Beach Music

"...and it was here I had fallen in love with these books and authors in a way that only lifelong readers know and understand. A good movie had never once affected me in the same life-changing way a good book could. Books had the power to alter my view of the world forever. A great movie could change my perceptions for a day." - Beach Music

Beach Music by Pat Conroy is about Jack McCall, a man from South Carolina who moves to Rome, Italy with his young daughter Leah after his wife Shyla commits suicide. Jack McCall is cynical, anti-religion, judgemental, and in my opinion, not very likable. But his experiences are relatable, and this book is his personal journey. Jack is avoiding his childhood and his beginnings, in hopes that he can raise Leah in a poison-free environment. Free from the sickness that is the South, his family, his past. Due to an illness in the family, he finds himself reluctantly going back to America with his daughter and facing the demons of his past. Reading about South Carolina makes me desperately want to go back. I was born there and haven't seen it since we left when I was a toddler, but I want to feel the other coast and the air that I was born in. The way Conroy writes, I feel like I'm there. Beach Music covers the drama and love that comes with family and the pain and pleasures of growing up; relives the horrors of the Holocaust and of times of hardship in the South.

This book is about redemption, forgiveness, adapting, moving on.

One of the last trips I took to Oklahoma was when my sister Rachel and I went for my grandmother Mama Mary's memorial service October of 2009. It was a hard time because her death was so unexpected. We went to her house that we had known from the time we were toddlers. To us, it's always seemed huge, clean, open, quiet, and beautiful. Such a sweet and peaceful neighborhood, all the houses made of brick. I've always loved the narrow staircase in the middle of the house, next to the kitchen, circling up to the upstairs loft where Rachel and I would sleep when we were there. The snow in winter. The big, unfenced yard in the back and the playground nearby that we'd play on, even in the cold when we were all bundled up. The summer we collected all of the rose rocks, hosed them clean, laid them in the sun on the sidewalk only to have them be stolen hours later.

I always had this picture in my mind of Mama Mary's house and what it was to me. And I always imagined that I'd love to have a house like hers someday. I know it was the staircase and the upstairs loft that made us love the house so much; to us kids, it felt like an adventure. My grandmother was gentle and caring, and she read a lot. On this visit, we looked through her bookcase and took a few books back with us. My Dad told me to grab Beach Music.

The incredible thing is that Lucy McCall, mother of Jack McCall and his four brothers, reminds me of my grandmother. And Jack and his brothers remind me of my Dad and my Uncle David. But most of all, the relationships are the same. At 120 pages in, when Jack's mother and brothers are introduced, I noticed the resemblance. But it took a few minutes to make the connection of where I got the book from: Mama Mary's bookshelf. It gave me goosebumps when I thought of it. I want to believe that she read it too, and that it wasn't just on her bookshelf to read later. I want to believe that she noticed the same things that I noticed. It was then that I realized the powers of reading and that it's more than just what these books mean to me. It can be that knowing someone you love was captivated by the same story and the same people. I feel connected to Mama Mary in ways that I didn't feel before.

Maybe someday someone will feel connected to me in the same way: reading the pages that I've read, loving the lines that I also loved.