The Summer of the Bear is another book rescued from the pile of sun-bleached pool-side "recyclables". It was the only brick in the pile that seemed to be without a serial killer or military adventures, with the added bonus of having a bear in the title which sold me before I could read the back flap. Like To Kill a Mockingbird, the book is divided into chapters that cycle through the characters one by one: the bear (or his wrestler-owner, I can't make out just yet), Letty, the bereaved mother of Georgie, Alba and James, however, it is in the narrator's omnipresent voice, rather than the character's. It is set during the Cold War, which may explain why, after reading this until 3am last night, I dreamt of war myself. I remember being told that there was a GPS coordinate where we had to go to defend ourselves. I didn't want to be involved, but there I was, at the end of a dark street. There was nothing happening there, but we could here gunshots and saw that across a dark body of water there were tall hills where machine gun wielding planes were taking off, headed towards us. We started to run back the way we came but the planes kicked up a thick fog of dirt and I couldn't breathe. I pulled a scarf over my nose and noticed that it was a red and white Arab headscarf, and was worried that I would be taken for an enemy. We came out into a plateia where all the young people had similar scarves and I ran through them to a movie theater, where no one was aware that we were at war. My husband threw 2 euros to the ticket taker who was my unrequited high school love, Duncan, and told him we were going to the bathroom. He said he would show us where it was and led us to a large underground ballroom where the bathrooms led to underground tunnels where we were meant to either protect ourselves or spread the word that we were under attack. I wondered if Duncan could take better care of me than my husband and felt immediately guilty. In a room with very yellow light i saw my family and my daughter was spraying her whole body with my deoderant. She was very thin, standing behind a ladder, wearing a peach dress. I noticed my bag was torn and full of crap in the lining. My dad put it in a bag with paplomata and gave me a needle and sent me to the tailor to have it fixed. I was surprised that the tailor had other customers during war time and wondered why i had such a large needle for him. When I woke up it was after noon, I was groggy and still stuck in this dream world for hours afterwards.
Two Weeks Later
I finished this book slowly, one paragraph at a time. This is the second book I've read this summer about a father dying. Life, unfortunately, imitates art. How I wish the spirit of my father were in a bear who would come to save me from my broken heart. I have to wonder if that dream of war and tailors that I had the night before my father's stroke, was a precursor to the battle we just fought and lost, if that big needle my dad gave me was to mend what broke? It's unmendable.
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