We hunt for treasure in two ways, as a quest for a bounty that will free us from the hassles and concerns of daily life, and as a quest to find what we have been dearly missing. Sandra Miller, we discover in this deeply textured, richly woven, memoir is subject to both impulses. Though deeply in need of the warm and loving family life she has fashioned, we find her discontent with her roles as mom and wife, feeling a potent desire to be free of their encumbrances even as she relishes the familial embrace that she did not know as a child. Miller wants to bolt, and she wants to stay, and the pursuit of treasure holds these conflicting impulses in uneasy balance.
Miller also has been a life-long seeker, missing something deep since she was very young, and on the lookout always for the treasure that might fill this aching hole. So she becomes an adept at spotting the stray bauble, the small lost gem waiting on the street just for her--a treasure to be found in the stream of things. And from these small gifts of magic, she gathers a trove that grows and travels with her as she winds through a life both discovered and self-made.
Sandra's search for treasure is both literal and metaphoric, a hunt for a chest with ten thousand coins with her hunting partner, an almost parodic expression of male logic directed at the nearly chimerical, balancing her temporary release from quotidian responsibility into her pure, yet somewhat clumsy, expression of the feminine intuitive, and a journey into what remains after profound and damaging loss. Miller, a master writer, braids the Brooklyn based treasure hunt, family history, the pending loss of her mother and the finding of self in tender, wry and surprising ways. She inspires, irritates and amuses, offering the rare gift of letting us get to know and to love her in all her modes and incarnations--a wry and tender memoir, so worth the read.
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Thoroughly engaging on many levels.
I loved this multi-layered memoir of Sandra Miller. I was immediately caught up with the idea of treasure hunting for physical as well as spiritual and emotional treasures. I have sea glass from decades ago. Many of Miller's lines are small treasures to hold as she explores her inner turmoil about longings for connection that started in childhood and pulled her across the globe, and later in life, temporarily away from her husband's loving arms. Her relationship with her parents is painful to read about, yet at times, tender and humorous. Miller writes with brave honesty and clarity about her mother. I felt like I was there with Miller eating pizza with her mom and desperately yearning to hear the right words. This memoir deftly explores our need for love and connection, the unique way others express love, and what, finally, is enough.
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