Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Book reviews, books, dr-seuss, elizabeth-strout, fiction, Jane Austen, john-irving, Mark Twain, oscar-wilde, reading, sherman-alexie, tommy-orange
As a child I read my mother to sleep each night. We shared the classics, coming-of-age tales, newly released novels, short stories, and many books the rather uptight librarian at my grade school thought summarily inappropriate for my age (but which provided opportunities for discussion at home with my parents). Humorous, moralistic, insightful, entertaining, thoughtful, bizarre tales were discovered, with themes that covered the gamut of human experience: love, hope, rejuvenation, identity, grief, loss, loneliness, isolation, injustice, fear, sadness, outrage…it feels good to feel deeply for the characters and their circumstances within a book. It reminds us of our collective humanity and builds compassion. If I managed to make tears slide from my mother’s eyes as she listened intently to a particular passage, I would finish the page and ask her if she wanted me to read it again.
I have never killed a spider, despite their terrifying me, because of Charlotte’s Web. Dr Seuss’s morals remain stalwart guides for my own values. Archetypal characters from Winnie the Pooh serve to classify the personalities of those I meet and know. There is no hidden painting assuming the burden of our “sins,” as Wilde imagines, so one must watch one’s penchants for self destruction. The absurdity of Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle perpetually resonates. I mourned Anna Karenina for days after reading the novel. At a loss for what book to read next after finishing A Gentleman in Moscow, it was only The Brothers Karamozov that satisfied. Plainsong left my soul silent and thoughtful for weeks. Jet lagged and unable to sleep in a hotel in Bangkok, I cried alone when Sirius Black died. A poignant scene from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn still haunts me years after reading it. Zenzele, A Letter to My Daughter recalls the dusty roads and sounds of baboons in Zimbabwe. John Steinbeck encapsulates my gorgeous memories of California and a mythologized USA. Tommy Orange and Sherman Alexie are responses to an idealized America. Twain’s quips are brilliant anecdotes. I chuckle to remember incidents in The World According to Garp and remain in awe of Irving’s prescience of modern culture. Jane Austen and Elizabeth Strout would be guests at my dream dinner table.
Considering the stories I have loved over my lifetime swells my heart with fond emotion. Invaluable friends and inspirational “guardians,” various epochs of my own life are chronicled by when I read these books and first met their authors, much like a great soundtrack enriches a movie. My mother, now dead, remains alive for me whenever I pick up any of the books we shared. There is a reason Victorian men did not like their wives to read fiction and Faust swore he would relinquish his books to save his soul: novels explore, describe, and expand upon the human experience — both our triumphant selves and our worst selves – and consequently make our understanding of “mine own” and the world around us richer, more infinite in its possibilities. They give us knowledge. They remind us that we are not alone. Yes, reading is magical indeed, “98 and 3/4 percent guaranteed.”
Filed under: The Baby Diaries | Tags: babies, baby, baby health, carte vitale, Chamonix, French Alps, French doctors, health in France, healthcare, healthcare in France, infant care, l'Assurance Maladie, Mark Twain
The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d rather not. Mark Twain
Today I went to the doctor with my boy for a check-up and we had an interesting conversation. She is a ‘stand-in’ for our regular doctor. Originally from Marseille, she loves the mountains and her husband works for the mountain rescue. Normally, she does research on frostbite for a national study and she’s also six months pregnant (and looks great. Unlike the bulk I was, and remain – I’m still wearing my maternity clothes!).
After she’d checked my boy’s weight, vitals, and head circumference, etc., we got to chatting about life in Southern France (I hold onto the idea that I will live there one day, put perhaps it won’t be until I’m in my 50’s, like Colette). From there, we began talking about the state of French industry. Recently, France has lost two manufacturing company contracts, which were employing/would employ thousands of workers because of inefficiency and the demand for guaranteed lifetime contracts, respectively. After that, we segued into the dire state of the French healthcare system. I’m a great admirer of their system – a winning combination of socialist and capitalist care – and I’ve been the grateful recipient of many medical services in France. Nonetheless, I am aware the system is bankrupt. That it has been so for thirty years. It seems to me that to raise the cost of doctor’s visits, hospital stays, and long term care, SLIGHTLY, would help the system immeasurably. It may even save it. Aren’t the French meant to be collectively oriented? Why isn’t this happening?
What she told me was surprising. Particularly from a French person. She said that the French complain about the 23e or 28e they must pay for each doctor’s visit, which is the amount one pays before being partially reimbursed. In reality, only about 10e per visit goes to the doctor. Unlike their American counterparts, for example, doctors here are not getting rich through their vocation. She told me that when the doctor is unable to process a Carte Vitale (one’s personal health card which is registered with the health authorities, is run through a machine at the chemist, the hospital, by doctors at every visit, and then is automatically reimbursed for a given treatment) and must give them a brown form to fill out and send to the l’Assurance Maladie (health office) for reimbursement, instead, the French patients complain about having to pay for the price of a stamp in sending the form in for reimbursement.
She is very pessimistic that anything will change in France, despite the dire state of affairs within the medical arena and the economic problems for the country as a whole. She believes that in general, the French believe that they are “entitled.” They do not care whence their rebates, subsidies, incentives, reimbursements, and retirement plans come from, only that they receive them and pay as little toward them as is possible. She believes that short of a huge philosophical shift in thinking, which is not likely to happen as the general population in France refuses to accept that there is a problem that requires everyone to adapt, the French medical and economic systems are doomed. I want to believe this is not so.
Victoria Jelinek 