overwhelming odds. "She could not clean a condemned house with no running water, she could not cook meals with food that didn't exist or wash clothes without a washing machine. Without clothes. She couldn't drive a car she didn't have, without a license she couldn't acquire. She had taken her vows, and then they had taken her, and the forces amassed against her were greater than love, greater than obligation. They were elemental, heavy as a dead planet." The mother's story is truly inspiring and was my favorite part of this book with many good parts.
The title refers to her mother, who at age 40 got up off the couch and escaped "twenty four years of poverty and terror and ennui" by enrolling in college and succeeding in the face of overwhelming odds. "She could not clean a condemned house with no running water, she could not cook meals with food that didn't exist or wash clothes without a washing machine. Without clothes. She couldn't drive a car she didn't have, without a license she couldn't acquire. She had taken her vows, and then they had taken her, and the forces amassed against her were greater than love, greater than obligation. They were elemental, heavy as a dead planet." The mother's story is truly inspiring and was my favorite part of this book with many good parts.
February 2, 2017
Zippy is just as charming as she was in the first book, although she loses some of her innocence as she experiences major changes in her family. I loved reading about her mother who got up off the couch and followed her dreams. I also loved learning about more people from the town, who obviously loved Zippy, and would wash and feed her. It definitely took a village to raise this child!
It’s fun to see Zippy’s dysfunctional family and small-town life, through her unique and amusing perspective. (One scene, with mice and rats, still keeps me up at nights.) The poverty, neglect, and infidelity in this book could have easily been written into a depressing story. Zippy shows us that it really is your attitude, and not your circumstances, that define the person you become.
It’s fun to see Zippy’s dysfunctional family and small-town life, through her unique and amusing perspective. (One scene, with mice and rats, still keeps me up at nights.) The poverty, neglect, and infidelity in this book could have easily been written into a depressing story. Zippy shows us that it really is your attitude, and not your circumstances, that define the person you become.
December 12, 2014
Yet another book I just couldn't put down. I'd read A Girl Named Zippy a few years ago, but didn't think to look for any kind of follow-up until I saw A Girl Named Zippy on sale for eBooks and posted it to my Facebook wall. It was then that my other reader friends let me know about this book, and I immediately put it on hold at my library.
This book is much, much darker than its predecessor. We get some inklings that things aren't too fantastically wonderful for the Jarvis family in A Girl Named Zippy, but in She Got Up Off the Couch, the dark things in Zippy's world are discussed much more explicitly. We see more about her father's drinking, her mother's inability to do anything at all, in a home without reliable electricity or plumbing, and we realize exactly why it was that Delonda had such a hard time getting up off the couch. But ultimately, even twenty-four years of inactivity and ennui couldn't hold her down, and so Delonda hied herself off to college and managed to not only lose over a hundred pounds off her weight, but also earned herself both a bachelor's and a Master's degree, and found a career in teaching.
But through it all, Zippy is as irrepressible as ever. You can't help but have a soft spot for this little girl who is loved by so many but also ignored by those closest to her. She's not the most lovable of girls, with her self-admitted quirks and her stomping about in a huff when a friend irritates her. But somehow in Kimmel's telling, she's just a unique and unruly and precocious girl that manages to worm herself into the reader's heart. The reader would love to travel back in time and somehow find herself in Mooreland, Indiana, in the 1970s, in the hopes of cajoling Zippy into being friends with her. Because one thing is for certain--life with Zippy in it is never dull.
The reader also begins to hold Zippy's mother Delonda in high esteem for finally getting off the couch and finding herself an education, for not taking no for an answer when it looked as if every door was going to slam shut in her face, for finding rides with 17 different people her very first year of college just so she could make it to class, for always finding a way and for always doing her best, no matter what was going on at home. You can just feel Zippy's admiration for her mother as well, for knowing firsthand all of the challenges that Delonda faced but still surmounting them with what looked like the greatest of ease.
I love this book with my whole heart, and I admit that I would love to find Haven Kimmel and to have coffee with her and to hear even more stories from her. I couldn't help but laugh out loud so often while reading this book, and I even had to read portions out to my husband as we got ready for bed.
Highly recommend.
This book is much, much darker than its predecessor. We get some inklings that things aren't too fantastically wonderful for the Jarvis family in A Girl Named Zippy, but in She Got Up Off the Couch, the dark things in Zippy's world are discussed much more explicitly. We see more about her father's drinking, her mother's inability to do anything at all, in a home without reliable electricity or plumbing, and we realize exactly why it was that Delonda had such a hard time getting up off the couch. But ultimately, even twenty-four years of inactivity and ennui couldn't hold her down, and so Delonda hied herself off to college and managed to not only lose over a hundred pounds off her weight, but also earned herself both a bachelor's and a Master's degree, and found a career in teaching.
But through it all, Zippy is as irrepressible as ever. You can't help but have a soft spot for this little girl who is loved by so many but also ignored by those closest to her. She's not the most lovable of girls, with her self-admitted quirks and her stomping about in a huff when a friend irritates her. But somehow in Kimmel's telling, she's just a unique and unruly and precocious girl that manages to worm herself into the reader's heart. The reader would love to travel back in time and somehow find herself in Mooreland, Indiana, in the 1970s, in the hopes of cajoling Zippy into being friends with her. Because one thing is for certain--life with Zippy in it is never dull.
The reader also begins to hold Zippy's mother Delonda in high esteem for finally getting off the couch and finding herself an education, for not taking no for an answer when it looked as if every door was going to slam shut in her face, for finding rides with 17 different people her very first year of college just so she could make it to class, for always finding a way and for always doing her best, no matter what was going on at home. You can just feel Zippy's admiration for her mother as well, for knowing firsthand all of the challenges that Delonda faced but still surmounting them with what looked like the greatest of ease.
I love this book with my whole heart, and I admit that I would love to find Haven Kimmel and to have coffee with her and to hear even more stories from her. I couldn't help but laugh out loud so often while reading this book, and I even had to read portions out to my husband as we got ready for bed.
Highly recommend.
April 20, 2008
A surprising feminist masterpiece, funny and honest. It's like The Awakening, if The Awakening had sensitivity and heart.
September 14, 2008
his girl knows how to write. I read “A Girl Named Zippy” last year for book club and really liked it. This was the sequel. This is not a story that goes from one period of time and flows to the next. It’s several chapters about different people and different things that happened in “Zippy”. It is not really an extraordinary life, but the way she tells it is. It’s funny and very witty. I find myself thinking about what life was like for me when I was her age. She had a lot of friends and seemed happy even though she was poor, her parents did not keep a very clean house and her parents were not very close. The title of the book refers to Zippy’s mom. Her mom seemed to be very intelligent and could have really made something of herself. But she met her husband, got married and had kids. The father was not a good provider and they lived in a very small town with limited means. She talks about how there was only one room in their house with heat. How many rats they killed. How her mom’s friends would clean her and her clothes when she came to visit. Her mother was very depressed, slept a lot, ate and gained wait. But one day, she got up off the couch, took her college entrance exams, passed and enrolled in Ball State. She graduated and got her masters. She got a job teaching English eventually in Zippy’s school. Zippy realized how happy her mom had become. Even though her dad was having an affair. I loved the way Zippy talked about her friends and how much she cared about them. How much fun she had. This is a very unique and extraordinary book. I highly recommend.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 26, 2015
There are a few moments of weakness in this book, a few chapters where Zippy's verbal tics bothered me the way a friend's might if we were roommates too long, but the story of her mother's academic transformation is incredibly moving. I think that what makes Kimmel's stories about Mooreland so popular is her intense desire to view each person and event in the most sympathetic and affectionate way possible, to take a town and a set of people we might drive right past, thinking, "Who could live here?" in a condescending way, and make us stop the car, get out, and feel a pleasantly keen respect. Having grown up in towns much like this at the exact period in American history when Zippy was coming of age, I feel in awe both of the forgiveness and warmth she extends to to the unglamorous world of the 1970's and her ability to make it rich, dark, light, and strangely beautiful.
