My few years hanging out with Leo have come to a close. I wrapped up my long, drawn out War and Peace project last night.  Honestly I don’t even know how I feel about it.  Tolstoy famously quips that pure, unadulterated sorrow is as impossible as pure, unadulterated joy.  In the same way I can say I feel great kinship with Tolstoy, his ideas, and his characters today.  I also can say the man’s pedantic, fatalist rambling  made me sometimes want to pull my own hair out.  There was a lot of that.  Still I read.

And read.

And read.

At times completely enthralled and other times not even sure why I kept trudging on besides the fact I felt deeply connected to the people and committed to seeing it through. 

I ended up seeing through War and Peace, Anna Karenina, Resurrection, and The Death of Ivan Ilyich and am now applauding myself enthusiastically because first, I am not that smart and second, my attention span is about as impressive as my energy level as a rule. It was a goal set and met though – despite all that life threw at me during the project – and that is worth noting with satisfaction.  

It is both sad to finally be walking away from these people and places and exciting to consider where to go next. My plan is to read a few of the boys’ high school lit novels which I have not yet read so we can hash those out better.  Sometimes I read ahead of them, sometimes I read aloud to them, and sometimes they summarize what they are reading.  It makes for a family book club of sorts. 

Years ago I was inspired by Joyce Swan working through her oldest’s assignments each evening so she could teach and troubleshoot more effectively.  Constant relocation and many years of night nursing prevented me from doing this as well as I had hoped.  There are still children to teach however, and if I can’t get to all the work ahead of them it is still helpful to do what I can.  Reading is a wonderful way to come together with your big people no matter where they spend their days.  It will be good to reconnect in this way. 

Tolstoy advises: A man on a thousand mile walk has to forget his goal and say to himself every morning, 'Today I'm going to cover twenty-five miles and then rest up and sleep.”

And so it is here. I’ve tried not to look at the whole journey and just tackle each day’s leg of it.  If I fell a bit short sometimes, I went a little further the next day. This is the way we chip away at the classics.  Eventually you look up and an epic work is under your belt.