Oddly, I found the government's censorship during WWI vaguely reassuring, since it meant today's strangulation of the press is not without precedent. The tracing of the disease's origin, course, spread, and dissipation was interesting; and the author makes a good case for its having been influenza, not a small stroke, that weakened Wilson and allowed Clemonceau to name the terms so disastrous for Germany (and the rest of the world).
But the narrator I wanted to throttle. He emoted. He emoted so much. The author must be faulted for repeating "It was only influenza--only influenza" scores of times throughout the book, but the narrator takes the blame for dramatizing sentences like "The doctors were WRONG and they would soon LEARN...HOW WRONG."
I slept through the last hour and change and I don't even care.
I do have a slight connection to the epidemic. My other grandmother's older brother died in WWI, on Nov. 8, 1918--after cease-fire, three days before Armistice. She was 12 at the time and had idolized him. She lost another sibling, an older sister, to the flu either that fall, during its first rampage, or one of the subsequent two major waves. My grandfather, who fought in WWI as well, was meant to marry that older sister, but married the surviving younger one when she turned 16 (he was 26). I learned all this well after her death in 1989, but it gives me insight to her character. She idolized my grandfather as she had her brother, and at least this man, that brother's age, had survived. Meanwhile, she herself was second best, being merely the surviving sister of, rather than the preferred, girl. My father is named for his uncle.
We cleaned and raked and toted and cooked and polished and stashed the NSFW stuff and mostly it rained. When the water didn't rain, it hung in the air in a way I do not miss at all, especially when the sun emerged for three minutes together reducing the world to a steambath.
In the evening we ate on the water in Stonington and had ice cream in Mystic. English continues to elude me and when we browsed in a store that sold dog and cat accessories, I said "water jacket" instead of "life preserver" like Koko signing "water bird" when she didn't know "duck" and that was my sister's favorite phrase for the rest of the weekend.
Saturday she had a combination housewarming for herself and surprise retirement party for our mother's husband.
Two of BDL's gifts from two of his fellow cult members were books: Humility and Absolute Surrender and one by Bill O'Reilly. The giver of the latter couldn't just give it and be done but proselytize about O'Reilly and Fox News--I had disliked this man nearly instantly and now I had reason besides my suspicion of the cult and irritation with his demeanor, dress, and voice. I was sitting on the staircase, looking into the living room but not crowded in, and at the O'Reilly love I quietly rose and let myself outside through the second floor to breathe the warm wet air. Also by this means I avoided asking if anyone else thought that Bill O'Reilly had a lot to learn about humility and surrender.
On the other hand, at least there's an assumption among the cult that members are literate.
The real treat of the day was the attendance of CLH's and my history, economics, and (for her) Russian novels teacher and his wife. CLH didn't get the numbers she hoped for--who could have guessed that Saturdays in June are such popular days for weddings--and so, aside from my actual family and one friend of my sister's, they were the only people I could have a conversation with. He was pleased I remembered so much from his teaching, his teaching methods, and his personal attitudes. The night before CLH had asked what were the only three dates that he wanted us to remember, and I said 1066, 1789, and 1870. But she said 1066, 1215, and 1789. He didn't remember exactly which himself, though his other contender was 742, and he wondered at 1870. Emancipation of U.S. slaves and Russian serfs and the unification of Germany and Italy, I said. We talked about swimming and the gossip from LOLHS and Omnivore's Dilemma and Fathers and Sons. I guess he didn't offer his class in the Russian novel when I was in 12th grade.
I met some of my sister's colleagues, some of whom I liked fine. About one, after I finally extricated myself from his monologuing, I asided to CLH, "That man has to stop talking to me now." He wasn't even hitting on me: he merely has no sense of the dialogue aspect of conversation nor perception of the social cues everyone else has. Later in the day I suggested to my mother that we sneak out for cigarettes, and I was very proud of her for immediately understanding that I just wanted a break and to talk with my own mother for a few minutes by ourselves. Specifically, a break from people for whom "an" is an unknown article. My mother said I shouldn't judge people by that but could not give me a reason when I asked her why ever not. She told me about a cousin who was getting married this day and I said yes, the 24th of June is an excellent day for weddings. She caught on to that too, although it mystifies her that RDC and I could be apart on our anniversary. Last year we had houseguests, I said: we've never been romantic. And she even remembered that she was a houseguest. I was very proud. CLH praised me for how well we got along, and my mother didn't even complain when I hugged her (I'm "too strong").
At midnight, having been On since noon with perhaps nine hours of sleep in two days, but waiting until other coworkers showed up to spare her being alone with an unattended man, I excused myself. Sunday continued to pee with rain as we cleaned up (I suggested the next house she buy have, if not a dishwasher, a large enough sink, maybe with a window over it), and into the afternoon that I had looked forward to spending at my lake. Instead we had a late lunch with our mother and BDL and then a little more time on our own before, at 6, I left for Logan.
Between Norwich and Framingham the rain did not merely pee but piss and bucket. I actually drove under the speed limit. I returned the car, praising to a manager the clerk who'd helped me, caught the shuttle, and got to Logan in time to learn that my flight was two fucking hours late. I stretched out on the floor and watched "The Usual Suspects" and the beginning of "Traffic" before boarding, and once seated shoved The Great Influenza in my ears. At this point in the book, I cared so little about the disease that I wanted the author and the narrator to die of it. I couldn't take melatonin because a mechanical glitch threatened to postpone the flight further, but I fell asleep anyway during the nearly two hours we sat on the tarmac, waking only during takeoff, hooray, and missing the end of the audiobook and waking sometime during John Adams, which I will rewind.
I am never doing that again. I did it for the family reunion, foregoing sleep for blood family when my chosen family were all in France surrounding Siblet's birth. I visited my sister in September of last year, and she couldn't control the weather then either, but six days in Connecticut with only one afternoon at the lake? Yeesh. And I did it this time because she really really wanted me to. I'm not never doing that again but I am not going to do that again for a couple of years. An hour and half with Jessie and a pleasant conversation with my old teacher and maybe four hours--two on Friday evening and two on Sunday afternoon--to relax and talk with my sister do not justify hellish travel.