High-calorie reading
Tomorrow evening I will be attending an annual variation of my monthly book club meeting. One of the members, Carol, hosts us for a "garden tea party" at her house. We all dress up in outfits that – depending on an individual’s penchant for visiting vintage/thrift shops – approximate Victorian ladies’ day wear; and Carol serves an always-amazing array of hand-crafted finger-foods and teas in dainty china cups. We always line up in our finery, with some part of Carol’s lovely garden as our backdrop, for a group photo. We ham it up, but few can top Carol’s ensembles for imaginative hilarity.
There’s more to this story than just the break in our bookclub routine. At the WFOT conference in Montreal in 2002, I attended a presentation by Australian OT Linsey Howie on her research about the occupations embedded in bookclubs. One of the bookclubs in her study had been meeting for 40 years! Mine (of which I’m an original member) has been in existence only since ’95; we’re babes in the woods by comparison! But a development in my bookclub shortly after WFOT 2002 makes me think regularly now of Howie’s project :
Carol decided to start bringing food that had some relevance to the book we were reading to each meeting. Since some books mention food only generically; and some not at all, Carol often faces challenges beyond the mechanics of the food preparation. One meeting, Carol had us scratching our heads over the platter of bologna sandwiches she brought, until she explained that the prairie setting of the book (I think it was Willa Cather’s My Antonia) reminded her of the food of her childhood in South Dakota. Many of the club members try to guess what food mentioned in each book Carol will create for us, and they trade speculations before the meetings start; but she often surprises us. Even if her choice is the "obvious" one, Carol usually has an entertaining story about what she went through to produce that evening’s treat.
The weird thing is, although I now tend to notice food references more often in my own book choices, I usually finish a bookclub read with no memory of anything food-related. I don’t understand my "selective blindness". Maybe it’s somehow related to the fact that I never try to guess the endings of mysteries, or to read the final page of any book before I get to it naturally: Carol’s offerings are part of the book, and therefore, part of "how things end" and not to found out prematurely.
On the rare occasions Carol can’t make it to bookclub (which normally meets at our local public library) and there is no food for us, the whole group vibe is different. Carol herself has often talked about how much she enjoys the challenge of creating the things she makes for us. She started this ritual for our bookclub, and we’re all hooked on it.
Howie found "that ritualising, a component of book group activities, facilitates specific customs and experiences of social order and community that are relevant to heightened self-concept[, and] that further research is needed into the practices of occupation-based community groups and the role of rituals in facilitating the development of occupational identities." 1
Carol’s husband is disabled, their children have long flown the nest, and she’s been struggling with unemployment for more than a year now. Whatever other meanings "Chez Bookclub" has had for her, she’s made it clear that feeding us once a month is now more important to her than ever. However, she’s such a delightful hostess, even at the regular meetings at the library, you’d never know how much pathos there is in her joyful ritual.
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1 Howie, L, Ritualising in Book Clubs: Implications Evolving Occupational Identities. Journal of Occupational Science, 10 (3) 2003 130-139