January 21, 2019
Besides being drop-dead hilarious, this is a poignant portrait of the author's mother tossing aside the oppressive weight of her troubles and courageously labouring to become herself, and on the author's part, the daily bravery of keeping one's bright spirit indomitable.
I often think about Haven's mother getting up off the couch, literally, when I feel beaten by the world.
Did I mention... hilARious?
I often think about Haven's mother getting up off the couch, literally, when I feel beaten by the world.
Did I mention... hilARious?
October 17, 2013
Wonderful, funny, and heart breaking. Read a Girl Named Zippy first to truly enjoy this book.
October 18, 2012
For the first third of the book, I wasn't sure what I was reading. Really, this is a memoir? The title character was barely present, but those early chapters that appeared to be tenuously related essays were hilarious. Was I reading Erma Bombeck or what?
Then things started to come together. Delonda Jarvis (mother of the author and nearly invisible in the first part of the book), did indeed get up off the couch, go to college where she performed stunningly well, lose 120 pounds, buy a decrepit Volkswagen, become the family breadwinner, and craft a life of her own choosing, all of this in the 1970s. By the time I finished the book, I had a much better understanding of why the author included those early passages and why they mattered. This was much more a story of the times than it had seemed when I was laughing so hard I scared the cat.
As good as the book is, I still think it suffers from inconsistencies in the point of view and a slightly muddled focus. But whatever these flaws, I highly recommend the book. The humor with which Haven Kimmel treats what for some would be very dark hours is refreshing and reflective of what kind of person she was and is. The darkness of the book's ending was sobering and saddening while at the same time, uplifting.
Then things started to come together. Delonda Jarvis (mother of the author and nearly invisible in the first part of the book), did indeed get up off the couch, go to college where she performed stunningly well, lose 120 pounds, buy a decrepit Volkswagen, become the family breadwinner, and craft a life of her own choosing, all of this in the 1970s. By the time I finished the book, I had a much better understanding of why the author included those early passages and why they mattered. This was much more a story of the times than it had seemed when I was laughing so hard I scared the cat.
As good as the book is, I still think it suffers from inconsistencies in the point of view and a slightly muddled focus. But whatever these flaws, I highly recommend the book. The humor with which Haven Kimmel treats what for some would be very dark hours is refreshing and reflective of what kind of person she was and is. The darkness of the book's ending was sobering and saddening while at the same time, uplifting.
August 13, 2016
I just love Zippy and love her stories. This book is tinged with sadness - I cried several times because I am a weepy one these days. I often complain about memoirs that are too insular, too self-absorbed. Why don't I level that accusation at Haven Kimmel's two memoirs? Of A Girl Named Zippy I wrote:
Also, these two books are audio essentials, read by the author herself.
there was no self-reflexive narration here, no self-conscious reflection on the act of memoir-writing, no nods or winks or notes to the reader about the author's awareness of crafting a written account of her own life, in short, no "meta."Because of course these are crafted stories, with an unknown degree of hyperbole thrown in. Interesting that Kimmel doesn't focus her novels on pre-teen girls (I've just read a couple; I could be wrong about that?). That age is the arena of Zippy. How could it be improved on?!
Also, these two books are audio essentials, read by the author herself.
June 28, 2015
This one is just as fabulously funny as the first one (minus one part in chapter 18 that was just plain disgusting, and I wish had been left out). If you liked the witty, tell-it-like-a-child-with-no-filter humor in the first book, you will love this one just as much. This one does have Zippy getting older, and she does lose some of her childhood innocence as changes happen in her family. Still thoroughly enjoyable.
I listened to this one on audio again which I definitely recommend.
I listened to this one on audio again which I definitely recommend.
January 30, 2011
I didn't much care for this book. other people did.
May 23, 2017
This was a very interesting memoir that continued the story from A Girl Named Zippy. It's the story of a girl growing up in a small town in Indiana. It's also the story of how her mother changed her life. I really like how real it felt. The author did an amazing job and capturing the voice of a young girl. It is also interesting to read, because so often these days, that kind of life is now extinct.
I will also add that the memory about her father dealing with the mice/rats actually made me laugh so hard I cried—in a public place—and then I read it out loud to my daughter's teacher when she walked down the hallway. That's how funny I found it.
Her mom's story really is amazing. She never went to college like she had planned, because she got married super young. And then for twenty-seven years she just lived on the couch really, raising her kids, going to church, doing laundry, cooking meals, reading books. Then she up and decides to go to college, so she teaches herself how to drive and goes to Muncie to take a test at Ball State University and tests out of FORTY credit hours—a whole year of college. Her husband is not thrilled with it, and her kids are flabbergasted by it, but she does it. And she continues doing it.
Some excerpts that stood out to me.
"A few years ago I wrote some essays about the town in which I grew up. Mooreland, Indiana, was paradise for a child—my old friend Rose and I have often said so—small, flat, entirely knowable. When I ay it was small I mean the population was three hundred people. I cannot stress this enough. People approach me to say they, too, grew up in small towns and when I ask the size they say, 'Oh, six thousand or so.' A town of six thousand people is a wild metropolis."
"But when Rose read the final draft she pointed out that Mother's evolution, personal as it was, is also the story of a generation of women who stood up and rocked the foundations of life in America. They didn't know they were doing so—they were trying to save their own lives, I think—but in the process they took it on the chin for everyone who followed." "As Zippy was a bow to Mooreland, Indiana, this is a love letter, humbly conceived and even more modestly written, to my father, my brother, the sister who is my very breath of life, and most of all to the woman who stood up, brushed away the pork rind crumbs, and escaped by the skin of her teeth. It is a letter to all such women, wherever they may be."
"I popped in and out of the den; I was a very busy person and my responsibilities were numerous which Mother understood. Dad came and went—he also had engagements far and wide and we had long since ceased asking what they were. A man had to protect his mysteries; it was one of the primary Liberties of Manhood in our home."
"All my life there had been certain constants, facts so steady I assumed they were like trees or mountains, things you could trust to stay where you left them because they were mountains and yes the Bible says faith can move one but the Bible also says a lot of stuff that if you tried to make it true you'd end up in the Epileptic Village. My constants were the same as everyone else's: a house with quite a few rooms and utilities that came and went. Church three times a week. Church so frequently and which I so much couldn't get out of I considered ripping off my own fingernails in protest, or better yet someone else's fingernails. My family. And no one was as dependable as my mom, burrowed into the corner of that sprung sofa cushion, reading and eating crunchy foods, the television on, the telephone ringing. We'd never said a whole lot to each other, given that I was a citizen of the world and was generally on my way out the door. But she always smiled when I passed her, gave me a wave. And when I got home, there she was."
"I had taken to spending all my time out of school away from home, because there were changes afoot that couldn't be named or even described. Walking into my house felt like hitting water belly first; it looked like one thing, but it felt like glass. My dad still sat in his chair and smoked, watching Westerns and drinking whiskey, and my mom still read and talked on the phone and would scratch my back if I asked her. But there was a strange resistance in her, some stubbornness that made her unreachable, and the way Dad kept his jaw set was a fence around him."
"Rose's little brother would sit on a box for hours if you told him to wait there for the bus. He'd sit there until Joyce found him, anyway, and then she'd threaten to start smacking, and maybe at that point I'd have to go home, because Joyce was not above smacking—she was a Catholic—but I was a Quaker and smacking wasn't part of our religion."
