The Possibility of Everything by Hope Edelman

The Possibility of Everything
by Hope Edelman
Pub. Date: September 2009
Genre: Non-Fiction, Memoir
352pp

Synopsis:
In the autumn of 2000, Hope Edelman was a woman adrift, questioning her marriage, her profession, and her place in the larger world. Feeling vulnerable and isolated, she was primed for change. Into her stagnant routine dropped Dodo, her three-year-old daughter Maya’s curiously disruptive imaginary friend. Confused and worried about how to handle Dodo’s apparent hold on their daughter, Edelman and her husband made the unlikely choice to take her to Maya healers in Belize, hoping that a shaman might help them banish Dodo–and, as they came to understand, all he represented–from their lives.

Why I Picked It:
I got this as an Advanced Reader Copy through Library Thing. (Yay!! That was SO exciting!!!) As usual, I went down the list of early reader copies available last month, and requested about 15. I was thrilled to find out I had been chosen for one, and then I waited... It came a few weeks later, just as I was finishing Firefly Lane. I almost didn't finish Firefly Lane after reading the first page of this one.

My Review:
The first paragraph in the introduction hooked me. It was after reading this paragraph that I turned the book over to read the synopsis that I added above. I am sure that when I requested it, I read the synopsis, but I was immediately... disappointed. The way the first paragraph was written, I was sure the author's daughter had some horrendous fatal disease. But a case of the croup and an imaginary friend? Really?

Anyway, I picked the book back up and continued to read. The following pages unfolded into an honest, forthcoming, sometimes tedious journaling of the author's life as a married woman and mother of a 3 year old. She reveals her imperfections and struggle to stay connected with a husband who was rarely around, feeling misplaced in her own home by the nanny she hired so she could write. Regardless, as I grew to know the author, she is a woman whom I found in some ways similar to myself, only with a much better knack for arranging words.

Maya, age 3, has suddenly developed a friendship with a not-so-nice imaginary friend named Dodo. She says there are many Dodo's, some good and some bad, and her Dodo is a bad one. Also, he apparently lives in the toilet. Maya begins to have some aggressive episodes - hitting, yelling, and then saying that Dodo made her do it. Hope Edelman and her husband Uzi decide a family vacation is needed so they book a trip to Belize. To add to the Dodo issues, Maya comes down with the croup days before their trip, but they decide to go anyway. The book is essentially the tale of 5 days journey and exploration in Belize, with a shaman or two thrown in for good measure.

The letter from the publisher that was enclosed with this advanced reader copy entreated me to suspend my disbelief for a while. It also should have told me to stop thinking how I would've handled the situation, and just go with it.

I truly enjoyed the parts of the story that were focused on their family dynamic, their interactions with the other travelers, and felt very voyeuristic in reading what felt like the pages of someone's personal journal. The interspersed historic details about the Maya calendar, the stars, the Maya kings, etc. were sometimes very dry and I would skim over them. I know the author was trying to make a bridge between her story of her family's struggle and the culture they were traveling within.

Hope Edelman is a complicated, introspective and firmly grounded woman trying her best to juggle the roles of loving wife, mother, and working author. That was clear. Her own struggle accepting and having faith in the shaman's recommendations to "cure" her daughter made it an easier, more believable read for me. Instead of attributing faith to something specific, she expounded upon her belief in the "possibility of everything." I actually appreciated and enjoyed reading her viewpoint on that and also her description of herself as a mother who does things to insure the success of her child instead of being one who trusts their child will naturally be a success.

Here are my problems with the story (and right about here I should add a Spoiler Alert): Croup is something that works it's way out of a system in a few days. That Maya magically was healed during their trip doesn't make me think that the shaman's cream was a wondrous cure. It makes me believe that the croup worked its way out of little Maya's system. That Maya found an imaginary friend right around the time that her dad started working long hours and her mom started feeling frustrated and irritated that her husband working long hours, doesn't make me think that she had an evil spirit attached to her. It makes me believe that she found something to gain a little more attention from temporarily detached parents. And Maya suddenly losing interest in Dodo while they were in Belize doesn't make me think that the bath in marigolds and rose petals cured her. It makes me think that the uninterrupted time with her parents was the best Christmas gift they could have given her.

Oh yeah, whoopsie, I'm supposed to "suspend disbelief". Another thing I loved: while they were on a tour of the Mayan ruins, every time the tour guide would say "Maya", little Maya got really angry. That was so perfectly 3!

Ultimately, I enjoyed this book enough to find time to read it. I wanted to know what happened next whether or not I bought into the premise. Mostly, I found I wanted to read the author's earlier memoirs about losing her mother at an early age. Even in this memoir, being a motherless daughter is something that clearly haunts her every single day, and I wonder how much that loss contributed to her exploration of any avenue -- spiritual or otherwise -- to ensure she is being the best mother to her own daughter.