These Precious Days: Essays

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A month later, I still hadn’t seen all the clothes she had brought with her, and I never saw the cold caps. Sooki the Tireless, Sooki the Indefatigable, looked as if she was about to split apart. She said she didn’t know what she was going to do. “I can’t just stay here forever.”

At the center of These Precious Days is the title essay, a surprising and moving meditation on an unexpected friendship that explores "what it means to be seen, to find someone with whom you can be your best and most complete self." When Patchett chose an early galley of actor and producer Tom Hanks' short story collection to read one night before bed, she had no idea that this single choice would be life changing. It would introduce her to a remarkable woman—Tom's brilliant assistant Sooki—with whom she would form a profound bond that held monumental consequences for them both. But the flames are not just those of a global pandemic. Lara’s eldest daughter Emily, who plans to make her life on the farm, decides she is not going to have children because of the climate emergency. It is here that even Patchett’s optimism falters. “I can’t imagine going through this with young children. You’re not worrying just for yourself and your own life and a love for trees and birds and all that. You’re worrying about it for the people you love the most.” When Sooki and Karl got home that night, they were elated. Karl loved Sooki’s family and they all loved Karl. He and the other pilot talked flying with Sooki’s mother. “She told me that she had to put Sooki on a leash when she was little because she ran so much. No one could keep up with her. Every time her mother turned around, Sooki was gone.” She went inside to see for herself. She wasn’t about to tell me she looked good, but it was clear what I was talking about. There was a delicacy about her that was well-suited to baldness. All these stories talk volume about Ann. She is as pragmatic as emotional. Her strength lies in her vulnerability & her vulnerability in her strengthYou never know.” Then she looked at me, her face suddenly brightened by a plot twist. “She could work for Mother Teresa. If she really wanted to go to India and she wanted to serve the poor, that’s what she would do.” One person remembers to tip the nose up for the landing while the other person forgets to latch the door—and, in the end, it probably won’t be the nose tip or the door. It will be something infinitely more mundane. It will be life and time, the things that come for us all.” I am now sitting at the airport waiting to catch a plane to my next opinion, at Sloan Kettering in NY. (It was not reassuring to know that one of the nurses at UCLA thought that “Sloan Kettering” was the name of the doctor I’d be seeing.) It looks like I’ll have chemo and maybe a clinical trial ahead. I will keep you more closely posted as I move ahead (in the right color shoes). A pitch-perfect collection ... She can turn a sentence like no one else: her writing is clear, honest, witty, and just full of unsentimental humanity' Nigella Lawson

I told her it was all an elaborate hoax. “You think you’re getting chemo three Wednesdays a month but really it’s a test to measure the effectiveness of kundalini yoga and kohlrabi.” I had signed up for a farm-share box, and every week we were overwhelmed with pounds of mysterious vegetables. Lessons in Chemistry: In the 1960s, Elizabeth Zott, an extraordinary chemist, defies gender norms in her male-dominated workplace. Unexpectedly becoming a single mother, she stumbles into hosting a cooking show where her unconventional methods challenge societal norms. Lessons in Chemistry is a hilarious and insightful tale of one woman daring to change the status quo. Discuss how writing is an integral part of the author’s identity and shapes the way she approaches life. But wasn’t there also a scenario in which she didn’t die? The chemo, the clinical trial, the yoga and the vegetables, the prayers of nuns and all the time to paint—what if it added up to something? What if there was some strange alchemy in the proportions that could never be exactly measured and, as a result, she lived, only to die at some later point from the thing no one saw coming: a pandemic, tornadoes, a straight-line wind.

These Precious Days

Three Fathers": Ann Patchett had three fathers because her mother had three marriages, two of which ended in divorce. At her sister's wedding, Ann realized all three of the men, who were never together for obvious reasons, would be in the same place at the same time. So she had her photo taken with them. One of the dads astutely observed to the other two, "You know what she's going to do, don't you? She's going to wait until the three of us are dead and then she's going to write about us. This is the picture that will run with the piece." He was right. What’s your take on this essay serving as a reflection on the value of taking risks and living life to the fullest? In "The Nightstand," after a stranger calls Patchett saying he found her old papers in a nightstand he bought, Patchett decides to go through her old letters, writings, and photographs. Twenty-two sessions down and six to go. Only on weekdays and not on the Fourth of July, because apparently cancer knows to take weekends off and observe federal holidays. Later that day we sat side by side on our yoga mats, Sooki’s head wrapped artfully in a scarf. With our hands on our shoulders we turned left and right, left and right, endlessly.