"Joyce put [persimmons] in the jams and pies; she even made something with the word 'pudding' in the title although of course it was not real pudding because it wasn't chocolate and it hadn't come from a box. I was too polite to point the truth out."
"All those years I had thought she was just sitting there, but it turned out she'd been quietly amazing an army, and now they were coming to take her home."
"I knew I should still be worried, but I suddenly felt that anything was possible, and that most things, though certainly not all, would turn out okay."
"Both Dan and Melinda were in the marching band with the director who they called Mr. M. Mr. M. was in all ways the model of a band director, and by that I mean he could have led an assault on an innocent nation, enslaved its peoples, and had them marching in pinwheels, all in the course of one profoundly hot afternoon."
"I missed her boyfriend Wayne who had been around for a while. I missed him even though he called me Nuisance and sometimes Pesty. I wasn't sure he even knew my actual name. While Melinda and Wayne were dating, Dad used to make me sit on the porch swing between them so they couldn't hold hands. Dad also made me go on their dates. During the times I wasn't forced to accompany them, I accompanied them because I wanted to."
"My hair looked like it had been purchased at a rummage sale after all the real hair is gone."
"My brother had a terrible temper and Mom asked Dr. Heilman the best way to deal with it. Dr. Heilman said, 'If he throws a tantrum tell him you're going to take away his favorite thing until he calms down. Then give it back to him.' Dan's favorite thing was his Davy Crockett coonskin cap, and one afternoon when he lost his temper Mom said, 'Danny, I'm taking your cap away until you can behave yourself. When you're done acting this way, you can have it back.' He looked her dead in the eye. He was three years old. He said, 'I don't ever want it back.' And she knew right then that she had snapped a little something in him entirely by accident, a part of him that must have been born fearing the way love unzips us and leaves us vulnerable to assault. He zipped that part up. Mom never took anything away from him again, but it wouldn't have mattered if she did."
"In the winter he would silently leave the house in the morning, pull the wagon down to the elevator, and pick up scraps of coal to take help us heat the house."
"There was evidence I loved my parents, and I sure felt something for my sister, although sometimes it was a palm itching to hit her. Then the double doors leading to the delivery room opened, and Rick walked out with my nephew Josh in a blue blanket, and it turned out I'd been right about disaster, because that's what happened to me as soon as I looked at the baby's face. There's no other way to describe that sort of love. Even if I'd been warned, I'd have gotten it wrong, I wouldn't have understood. My passion for him was like a cartoon anvil falling on my cartoon head."
"No way was she going to make me leave a helpless baby. Melinda was a great mom and all, she really understood the whole lamb-suit concept, but I felt, deep in my heart, that the only thing that stood between Josh and tragedy was my constant attention."
"Mom pulled out her big gun, as mottoes went, and she had a million. She generally saved it to the end. 'Happiness is a decision. You decide how happy or unhappy you're going to be.'"
“I sat on the front stoop in my cutoff shorts, barefoot. My T-shirt and bathing suit and towel were hanging on the line in the moonlight, drying, and for some reason I found the sight to be very reassuring. No one was around; the crickets were noisy, and I could hear the music from the dance coming up the hill very clearly, but it wasn’t for me and I didn’t want it. I heard footsteps and feared an assault by a ministerial brigade, but it turned out to be just Robin Hicks, my neighbor. He said, ‘Hey you.’
I said, ‘Hey, Robin.’
He smiled at me and there was that broken tooth—I had done that and he still liked me just fine. He was seventeen, and I was eleven. 'I came up here to see if you'd like to dance.'
The song that began was 'If,' by Bread, a song I already found so painfully beautiful I couldn't add it to my record collection at home. If a face could launch a thousand ships, then where am I go to? I stood up in the leaves and pine twigs, and took a step toward Robin. He very gently put one hand on my waist and one on my right shoulder, and we swayed so slowly I bet to the stars it looked like we weren't moving at all. When the song was over he kissed the top of my head and walked back down to the dance, and I went inside the cabin to pack. To go home."
"Julie was in the backseat beside me in her jeans and cowboy boots and a white T-shirt with a red Viking head on it. That was the thing about Julie. She always looked exactly right for whatever she was doing, whereas I always looked like I'd walked through the wrong door into a story that had nothing to do with me. I believe I was wearing shorts with my unmatched bobby socks and used saddle oxfords, and some inappropriate upper-wear, like a discarded short sleeved dress shirt belonging to my father."
"She kept her gray-and-black hair cut short and springy with little curls she made with bobby pins, and she always wore a dress and sensible shoes and often an apron. She understood the old ways, where you had your two sons and then you were a matron with a round belly and hands bright red from bleach water."
"We didn't say on that afternoon or any other that maybe it was unusual how she had to wash my clothes and give me a bath; Rose's mother did it, too, and she never said anything. Melinda did it year in and year out. Olive didn't mention that I had two grandmothers who were my real grandmothers and I have never once been asked to spend the night with them."
"I saw the look on Melinda's face, too, and surely Mother was remembering the time Dad had come home with a raccoon for dinner, which he'd skinned and she'd put in the oven to bake, except that naked and pinky and lying in a pan it looked exactly like a human baby and Mom became a bit agitated, which is to say she became hysterical and swore she would need electric shocks to recover."
"I didn't think about it much—but at the end of the day, after the hundreds of pounds of meat had been divided between Rick and Melinda and us, as Dad and I loaded our take into the truck to head for home, I knew, dried blood up to my elbows and in my hair, that it's possible when necessary to get used to anything."
"But no torture I knew as a child compared with canning season, which seems to have been devised by Satan to reproduce the environs of Hell long before we get there. Imagine a kitchen at the height of summer, pans boiling and pressure cookers steaming, Ball jars being sterilized (and not by something cold), Dad running the operation like a band director with a grudge and a twitching baton. We put up apple butter, we put up snap beans. We boiled corn on the cob then sliced it off in strips with a sharp knife. There were bread-and-butter pickles, chowchow, yellow squash. But nothing matched the sheer, violent hatefulness of canning tomatoes."
"I dove onto the other couch, arms out like Superman. I landed hard with a whoomph, and felt a shiver of worry that perhaps my most recent long-lost hamster, Merle, was still somewhere in the sofa where he'd disappeared a few weeks ago. Each day I stuffed crackers or popcorn down between the cushions, just in case, but he'd yet to make an appearance."
Her mom's first day of school.
"At the end of the hour Dr. Satterwhite snapped his watch closed and asked, 'In valediction of today's lesson, does anyone have anything to add?'
No one spoke. 'Carol,' Mom said into the phone, both laughing and beginning to cry. 'I burst into tears.'
When the other students had fled the room he asked Mom in his brisk, military tone, 'Madam, may I ask what's the matter with you?'
Mom said, 'I live in Mooreland, and I've never heard anyone say "in valediction" of anything before. I think you're wonderful!'
Dr. Satterwhite flushed, cleared his throat, and left the room abruptly."
"Dad watched Mom make the turn onto Broad Street with his arms crossed over his chest.
'Nothing stops her,' he said, shaking his head and flipping his cigarette out into the street.
'Nope,' I said, unsure how to measure the word. There was a lot he meant to tell me, and I could feel it all in the pit of my stomach like the approach of a flu. Nothing, he meant, as in no money, no driver's license, no teeth, no job, no support, no supplies, no safe car. And nothing, he meant, as in himself. Or me. I knew he was right, in a dark sad corner of my bones, and still. Still, I was proud of her."
Mom "handed to me, in those years, one of her greatest gifts: the ability to say with a smile, 'Tell me who will say yes, and then direct me to his office.'"
