The Things We Cannot Say by Kelly Rimmer and Babcia Bread Recipe
Recipe: Click here
Babcia means “grandmother” in Polish and is a word used consistently throughout this book. When I came across this recipe, I knew I had to make it. I wasn’t sure if this recipe would work but it did!
Now for the book…
Yesterday, I was at the doctor’s office for a check up. I was reading this book when the doctor walked in. She asked what I was reading. I showed her the book and told her it was a little slow. Well, “slow” didn’t last long because I stayed up until 12:30am to finish the book…literally read over half the book in one day!
During the quarantine and online school, I had a ninth grader email me about some work. He then told me he knew how much I loved to read and thought I would like this book that he read. I put it on my “wish list” but didn’t think much about it until I was needing something to read. I checked several “top sellers” lists and this book popped up on several.
I cannot say enough how beautifully written this story is! I thought it was going to be a cheesy read, hence the slow start, but the beginning is building the characters for the rest of the novel. There are two aspects the reader can take away from this book: 1) family histories that are sometimes “unknown” because of loved ones not wanting to “go there” and share past experiences and 2) a glimpse into the life of a family with an autistic, nonverbal child and the struggles not only in everyday life but the pressures placed on marriages. The novel goes back and forth from past to present, building the story until the very end (you really can’t figure out anything until the end). It is very similar to Kate Mortan’s books (whom I just LOVE)! I don’t see how anyone can read this novel and not be left contemplating on everything that happened! It is truly one of those books!
I haven’t cried in a novel in a very long time but I did towards the end of this one. It mirrors so much of my own family’s history. If you have read any of my previous blogs concerning WW2 books, you should know that I desire to know more about my grandmother’s life, as a young child, in WW2 Germany. Since she is no longer with us, there is no one to ask so I read and read and read. Here is an excerpt from the novel that stood out the most to me and sums up my feelings about not talking to my grandmother more when she was alive:
“I’m suddenly thinking again about Babcia and Pa’s inability to share their stories from their lives here, and wondering about all the things they surely must have seen and experienced that I will never know about now, no matter how well this trip goes. What happens when stories like theirs are lost? What happens when there’s no one left to pass your experience on to, or you just can’t bring yourself to share it? Not for the first time, I wish just once when I asked my grandmother about the war, instead of her telling me ‘that was a terrible time, I don’t want to talk about it,’ she’d been able to say something more. Anything more. Maybe if she could have shared some of her story, I could have learned from it, I could have taught my children from it – we could have built a better world from the hard lessons she surely learned.”
Teddy Roosevelt said, “The more you know about the past, the better prepared you are for the future.” As Rimmer states in the novel, “it cost our ancestors too damned much for us to have this life – the best thing we can do to honor them is to live it to the fullest.”
