More Than a Book Club - "It is really about the food!"

I would like to dedicate this paper to my grandmothers, to honour their memories - for my maternal abuela Isabel and paternal abuela Francisca.

I am grateful to have received spiritual gifts and teaching from these two remarkable kinswomen. Their lives have affected who I am today. Unlike me, my industrious grandmothers never had a chance to attend school or had the privilege to be part of a wonderful discussion group like the Bookettes. My abuela Isabel led a life of isolation and emotional pain. Her first opportunity to learn to write her name came when I taught her how, when I was in primary school. For my birthday or end of the school year, I would always receive a beautiful pair of earrings that she would buy with her small pension; that was her way of connecting with me. My abuela Francisca learned to read and write by watching her children do their homework. She would work alongside them and trace the letters with a hairpin. Later, as her adult children moved away to other towns and countries, she would write letters to them. Francisca loved to read romance novels. She also had an incredible spirit of generosity. Every day, she would cook a large pot of stew or soup for her brood of children and then she would send one of the children with a food plate to an infirm or elderly neighbour. The spirits of Isabel and Francisca continue to live in me today.

At the beginning of 2004, a dear friend invited me to partake in a new book club that she was starting up with two other friends. I was a bit nervous because it was my first experience of joining a book club, but I was looking to expand my community, as I had moved to Toronto from Brampton the previous year. While in Brampton, my daily travels on the Go train to and from work had not left me much time to build community. As a middle-aged woman, the commute, as well as the isolation of living so far away from my friends, had begun to affect my health. Thus, in the spring of 2003, my daughter, our feline companion, Misty and I moved back to Toronto after a ten-year hiatus.

In my emotional and spiritual life, I am working currently to heal the deep core isolation and lack of loving connections that have obscured parts of my soul from the very beginning of my life. Emotionally, I have lived only at a basic survival level for most of my life. My childhood was weighed down with disturbance. I hungered for love from the adults in my life, and I acted out against the lack of connection and acknowledgement that I received from my caretakers.

As an adult, my intimate relationships have been deplorable. My own limitations did not allow me to give a longer term healing process a chance. I was looking for instant gratification. When I initially moved to Brampton, I was chasing an elusive and intangible fantasy of what I thought would provide a loving family environment and intimacy with a partner. In actuality, I experienced the total opposite. Unconsciously, I was living in a power outage nightmare as I stumbled through my own emotional darkness. Now, by getting back on track with my emotional healing and moving back to Toronto, my life has begun another chapter. My desire and hope is to grow healthy roots in this beautiful city that has so much to offer. As I build both positive relationships and a healthy sense of belonging to a community, I am healing some of the injured parts of my soul.

It has taken me this long to process the huge positive impact of being back in Toronto. I am closer to work and to my community of friends, and the book club has become a way to expand my existing community. Our meetings are on a monthly basis and take place on a Sunday at alternate members' homes. We meet for brunch and we all contribute by bringing delicious dishes. Sometimes part of our meeting is spent discussing the recipes, which we later e-mail to each other. We always joke that it is not for the books that we get
together - "it is really about the food".

We wanted to give the club a name and one of our members came up with the Bookettes, which we all liked and immediately adopted. We have talked about starting our own website so that we can facilitate our own communication and share with the world the books that we have read and the dishes that we have prepared. Members bring various sweet and savoury dishes, using fruits and vegetables that are in season. On a couple of occasions, I have tried my hand at preparing some typical Uruguayan delicacies, such as pasqualina (spinach pie) and binuelos (veggie or fruit fritters).

We have eleven members, all women, of a fair range in age. We lost a dear member to cancer early in the spring of 2004. This summer, one of our Bookettes gave birth to a beautiful son. Another member is retired and enjoys travelling quite a bit. One of the original creators of the group is no longer as active with the Bookettes due to other responsibilities, but does visit us whenever possible. We share about our children, our families, our communities, our work and our pets. We share plants from our gardens and order plants from garden centres for each other. We celebrate important occasions and accompany each other during times of sorrow. We also support our members' community outreach and creative endeavours.

We have read a wide range of books, with a varied and eclectic range; we have discussed history, spirituality, gender-related topics and politics, to name a few, and their impact in the world community. Some of the writers that we have read are Anne Cameron, Thomas King, Marianne Wiggins, Eduardo Galleano, Barbara Kingsolver, Ronald Wright, Alice Munro, Jeffrey Eugenides, Sylvia Fraser, Monica Ali, Ann-Marie MacDonald and many others.

The Bookettes have enriched my life experience remarkably. I always look forward to our meetings, and I invariably take away intellectual food to be digested and reflected upon in my everyday life. In all honesty, I do not always finish reading the assigned book prior to our meetings; we all lead busy lives filled with family, work, personal and community involvement. But when we do come together, we have so much to share with each other.

Among many precious moments, one Bookette anecdote has stayed with me. Last summer, while we were waiting for the arrival of our colleagues, the hostess and I were admiring her garden. To our surprise, the Bookettes Brigade - more than the majority of the group - arrived together riding their bikes, helmets firmly in place, their baskets filled with food and books. It was such a pleasure to see the joy in the women's lighthearted and sun-filled faces. They were laughing and giggling, and it felt like I was looking through the lens of time, witnessing a group of young girls getting together for tea and play.

The Bookettes provides us with more than a social environment; it offers us a community, full of love and support. And the food that we consume at our brunch meetings is much more than physical sustenance or pleasure for our palates; it is also spiritual food and communal nourishment. I will forever be grateful to my dear friend for inviting me to be part of this wonderfully generous and rich community of women. I am also thankful to the cosmos for providing such blessings in my life.

Stay tuned - more to come!