"One thing was clear to me all the way in my bones, it was so deep and factual I barely needed to consider it: the more I was trusted, the more trustworthy I became."
"Maybe Mom would ask what the trouble was this time or maybe she'd skip right ahead to Delonda's Laws of Life, which were repeated so often my sister and I had assigned them numbers. We asked that in the future she simply hold up two fingers if she wanted to remind us not to smoke; one if we'd forgotten there ain't no free lunch. Number four was the one that most often applied to my friendship with Rose: Is this the hill you're going to die on? I would shake my head because number five was There is never the right hill to die on. Mom was nice about it but left little room for argument."
Listening to her mom talking, "With every year that passed, more and more of what that woman said made sense to me, which was flat terrifying. She talked on and I half listened, until her voice was just like water flowing past me."
I will also add that the memory about her father dealing with the mice/rats actually made me laugh so hard I cried—in a public place—and then I read it out loud to my daughter's teacher when she walked down the hallway. That's how funny I found it.
Her mom's story really is amazing. She never went to college like she had planned, because she got married super young. And then for twenty-seven years she just lived on the couch really, raising her kids, going to church, doing laundry, cooking meals, reading books. Then she up and decides to go to college, so she teaches herself how to drive and goes to Muncie to take a test at Ball State University and tests out of FORTY credit hours—a whole year of college. Her husband is not thrilled with it, and her kids are flabbergasted by it, but she does it. And she continues doing it.
Some excerpts that stood out to me.
"A few years ago I wrote some essays about the town in which I grew up. Mooreland, Indiana, was paradise for a child—my old friend Rose and I have often said so—small, flat, entirely knowable. When I ay it was small I mean the population was three hundred people. I cannot stress this enough. People approach me to say they, too, grew up in small towns and when I ask the size they say, 'Oh, six thousand or so.' A town of six thousand people is a wild metropolis."
"But when Rose read the final draft she pointed out that Mother's evolution, personal as it was, is also the story of a generation of women who stood up and rocked the foundations of life in America. They didn't know they were doing so—they were trying to save their own lives, I think—but in the process they took it on the chin for everyone who followed." "As Zippy was a bow to Mooreland, Indiana, this is a love letter, humbly conceived and even more modestly written, to my father, my brother, the sister who is my very breath of life, and most of all to the woman who stood up, brushed away the pork rind crumbs, and escaped by the skin of her teeth. It is a letter to all such women, wherever they may be."
"I popped in and out of the den; I was a very busy person and my responsibilities were numerous which Mother understood. Dad came and went—he also had engagements far and wide and we had long since ceased asking what they were. A man had to protect his mysteries; it was one of the primary Liberties of Manhood in our home."
"All my life there had been certain constants, facts so steady I assumed they were like trees or mountains, things you could trust to stay where you left them because they were mountains and yes the Bible says faith can move one but the Bible also says a lot of stuff that if you tried to make it true you'd end up in the Epileptic Village. My constants were the same as everyone else's: a house with quite a few rooms and utilities that came and went. Church three times a week. Church so frequently and which I so much couldn't get out of I considered ripping off my own fingernails in protest, or better yet someone else's fingernails. My family. And no one was as dependable as my mom, burrowed into the corner of that sprung sofa cushion, reading and eating crunchy foods, the television on, the telephone ringing. We'd never said a whole lot to each other, given that I was a citizen of the world and was generally on my way out the door. But she always smiled when I passed her, gave me a wave. And when I got home, there she was."
"I had taken to spending all my time out of school away from home, because there were changes afoot that couldn't be named or even described. Walking into my house felt like hitting water belly first; it looked like one thing, but it felt like glass. My dad still sat in his chair and smoked, watching Westerns and drinking whiskey, and my mom still read and talked on the phone and would scratch my back if I asked her. But there was a strange resistance in her, some stubbornness that made her unreachable, and the way Dad kept his jaw set was a fence around him."
"Rose's little brother would sit on a box for hours if you told him to wait there for the bus. He'd sit there until Joyce found him, anyway, and then she'd threaten to start smacking, and maybe at that point I'd have to go home, because Joyce was not above smacking—she was a Catholic—but I was a Quaker and smacking wasn't part of our religion."
"Joyce put [persimmons] in the jams and pies; she even made something with the word 'pudding' in the title although of course it was not real pudding because it wasn't chocolate and it hadn't come from a box. I was too polite to point the truth out."
"All those years I had thought she was just sitting there, but it turned out she'd been quietly amazing an army, and now they were coming to take her home."
"I knew I should still be worried, but I suddenly felt that anything was possible, and that most things, though certainly not all, would turn out okay."
"Both Dan and Melinda were in the marching band with the director who they called Mr. M. Mr. M. was in all ways the model of a band director, and by that I mean he could have led an assault on an innocent nation, enslaved its peoples, and had them marching in pinwheels, all in the course of one profoundly hot afternoon."
"I missed her boyfriend Wayne who had been around for a while. I missed him even though he called me Nuisance and sometimes Pesty. I wasn't sure he even knew my actual name. While Melinda and Wayne were dating, Dad used to make me sit on the porch swing between them so they couldn't hold hands. Dad also made me go on their dates. During the times I wasn't forced to accompany them, I accompanied them because I wanted to."
"My hair looked like it had been purchased at a rummage sale after all the real hair is gone."
"My brother had a terrible temper and Mom asked Dr. Heilman the best way to deal with it. Dr. Heilman said, 'If he throws a tantrum tell him you're going to take away his favorite thing until he calms down. Then give it back to him.' Dan's favorite thing was his Davy Crockett coonskin cap, and one afternoon when he lost his temper Mom said, 'Danny, I'm taking your cap away until you can behave yourself. When you're done acting this way, you can have it back.' He looked her dead in the eye. He was three years old. He said, 'I don't ever want it back.' And she knew right then that she had snapped a little something in him entirely by accident, a part of him that must have been born fearing the way love unzips us and leaves us vulnerable to assault. He zipped that part up. Mom never took anything away from him again, but it wouldn't have mattered if she did."
"In the winter he would silently leave the house in the morning, pull the wagon down to the elevator, and pick up scraps of coal to take help us heat the house."
"There was evidence I loved my parents, and I sure felt something for my sister, although sometimes it was a palm itching to hit her. Then the double doors leading to the delivery room opened, and Rick walked out with my nephew Josh in a blue blanket, and it turned out I'd been right about disaster, because that's what happened to me as soon as I looked at the baby's face. There's no other way to describe that sort of love. Even if I'd been warned, I'd have gotten it wrong, I wouldn't have understood. My passion for him was like a cartoon anvil falling on my cartoon head."
"No way was she going to make me leave a helpless baby. Melinda was a great mom and all, she really understood the whole lamb-suit concept, but I felt, deep in my heart, that the only thing that stood between Josh and tragedy was my constant attention."
"Mom pulled out her big gun, as mottoes went, and she had a million. She generally saved it to the end. 'Happiness is a decision. You decide how happy or unhappy you're going to be.'"
“I sat on the front stoop in my cutoff shorts, barefoot. My T-shirt and bathing suit and towel were hanging on the line in the moonlight, drying, and for some reason I found the sight to be very reassuring. No one was around; the crickets were noisy, and I could hear the music from the dance coming up the hill very clearly, but it wasn’t for me and I didn’t want it. I heard footsteps and feared an assault by a ministerial brigade, but it turned out to be just Robin Hicks, my neighbor. He said, ‘Hey you.’
I said, ‘Hey, Robin.’
He smiled at me and there was that broken tooth—I had done that and he still liked me just fine. He was seventeen, and I was eleven. 'I came up here to see if you'd like to dance.'
