ADVENTURES IN READING: "...POMEGRANATES"

I finally finished my third book of the year: Traveling with Pomegranates: a mother-daughter story by Sue Monk Kidd and her daughter, Ann Kidd Taylor.  If travel (Greece and France) and mythology is your cup of tea, you may enjoy this book.  Additionally there is much mother-daughter interaction and Ms. Kidd's grappling with menopausal and post menopausal realities.

In the process of reading, I jotted down the following quotes to mull over:

• "the cultivation of being" (part of the passage into her fifties..).
• "the urge to create and the urge to be--a set of opposites that always clunk into one another"
• "she (daughter) wants me to receive her feelings, not fix them"
• "Every woman needs to become self-mothering...to learn to take care of herself.  To love herself"
• "...behave like a finder as much as a seeker"
• "The old woman I shall become will be quite different from the woman I am now.  Another I is beginning" (George Sand)

I especially am struck by the thoughts of "self-mothering" and behaving "like a finder as much as a seeker."

The title - Pomegranates?  To be honest, I remember mother and daughter eating the pomegranate seeds and faintly recall them drying some (I think).  But that's about all I remember.  Clearly, some of the symbolism was lost on me.  If you read or saw The Secret Life of Bees or read The Mermaid Chair, you might find this book about their author interesting.

I do LOVE eating pomegranate seeds, though!  If you haven't tried them, you really should!