At home in Mitford Book

When I retired, I wanted to repossess my lost innocence.

I thought I could, with books like this. I devoted much free time to them in those anguished and burnt-out years.

But then the "C" word raised its Medusa's Snake Mane in my family a short three or four years ago. I had never anticipated a colossal power like it before that - but I needed a literary anchor - so once again chose Jan Karon as a vade mecum for a long journey of worry and pain.

Except, as I was to discover, it was one of those Dark books of her mid-life crisis from the Father Tim series - and so, serendipitously, its turbulence rhymed with my anxiety, essentially.

How many anxious hours outside of medical examining rooms were spent in the desperate company of Father Tim, this time in Ireland? That novel was In the Company of Others, and in it we face our Shadow, head on.

That novel proved to me that Mitford and Tim were, like me, changing and coming to maturity in Purgatorial Fire. Sometimes it's best not to counteract anxiety pharmaceutically, and sometimes being with our anxiety is like holding onto the Tail of a Dragon. For that Dragon can take you along on the road to becoming Yourself.

His nostrils exhale fire, but sometimes purification by fire is necessary.

For if you are Lamenting, yourself, alongside the dear family member who has been diagnosed with cancer, a Part of You is going to soon Die.

The part that is the kid within you, and as he dies he'll herald a new day of clarity and competence in your life.

My loved one didn't die.

And this is for real, folks. You see - intellectually AND in my heart - Karon forced me to GROW UP. She put me into a narrow ascending dark tunnel. Until I saw the light at the end of it.

And This is the reason Karon is an important writer.

For just as Tim (and I) later returned to his childhood home to Exorcise his Inveterate Demons, you'll believe me when I say Karon has purged hers.

So don't put this beautiful series down too soon.

I certainly won't...

Cause one of my oldest friends sent me two later Mitford novels - Sheep May Safely Graze and Somewhere Safe with Someone Good - as Holiday treats last Christmas.

For what starts out as a saccharine-sounding Golden Age in THIS book, turns often in her later books to be more reliable and real:

As an adult sneak peak at the Glory to come -

In the flummoxed face of flawed beautiful losers just like you and me...

And the human remnant that hangs their hats in Mitford.