The song that began was 'If,' by Bread, a song I already found so painfully beautiful I couldn't add it to my record collection at home. If a face could launch a thousand ships, then where am I go to? I stood up in the leaves and pine twigs, and took a step toward Robin. He very gently put one hand on my waist and one on my right shoulder, and we swayed so slowly I bet to the stars it looked like we weren't moving at all. When the song was over he kissed the top of my head and walked back down to the dance, and I went inside the cabin to pack. To go home."
"Julie was in the backseat beside me in her jeans and cowboy boots and a white T-shirt with a red Viking head on it. That was the thing about Julie. She always looked exactly right for whatever she was doing, whereas I always looked like I'd walked through the wrong door into a story that had nothing to do with me. I believe I was wearing shorts with my unmatched bobby socks and used saddle oxfords, and some inappropriate upper-wear, like a discarded short sleeved dress shirt belonging to my father."
"She kept her gray-and-black hair cut short and springy with little curls she made with bobby pins, and she always wore a dress and sensible shoes and often an apron. She understood the old ways, where you had your two sons and then you were a matron with a round belly and hands bright red from bleach water."
"We didn't say on that afternoon or any other that maybe it was unusual how she had to wash my clothes and give me a bath; Rose's mother did it, too, and she never said anything. Melinda did it year in and year out. Olive didn't mention that I had two grandmothers who were my real grandmothers and I have never once been asked to spend the night with them."
"I saw the look on Melinda's face, too, and surely Mother was remembering the time Dad had come home with a raccoon for dinner, which he'd skinned and she'd put in the oven to bake, except that naked and pinky and lying in a pan it looked exactly like a human baby and Mom became a bit agitated, which is to say she became hysterical and swore she would need electric shocks to recover."
"I didn't think about it much—but at the end of the day, after the hundreds of pounds of meat had been divided between Rick and Melinda and us, as Dad and I loaded our take into the truck to head for home, I knew, dried blood up to my elbows and in my hair, that it's possible when necessary to get used to anything."
"But no torture I knew as a child compared with canning season, which seems to have been devised by Satan to reproduce the environs of Hell long before we get there. Imagine a kitchen at the height of summer, pans boiling and pressure cookers steaming, Ball jars being sterilized (and not by something cold), Dad running the operation like a band director with a grudge and a twitching baton. We put up apple butter, we put up snap beans. We boiled corn on the cob then sliced it off in strips with a sharp knife. There were bread-and-butter pickles, chowchow, yellow squash. But nothing matched the sheer, violent hatefulness of canning tomatoes."
"I dove onto the other couch, arms out like Superman. I landed hard with a whoomph, and felt a shiver of worry that perhaps my most recent long-lost hamster, Merle, was still somewhere in the sofa where he'd disappeared a few weeks ago. Each day I stuffed crackers or popcorn down between the cushions, just in case, but he'd yet to make an appearance."
Her mom's first day of school.
"At the end of the hour Dr. Satterwhite snapped his watch closed and asked, 'In valediction of today's lesson, does anyone have anything to add?'
No one spoke. 'Carol,' Mom said into the phone, both laughing and beginning to cry. 'I burst into tears.'
When the other students had fled the room he asked Mom in his brisk, military tone, 'Madam, may I ask what's the matter with you?'
Mom said, 'I live in Mooreland, and I've never heard anyone say "in valediction" of anything before. I think you're wonderful!'
Dr. Satterwhite flushed, cleared his throat, and left the room abruptly."
"Dad watched Mom make the turn onto Broad Street with his arms crossed over his chest.
'Nothing stops her,' he said, shaking his head and flipping his cigarette out into the street.
'Nope,' I said, unsure how to measure the word. There was a lot he meant to tell me, and I could feel it all in the pit of my stomach like the approach of a flu. Nothing, he meant, as in no money, no driver's license, no teeth, no job, no support, no supplies, no safe car. And nothing, he meant, as in himself. Or me. I knew he was right, in a dark sad corner of my bones, and still. Still, I was proud of her."
Mom "handed to me, in those years, one of her greatest gifts: the ability to say with a smile, 'Tell me who will say yes, and then direct me to his office.'"
"One thing was clear to me all the way in my bones, it was so deep and factual I barely needed to consider it: the more I was trusted, the more trustworthy I became."
"Maybe Mom would ask what the trouble was this time or maybe she'd skip right ahead to Delonda's Laws of Life, which were repeated so often my sister and I had assigned them numbers. We asked that in the future she simply hold up two fingers if she wanted to remind us not to smoke; one if we'd forgotten there ain't no free lunch. Number four was the one that most often applied to my friendship with Rose: Is this the hill you're going to die on? I would shake my head because number five was There is never the right hill to die on. Mom was nice about it but left little room for argument."
Listening to her mom talking, "With every year that passed, more and more of what that woman said made sense to me, which was flat terrifying. She talked on and I half listened, until her voice was just like water flowing past me."
September 9, 2009
I'm kind of bereft because there's no more Zippy to be had.
At first I was not so sure about She Got Up Off the Couch. It seemed like outtakes from the first book, and the aw shucks introduction justifying a sequel worried me. ("I didn't expect much from that little book. I was an remain surprised that some people bought and liked it." C'mon!)
She Got Up does take a couple chapters to get going, as if you can feel Kimmel getting back on the bike and finding the pedals. But once she does...like Faulkner returning again and again to Yoknapatawpha county, Kimmel is able to go back to the same people, the same places, even sometimes the same incidents and mine new things.
She Got Up actually surpasses the first book about Mooreland, Indiana, in my opinion. A Girl Named Zippy was mostly salty. Reading the stories was like eating potato chips (which, trust me, is a high compliment!) but this book is salty, sweet, and bitter, a full meal. You can see more of the poverty, more of the instability, more of the parental failures that marked Zip's youth, but the stories are still howlingly funny and exuberant.
Front and center this time is Delonda, Zippy's mother (and the "she" of the title) who has a sudden burst of energy and aspiration, pulls herself out of depression and oppression, learns to drive (and procures an asthmatic disaster of a car), goes back to school, and turns out to be really really smart. But this book is not about bronzing the mother figure in a moment of American-dream accomplishment; it's a child's slightly baffled, slightly resentful, slightly proud rendering of that heroic act.
It's also a portrait of Zippy's dad, the counter-weight to each of Delonda's efforts to rise up. You get the feeling if he had been slightly more determined in his bullying, this book could have easily been called -- She Never Did Get Up off that Couch. Zip's dad is mean and undermining and selfish but she can't stop loving or being drawn to him, and the heartbreaking final chapters are some of the most understated and breathtakingly non-condemnatory you will ever read about disillusionment and rejection as experienced by a kid. You find yourself wondering how you thought A Girl Named Zippy was about a happy childhood -- and yet, somehow, it still was. And so is this...? I think so. I'm less sure.
Oh, Haven Kimmel -- write more! I'll even forgive you an earnest introduction to Zippy 3 saying you are shocked, just shocked, that people liked Zippy 2. Though really -- time not to be shocked.
At first I was not so sure about She Got Up Off the Couch. It seemed like outtakes from the first book, and the aw shucks introduction justifying a sequel worried me. ("I didn't expect much from that little book. I was an remain surprised that some people bought and liked it." C'mon!)
She Got Up does take a couple chapters to get going, as if you can feel Kimmel getting back on the bike and finding the pedals. But once she does...like Faulkner returning again and again to Yoknapatawpha county, Kimmel is able to go back to the same people, the same places, even sometimes the same incidents and mine new things.
