Reeve Lindbergh – författare

In 1999 Anne Morrow Lindbergh, the famed aviator and author, moved from her home in Connecticut to the farm in Vermont where her daughter, Reeve, and Reeve's family live. Mrs. Lindbergh was in her nineties and had been rendered nearly speechless years earlier by a series of small strokes that also left her frail and dependent on others for her care. As an accomplished author who had learned to write in part by reading her mother's many books, Reeve was deeply saddened and frustrated by her inability to communicate with her mother, a woman long recognized in her family and throughout the world as a gifted communicator. No More Words is a moving and compassionate memoir of the final seventeen months of Reeve's mother's life. Reeve writes with great sensitivity and sympathy for her mother's plight, while also analyzing her own conflicting feelings. Anyone who has had to care for an elderly parent disabled by Alzheimer's or stroke will understand immediately the heartache and anguish Reeve suffered and will find comfort in her story.

In 1999 Anne Morrow Lindbergh, the famed aviator and author, moved from her home in Connecticut to the farm in Vermont where her daughter, Reeve, and Reeve''s family live. Mrs. Lindbergh was in her nineties and had been rendered nearly speechless years earlier by a series of small strokes that also left her frail and dependent on others for her care. No More Words is a moving and compassionate memoir by Reeve Lindbergh of the final seventeen months of her mother''s life. Reeve Lindbergh is an accomplished author who had learned to write in part by reading her mother''s many books -- among them the international bestseller Gift from the Sea -- and also by absorbing her mother''s careful and intimate way of examining the world around her. So Reeve''s inability to communicate with her mother, a woman long recognized in her family and throughout the world as a gifted communicator, left her daughter deeply saddened and frustrated. Worse, from time to time Mrs. Lindbergh would offer a comment or observation that seemed harsh, shocking, or simply unrelated to the events around her, leaving Reeve anxious and distressed about what her mother might be thinking. Anyone who has had to care for an elderly parent disabled by Alzheimer''s or stroke will understand immediately the heartache and anguish Reeve suffered. Reeve writes with great sensitivity and sympathy for her mother''s plight, while also analyzing her own conflicting feelings. Mrs. Lindbergh was fortunate to have full-time care, but a tremendous emotional burden still fell on Reeve. And even as she worried about her mother''s long silences and enigmatic remarks, and monitored her daily care, Reeve had her husband and son to look after. But mixed with the sadness and responsibility were moments of humor and happiness, and even an eventual understanding, all the more treasured for being so unexpected. No More Words is a tender tribute from daughter to mother, from one writer to another who was her model and mentor. It is a loving and poignant work, rich with insight into life''s final stage.

In her funny and wistful new book, Reeve Lindbergh contemplates entering a new stage in life, turning sixty, the period her mother, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, once described as "the youth of old age." It is a time of life, she writes, that produces some unexpected surprises. Age brings loss, but also love; disaster, but also delight. The second-graders Reeve taught many years ago are now middle-aged; her own children grow, marry, have children themselves. "Time flies," she observes, "but if I am willing to fly with it, then I can be airborne, too." A milestone birthday is also an opportunity to take stock of oneself, although such self-reflection may lead to nothing more than the realization, as Reeve puts it, "that I just seem to continue being me, the same person I was at twelve and at fifty." At sixty, as she observes, "all I really can do with the rest of my life is to...feel all of it, every bit of it, as much as I can for as long as I can." Age is only one of many subjects that Reeve writes about with perception and insight. In northern Vermont, nature is an integral part of daily life, especially on a farm. Whether it is the arrival and departure of certain birds in spring and fall, wandering turtles, or the springtime ritual of lambing, the natural world is a constant revelation. With a wry sense of humor, Reeve contemplates the infirmities of the aging body, as well as the many new drugs that treat these maladies. Briefly considering the risks of drug dependency, she writes that "the least we [the "Sixties Generation"] can do for ourselves is live up to our mythology, and take lots of drugs." Legal drugs, that is -- although what sustains us as we grow older is not drugs but an appreciation for life, augmented by compassion, a sense of humor, and common sense. And of course there is family -- especially with the Lindberghs. Reeve writes about discovering, thirty years after her father''s death and two and a half years after her mother''s, that her father had three secret families in Europe. She travels to meet them, learning to expand her self-understanding: "daughter of," "mother of," "sister of" -- sister of many more siblings than she''d known, in a family more complicated than even she had imagined. Forward from Here is a brave book, a reflective book, a funny book -- a book that will charm and fascinate anyone on the journey from middle age to the uncertain future that lies ahead.