Karl was home from work when we got to the house, and he and I showed Sooki around. There was a sitting room downstairs, the library, her bedroom and bathroom. I had cut a small bouquet of Lenten roses and put them on the night table. There was a bottle of water, a blue glass by the sink. I told her to take her time settling in. We would have dinner whenever she was ready. She gave us a giant furry blanket that I loved. She had brought a squeaky toy for Sparky. Call me crazy, but that seems like a lot.” We were well into March by then. The spring was cold and wet and endlessly beautiful because of it. The cherry blossoms hung on forever. Sooki hadn’t answered the question, but that was the day I felt as though we started talking. We don’t deserve anything,” she writes. “Not the suffering and not the golden light. It just comes.” The Vanishing Half: A captivating tale of twin sisters, their diverging paths, and the hidden truths that bind them. Spanning decades and continents, this novel explores race, family, and the powerful legacy that shapes our lives. Prepare to be spellbound by its intricate storytelling. Direct flights to Los Angeles had been suspended, and even if she’d wanted to fly to Dallas to wait and see whether the connecting flight would be canceled (because that’s what happened now), her weekly blood draws underscored the fact that she scarcely had enough white cells to qualify for chemo, much less protect her from a pandemic while on a commercial flight. And anyway, UCLA had suspended its plans to start the clinical trial for recurrent pancreatic cancer. All across the country clinical trials were being postponed or abandoned in an attempt to deal with the overflow of patients being treated for COVID-19. All resources were now directed at a disease that was not the disease Sooki had.I wasn’t sure why I was negotiating my character’s future with my friend, but there I was, listening. Did my character want to be a nun?

It’s funny, but all this time I was sure it was exactly that. I’d come up with the answer months ago. Our house was a holding pattern, a neutral space without expectation where all that mattered was her recovery. Although motherhood is one of the joys in the novel, Patchett’s childlessness had no bearing on the writing. “This is what I do. I make these things up,” she says sternly. “I think about it really hard. I’m not an actress. I’m not a farmer. I’m not a mother.” I had never found a way of asking what having cancer had been like for her, or what it meant to so vigorously refuse the hand you were dealt. With every passing day I seemed less able to say, Do you want to talk about this? Am I the person you’re talking to, or are you talking to someone else downstairs late at night? I was starting to understand that what she needed might have been color rather than conversation, breath rather than words. In "Tavia," Patchett cites her lifelong friendship with Tavia as evidence of friendship's lasting and transformative powers. Because if I didn’t know that Sooki had a husband, how much did she know about me, about us? Nothing. We would meet on the level playing field of affectionate strangers.

Reviews

In "Three Fathers," Patchett reflects upon her relationships with her three fathers, Frank, Mike, and Darrell. Although each man played a different role in Patchett's life, after their deaths, she realizes how much they all enriched her writing. Even as Sooki’s white count continued to hover in the neighborhood of nonexistent, her CA 19-9 cancer marker number (that unreliable indicator we relied on) was dropping. “Maybe it’s the trial,” she said, “but I think it could just as easily be the food and the yoga.” In "My Year of No Shopping," Patchett's decision not to shop for a whole year makes her realize how little she needs and how much she can give to others. Once I’m there for chemo, I will find a place where I won’t be worried about being a good houseguest. I just can’t stand the thought of being so disruptive to your and Karl’s (and Sparky’s!) lives. I know that after my last round of chemo I would sometimes get up and eat in the middle of the night, or get up early and make noisy smoothies. I’m self-conscious about being in the way, especially if I’m not at my best through chemo. I just would worry too much about being a bad friend. The elegance of Patchett’s prose is seductive and inviting: with Patchett as a guide, readers will really get to grips with the power of struggles, failures, and triumphs alike." — Publisher's Weekly