She Got Up actually surpasses the first book about Mooreland, Indiana, in my opinion. A Girl Named Zippy was mostly salty. Reading the stories was like eating potato chips (which, trust me, is a high compliment!) but this book is salty, sweet, and bitter, a full meal. You can see more of the poverty, more of the instability, more of the parental failures that marked Zip's youth, but the stories are still howlingly funny and exuberant.
Front and center this time is Delonda, Zippy's mother (and the "she" of the title) who has a sudden burst of energy and aspiration, pulls herself out of depression and oppression, learns to drive (and procures an asthmatic disaster of a car), goes back to school, and turns out to be really really smart. But this book is not about bronzing the mother figure in a moment of American-dream accomplishment; it's a child's slightly baffled, slightly resentful, slightly proud rendering of that heroic act.
It's also a portrait of Zippy's dad, the counter-weight to each of Delonda's efforts to rise up. You get the feeling if he had been slightly more determined in his bullying, this book could have easily been called -- She Never Did Get Up off that Couch. Zip's dad is mean and undermining and selfish but she can't stop loving or being drawn to him, and the heartbreaking final chapters are some of the most understated and breathtakingly non-condemnatory you will ever read about disillusionment and rejection as experienced by a kid. You find yourself wondering how you thought A Girl Named Zippy was about a happy childhood -- and yet, somehow, it still was. And so is this...? I think so. I'm less sure.
Oh, Haven Kimmel -- write more! I'll even forgive you an earnest introduction to Zippy 3 saying you are shocked, just shocked, that people liked Zippy 2. Though really -- time not to be shocked.
March 22, 2010
One of my favorite books a few years ago was A Girl Named Zippy, the prequel to this book, Haven “Zippy” Kimmel’s follow up memoir. I am delighted to say that this book is equally as funny and touching, but also a little deeper in its examination of the some of the fallout of a mother struggling to find herself in the women’s movement of the early 70’s.
When last we left Delonda Kimmel she was riding a bicycle, her first step off the couch where she had spent the last twenty years of her life, reading, watching TV and gaining a lot of weight. This book picks up right from that point, as Delonda takes a competency exam and gets into Ball College, where she graduates in two years, loses one hundred pounds, gets a Master’s Degree and becomes a teacher- all without any emotional support from her husband. Zippy manages to go through life, if not oblivious to the turmoil in her family, definitely with an optimistic and quirky view of her unconventional upbringing. Despite living in poverty and often neglected by both her parents Zippy found safe haven with the families of her friends and her older sister, all pitching in to help raise this child. Not once does she offer a word of recrimination towards her mother and father, but imbues this story with all the love a child feels for her parents.
As Zippy begins to understand that her parents’ marriage is slowly unraveling she again expertly portrays the feelings of anxiety and bewilderment a young teen feels as her home life slowly comes apart, but also opens as she realizes all the possibilities there are in the world as she begins to understand what it took for her mother to reinvent herself. Delonda also begins to open Zippy’s eyes to the opportunities there were available outside of their small town. The ending of the book brought tears to my eyes as Zippy comes to understand that even those you love most in life can disappoint you. A lovely memoir that doesn’t cast the people around her as cruel but as what we all are, flawed, despite our very best intentions.
When last we left Delonda Kimmel she was riding a bicycle, her first step off the couch where she had spent the last twenty years of her life, reading, watching TV and gaining a lot of weight. This book picks up right from that point, as Delonda takes a competency exam and gets into Ball College, where she graduates in two years, loses one hundred pounds, gets a Master’s Degree and becomes a teacher- all without any emotional support from her husband. Zippy manages to go through life, if not oblivious to the turmoil in her family, definitely with an optimistic and quirky view of her unconventional upbringing. Despite living in poverty and often neglected by both her parents Zippy found safe haven with the families of her friends and her older sister, all pitching in to help raise this child. Not once does she offer a word of recrimination towards her mother and father, but imbues this story with all the love a child feels for her parents.
As Zippy begins to understand that her parents’ marriage is slowly unraveling she again expertly portrays the feelings of anxiety and bewilderment a young teen feels as her home life slowly comes apart, but also opens as she realizes all the possibilities there are in the world as she begins to understand what it took for her mother to reinvent herself. Delonda also begins to open Zippy’s eyes to the opportunities there were available outside of their small town. The ending of the book brought tears to my eyes as Zippy comes to understand that even those you love most in life can disappoint you. A lovely memoir that doesn’t cast the people around her as cruel but as what we all are, flawed, despite our very best intentions.
June 11, 2016
If Junie B. Jones was real, but grew up in tee-tiny Moorland, Indiana in a decrepit house, with dysfunctional parents who dearly loved her, but just couldn't be relied upon to actually parent her (e.g., clean clothes, food, baths), she could be Haven Kimmel. I had the same reaction to reading Haven's descriptions of events as I did reading about Junie's escapades. I guess I just have a weakness for strong willed, wacky characters...ones that drive those around them to ask, "hey, is your head screwed on tight?"
My best friend bought me this book after I raved about (and likely forced her to read) "A Girl Named Zippy." Checking her inscription, she gave it to me for my birthday...in 2008. It sat on my shelf. It moved with me SIX times (!!) and I never picked it up. Inspired by a Book Bingo category "A Book I've Been Meaning to Read," I picked it up. And fell, giggling to the point of tears, into the rabbit hole. Oh, Zippy. So wacky. So wise. So uninhibited. So freaking funny.
This memoir (collections of essays) was glorious in that it was as funny as the first book but deeper. Zippy still describes events as she saw them, from a child's perspective, but she lets the reader see more this time. She doesn't spell it out for you, just describes the scene and runs off to some other adventure, but she leaves it all there for you to discover. You see her filthy house (crock pot and dirty laundry sitting in the living room. House with no insulation, often with no power, utilities often turned off, kitchen water dumps out onto the sidewalk...), you learn it is her friends' parents who actually feed her and wash her clothes. But you also leave each story firmly assured that Zippy is (to quote Kimmel herself) "dearly loved."
My best friend bought me this book after I raved about (and likely forced her to read) "A Girl Named Zippy." Checking her inscription, she gave it to me for my birthday...in 2008. It sat on my shelf. It moved with me SIX times (!!) and I never picked it up. Inspired by a Book Bingo category "A Book I've Been Meaning to Read," I picked it up. And fell, giggling to the point of tears, into the rabbit hole. Oh, Zippy. So wacky. So wise. So uninhibited. So freaking funny.
This memoir (collections of essays) was glorious in that it was as funny as the first book but deeper. Zippy still describes events as she saw them, from a child's perspective, but she lets the reader see more this time. She doesn't spell it out for you, just describes the scene and runs off to some other adventure, but she leaves it all there for you to discover. You see her filthy house (crock pot and dirty laundry sitting in the living room. House with no insulation, often with no power, utilities often turned off, kitchen water dumps out onto the sidewalk...), you learn it is her friends' parents who actually feed her and wash her clothes. But you also leave each story firmly assured that Zippy is (to quote Kimmel herself) "dearly loved."
February 15, 2010
Haven Kimmel has done it again. I loved A Girl Named Zippy and this book, I think, is even better. Written in the same voice as the previous book, Zippy continues her adventures growing up in tiny Moreland, Indiana where everyone knows your name and, unfortunately, your business. Much of this book, however, is a tribute to her mother who, in the last book, was spending the majority of her time sitting on the end of the couch reading, watching television, and talking on the telephone to members of her prayer group in her local Friends church. Receiving, she believes, a sign from God (given through the timing of a commercial on television), she takes the CLEP test, enters college, graduates with a perfect 4.0 average, earns a Master's degree, and becomes a English teacher in Moreland's high school. And what odds Zippy's mother has to overcome. She weighs close to 300 pounds, is missing a significant number of teeth, doesn't have either a car or a driver's license, doesn't have the money to go to college, and her husband is resentful that she has "gotten up off the couch". And yet she does it. While celebrating the power of her mother's will to change her life, this book has a darker side than A Girl Named Zippy. As her mother finds her voice and becomes the primary breadwinner for the Jarvis family, there are ramifications that ripple throughout the entire family.
