The last time the book group met was in my back yard in 2000.  We ate chicken, a salad, and dessert (something from the neighborhood bakery), and desultorily discussed John Updike’s Rabbit Is Rich. 

I remember their faces, but can’t remember their last names. 

Time passes. Details drift away, unless one needs to remember. And yet we met for four years, and I felt close to them.  I had met these people at a support group. We socialized sometimes.

And so I organized a monthly book group, and I picked the books. We read some dazzling memoirs and novels, among them Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea, Lisa Zeidner’s Layover, John Thorndike’s Another Way Home: A Father’s Memoir, Mick Jackson’s The Underground Man, Kaye Gibbons’ Sights Unseen, and Jay Neugeboren’s Imagining Robert.

One evening a cartoonist showed up at book group.  She hilariously skewered one of my favorite novels, and was so witty that I hiccoughed with laughter.  Really, it is and is not ideal to have a cartoonist in your book group!  

At that last meeting, I was distracted, still packing for the move.

“You shouldn’t move.  You have a lot of friends here,” said one of my favorites.

“I’ll miss you a lot. You’ve got to keep the book group going.”

“We won’t,” he said glumly.

But there must have been someone bossy enough to take over. I’d phoned them, arranged transportation (I’m a master of bus schedules and carpooling), and occasionally sent out a newsletter to remind them of our selection of the month.

As you can see, I have a clear memory of my bossiness, and/or powers of organization, and it makes me laugh. I remember the group vividly, but I wish I had a photo.