April 24, 2009
Cute continuation of "A Girl Named Zippy." Again, parts of this book were laugh out loud funny. Ms. Kimmel has a way of encapsulating those strange pre-adolescent thoughts we all had in a way that is so accurate and sincere while highlighting the absurdity of it all. The chapter about the church camp and the scene with the dead mice particularly had me in stitches. I appreciate that she doesn't complain about her somewhat dysfunctional childhood - she seems to revel in its oddities. I wish it had ended on a happier note, though. After the hilarity of the rest of the book and the triumph of her mother's educational efforts, the ending was such a downer. Though, to her credit, she was being absolutely true to life, which often juxtaposes the uplifting and heartbreaking.
For more book reviews, visit my blog, Build Enough Bookshelves.
For more book reviews, visit my blog, Build Enough Bookshelves.
February 15, 2009
A follow-up memoir to one of my top 10 favorite books ever. We start up where we left off with Zip, a little older but still fairly enveloped in the warm nostalgic embrace of childhood. But in this book, its less romantic remembrances of family and more the strange and terrifying truths that start to emerge when one is forced as we all are, to grow up. The momentous occansion that inspired the book...the impulse that drove Zip's mother after years of hiding, to literally GET UP OFF THE COUCH...is the equivalent of an earthquake and the stories of the book and Zip's journey from that point are documentation of the aftershocks, some which changed things for the better, but others doing irrepairable damage to structures that had stood strong and immovable, the framework of her childhood. A great read, truthful and honest, bittersweet in some places, gasping for air hilarity in others.
December 13, 2017
I can’t remember ever having *not* read Zippy, since my dad has been reading snippets aloud to me since I was probably six or so (though obviously most of it wasn’t exactly child appropriate, despite being about a girl my age). It was my favorite book until I read this one, about 12 years later. It wasn’t until I read She Got Up Off The Couch that I fully realized what kind of story I wanted to tell myself someday. It was my first experience with someone who told complex, full truths about people immediately close to her in a way that magnified them instead of making them smaller. I have laughed until my stomach hurt and I was a curled up, weeping ball on the floor, and been reduced to a similar state with pride for her mother, the relationship with her sister that strongly echoes my own with my younger sister, and the startling prose that achieved something nothing else I’d read could.
It takes me absolutely no deliberation to say this book is more special to me than any other.
It takes me absolutely no deliberation to say this book is more special to me than any other.
May 24, 2008
I read "A Girl Named Zippy" a few years ago and remember enjoying it, so when I saw this at the bookstore, I couldn't pass it up. I really liked this book, I think even more than the first one. The author knows how to turn a phrase in an amusing and clever way that makes me laugh out loud. I am enthralled with her childhood and equally curious how she manages to remember some of the minute details that I know I certainly couldn't, but I guess that's just good storytelling. She describes people and environments so vividly you start to really see it like you've been there yourself and have a semi-fuzzy memory about it. Like it's your own childhood memoir! It sorta reminds me a little bit of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood books. Thoroughly enjoyable reading, I recommend it.
July 12, 2017
This sequel to A Girl Named Zippy is the July pick for my in-person book club. Ostensibly this book is about the author’s mother who, after two decades of a paralyzing lethargy from an oppressive marriage and grinding poverty, got her college degree in 2 years and went on to a master’s degree and a successful career. In actuality, this was a collection of more cute stories of growing up in small town America, of broken bones and school plays, of meeting her first African American family and baby-sitting her nephew, only a handful of chapters had anything to do with her mother. This is not my preferred reading material; two
August 4, 2009
I enjoy reading memoirs. It makes me wish I could write my own. While I'm not much like Zippy, there were a few things I could relate to in her life. She starts out saying this story is about her mother, but it is still more about her. But that's fair--she knows herself better. I wouldn't mind reading the book on her younger years now. I don't think reading out of sequence is a problem. I'm pretty sure this one didn't give away any surprises.
August 30, 2017
This is the second time I read this gem. This year's challenge for "book I've read before that never fails to make me smile." Love Zippy and love this sequel as well. Kimmel is such a talented writer. She makes me want to start writing down all my family stories, which is what everyone should do! Moments of heartbreak, triumph, nostalgia, and hilarity. What every good book should have!
February 6, 2019
I did not want it to end.
August 10, 2020
4.5 highly entertaining, she is just a wild child and I appreciated laughing out loud!
December 21, 2010
I finished it, albeit with some skimming, so it can't have been too bad, but overall less enjoyable than I expected from the premise/title and blurbs. Her mom's going back to college, becoming active, and losing a ton of weight is actually a minor focus. There are many other vignettes from her growing up in Indiana, some poignant (chapters on her estranged brother and distant father), some kind of cute, but most fairly boring and generically unfunny (to me).
I tried to analyze a little more why I wasn't finding the author funny or especially engaging, rather than just leave it at the obvious point that it's a matter of taste. Came up with this taxonomy:
1. Strangely worded, verbose, hyperbolic passages
Example: (p. 6) "All my life there had been certain constants, facts so steady I assumed they were like trees or mountains, things you could trust to stay where you left them because they were [ital] mountains [ital] and yes the Bible says faith can move one but the Bible also says a whole lot of stuff that if you tried to make it true you'd end up in the Epileptic Village."
Analysis: (A) Word choice is not crisp -- (a) I don't think of trees or mountains as things I "left" in place but rather as things that stay in place. (b) If you wanted to set up "faith can move one" you should stick with just mountains and not throw in "trees" as well. (c) the repetition of, and emphasis on, "mountains" adds nothing but length to the sentence; (d) there are things in the Bible that are hard to believe, but the issue is not one of anyone's trying to "make" them true
(B) ends with a thud -- trying to do something impossible might make you exhausted, or might conceivably make you crazy, but what does epilepsy have to do with it? Very poor punch line choice. Where's the editor?
2. non-evocative images
Example: (p. 60, commenting on a photo of herself) "My hair looks like it had been purchased at a rummage sale after all the real hair was gone"
Analysis: This is close to being funny -- the concise contrast with "real hair" has potential. But what did it look like? This conjures up no specific visual image for me because rummage sales don't contain hair. Need to dig into the stock of images reader could actually envision -- hair after you've worn a hat, or slept on it funny, or gotten an overly severe haircut, or better still something i'm not thinking of because I'm not a creative writer, but at least something I could picture once you label it.
3. Stuff that reads as though it were dictated, with no further editing undertaken.
Example (p. 278, describing the small town in which her mother got a teaching job, straddling the Indiana/Ohio border) "It was either a single town cut in two, or two different towns with the same name that happened to be connected to each other, or. There was probably another way to think about it but I didn't know what that was."
Suggested Edit: It's not that funny anyway, but at least move on after "each other" and delete final sentence.
Example (p. 282, re seeing her Dad on duty as a cop at a basketball game): "who would have ever predicted something as horrible as this: one night at a Blue River home basketball game, a [ital] sacred occasion [ital] the details of which I could describe in a novel of a thousand pages and which would take my whole adult life to write, I looked up from where I was sitting with Julie and whom did I see but my father, in uniform"
Suggested edit: drop "who would have ever predicted...." -- given your dad is a cop and it's a small town, it's not amazing you would run into him on duty sometimes. "sacred occasion" is nice -- concisely evokes the importance of basketball in Indiana -- but then get rid of one, or preferably both of the following phrases about how long a description you COULD have inflicted.
Sorry if this review itself has now gone on too long, but for some reason I was moved to go beyond my initial knee-jerk "Erma Bombeck style. Not funny to me. If you like it, have fun" reaction to try to figure out what in particular was off-putting.
I tried to analyze a little more why I wasn't finding the author funny or especially engaging, rather than just leave it at the obvious point that it's a matter of taste. Came up with this taxonomy:
1. Strangely worded, verbose, hyperbolic passages
Example: (p. 6) "All my life there had been certain constants, facts so steady I assumed they were like trees or mountains, things you could trust to stay where you left them because they were [ital] mountains [ital] and yes the Bible says faith can move one but the Bible also says a whole lot of stuff that if you tried to make it true you'd end up in the Epileptic Village."
Analysis: (A) Word choice is not crisp -- (a) I don't think of trees or mountains as things I "left" in place but rather as things that stay in place. (b) If you wanted to set up "faith can move one" you should stick with just mountains and not throw in "trees" as well. (c) the repetition of, and emphasis on, "mountains" adds nothing but length to the sentence; (d) there are things in the Bible that are hard to believe, but the issue is not one of anyone's trying to "make" them true
(B) ends with a thud -- trying to do something impossible might make you exhausted, or might conceivably make you crazy, but what does epilepsy have to do with it? Very poor punch line choice. Where's the editor?
2. non-evocative images
Example: (p. 60, commenting on a photo of herself) "My hair looks like it had been purchased at a rummage sale after all the real hair was gone"
Analysis: This is close to being funny -- the concise contrast with "real hair" has potential. But what did it look like? This conjures up no specific visual image for me because rummage sales don't contain hair. Need to dig into the stock of images reader could actually envision -- hair after you've worn a hat, or slept on it funny, or gotten an overly severe haircut, or better still something i'm not thinking of because I'm not a creative writer, but at least something I could picture once you label it.
3. Stuff that reads as though it were dictated, with no further editing undertaken.
Example (p. 278, describing the small town in which her mother got a teaching job, straddling the Indiana/Ohio border) "It was either a single town cut in two, or two different towns with the same name that happened to be connected to each other, or. There was probably another way to think about it but I didn't know what that was."
Suggested Edit: It's not that funny anyway, but at least move on after "each other" and delete final sentence.
Example (p. 282, re seeing her Dad on duty as a cop at a basketball game): "who would have ever predicted something as horrible as this: one night at a Blue River home basketball game, a [ital] sacred occasion [ital] the details of which I could describe in a novel of a thousand pages and which would take my whole adult life to write, I looked up from where I was sitting with Julie and whom did I see but my father, in uniform"
Suggested edit: drop "who would have ever predicted...." -- given your dad is a cop and it's a small town, it's not amazing you would run into him on duty sometimes. "sacred occasion" is nice -- concisely evokes the importance of basketball in Indiana -- but then get rid of one, or preferably both of the following phrases about how long a description you COULD have inflicted.
Sorry if this review itself has now gone on too long, but for some reason I was moved to go beyond my initial knee-jerk "Erma Bombeck style. Not funny to me. If you like it, have fun" reaction to try to figure out what in particular was off-putting.
June 19, 2010
I read Kimmel's first memoir, A Girl Named Zippy: Growing Up Small in Mooreland, Indiana during one of my annual girls' trips to Mexico a couple years back. While taking in the sun, tasty margaritas and enjoying the simple things, I was enamored with this quirky small-town girl and her cleverly down-home way with words. She made childhood in a town of just 300 (THAT'S small!) a bit romantic. Living where everyone knows your name (forget that they all know your business, too) and where life seems less complicated or harried than that of the big city. I found her book utterly delightful, as did the friends with whom I shared it.
After that first book, Kimmel's mother, Delonda, became as popular or intriguing as Zippy herself. One to sit firmly planted on the family couch, surrounded by books or knitting, Delonda did nothing much more than that - parenting from old, upholstered sofa cushions. Kimmel was repeatedly asked, "So did your mother ever get up off the couch?" And, so, a follow up was born.
SHE GOT UP OFF THE COUCH is really a story of Delonda Jarvis and her transformation from couch potato to college graduate at 40 (much to her husband's disbelief), told from Zippy's childhood perspective. It covers a time of significant change in the Jarvis household, when Zippy's beloved brother marries and moves away, her sister starts her own family, and Delonda steps out of her comfort zone to go after her own dreams. It's a time when Zippy begins to see her parents no longer as superheroes, but human and just as capable of achieving greatness as they are of falling from it.
Kimmel weaves her stories with both compassion and humor that left me laughing out loud and pausing for reflection. One of my favorite passages involved Delonda's recent acquaintance with a foul-mouthed friend, "Big Fat Bonnie" a woman who would play a small but significant part in Delonda's newfound independence:
"Well, I'll be &*@! if I can't teach you how to drive, and I will, too, you can bet your &*@!" Bonnie was saying. "No man would keep ME from driving a car, forget it! What is this, a Turkish prison? What do you do all day, just sit around watching the %*#^TV?!"
Mom blushed, but also looked a bit sheepish, then noticed me. "Bonnie, this is my daughter."
I just continued to stand frozen in the doorway. I wanted to raise my hand and wave, but I was afraid I'd break the spell and miss a whole stream of good swears.
It's clear that Kimmel has immense respect for her mother and the journey she took off the couch and into the classroom. Following her dreams, however late in life she did, largely influenced Kimmel herself to go after her own as a writer. Interestingly enough, her memoirs were never intended to be published, just documentation of her family for her family.
Fortunately, she too did what may not have been expected of her and shared them with all of us.
After that first book, Kimmel's mother, Delonda, became as popular or intriguing as Zippy herself. One to sit firmly planted on the family couch, surrounded by books or knitting, Delonda did nothing much more than that - parenting from old, upholstered sofa cushions. Kimmel was repeatedly asked, "So did your mother ever get up off the couch?" And, so, a follow up was born.
SHE GOT UP OFF THE COUCH is really a story of Delonda Jarvis and her transformation from couch potato to college graduate at 40 (much to her husband's disbelief), told from Zippy's childhood perspective. It covers a time of significant change in the Jarvis household, when Zippy's beloved brother marries and moves away, her sister starts her own family, and Delonda steps out of her comfort zone to go after her own dreams. It's a time when Zippy begins to see her parents no longer as superheroes, but human and just as capable of achieving greatness as they are of falling from it.
Kimmel weaves her stories with both compassion and humor that left me laughing out loud and pausing for reflection. One of my favorite passages involved Delonda's recent acquaintance with a foul-mouthed friend, "Big Fat Bonnie" a woman who would play a small but significant part in Delonda's newfound independence:
"Well, I'll be &*@! if I can't teach you how to drive, and I will, too, you can bet your &*@!" Bonnie was saying. "No man would keep ME from driving a car, forget it! What is this, a Turkish prison? What do you do all day, just sit around watching the %*#^TV?!"
Mom blushed, but also looked a bit sheepish, then noticed me. "Bonnie, this is my daughter."
I just continued to stand frozen in the doorway. I wanted to raise my hand and wave, but I was afraid I'd break the spell and miss a whole stream of good swears.
It's clear that Kimmel has immense respect for her mother and the journey she took off the couch and into the classroom. Following her dreams, however late in life she did, largely influenced Kimmel herself to go after her own as a writer. Interestingly enough, her memoirs were never intended to be published, just documentation of her family for her family.
Fortunately, she too did what may not have been expected of her and shared them with all of us.
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