Jeff Hobbs, the bestselling author of THE SHORT AND TRAGIC LIFE OF ROBERT PEACE, is back with a powerful portrayal of American homelessness. SEEKING SHELTER, which releases on February 4th, follows a single mother of six in Los Angeles courageously struggling to keep her family together and her children in school amidst the devastating housing crisis. For many years, Jeff and his family have enjoyed Christmas Day gatherings with the mother of one of their best friends, whom they affectionately call “Nonny.” Nonny’s most recent Christmas present to Jeff was a book by Haruki Murakami, and neither the giver nor the recipient realized how just perfect this gift would be.
Originally, my wife assured me that we would be in Los Angeles, about 2,500 miles away from virtually all the people I loved in the world, for six months. Twenty years have since passed. This city is my children’s home but has never come to feel like my own. And while life is all right here (I surf in astonishing places and coach youth sports teams year round), one aspect of being a transplant that has amplified its persistent loneliness has to do with a social pattern by which new friend groups form --- through work circles, maybe, or preschool classes --- and everyone in the orbit quickly, breathlessly declares us all to be family. There’s nothing wrong with the draw of this language, our shared longing for relationships left far away, and the earnest attempt to conjure surrogates. But then, invariably, these tightly knit assemblages have all dispersed with the currents of life and child-rearing, undermining over and over the notion of the found family.
And yet: there is Nonny. She is not technically our Nonny, but rather the mother of one of our best friends here in California. When we met almost two decades ago, that was how I referred to her: “Aubrey’s Mom.” Then she became an acquaintance, and I called her “Barbara.” After a few more years had passed, I tentatively edged toward familiarity with “Barb.” When exactly “Nonny” came into play I can’t remember, but my kids must have taken to the moniker as toddlers out of a natural yearning for a nearby grandparental figure. I yearned for one, too.
Many years ago, pre-kids, we were unable to travel east for winter break due to something health-related. Nonny learned that we were stranded and invited us to her casual Christmas Day gathering: a cooler of drinks, a table of pick-at-whatever food, a Dutch oven of chili, NBA games in one room and conversation in the other. She gave me a book of puns: exactly the kind of present you give to an author you don’t know too well.
Since then, children in our two families have been born and raised to the verge of adulthood. Many weddings have happened along with a few funerals. Hundreds of meals have been shared. On Grandparents’ Day, Nonny has visited my kids’ classrooms in addition to her actual grandchildren’s. She’s advised us on school travails, financial planning and nutrition. When her wonderful husband passed, she gave me his dress shirts and blazers. My family has endured multiple epic travel delays in order to be present at her Christmas Day gatherings. At these gatherings, she still gives me predictably writerly books: anthologies of letters and quotations, literary jokes, essays, critiques.
Her most recent present --- after a year in which tremendous losses had coincided in both our families --- was Haruki Murakami’s NOVELIST AS A VOCATION. Nonny had no particular reason to recommend it; she had passed the title in her favorite store and thought it might be interesting for me. She was almost apologetic for the lack of intention. I set the book aside for a few months and only picked it up when I’d finished everything else in the bedside stack, an in-between kind of read. Somehow, with a power that extended dimensions beyond the book’s pleasantly self-deprecating, light-heartedly wise content, the author’s descriptions of writing, running and aging jabbed deep in me and stayed there. All told, I spent hours manually typing out long excerpts in order to email to loved ones, as well as a whole lot of money buying copies for my college writing students as graduation gifts. Full paragraphs still scroll through my memory at odd moments.
The perfect book gift occurs when the giver and the work itself comingle in one’s consciousness while reading. NOVELIST AS A VOCATION spans many passages in Murakami’s life, many layers of purpose and meaning. Nonny’s presence in mine does, too. Our first decade of having her as a fixture mostly revolved around energetic occasions of joy: births, elementary school talent shows and rec center hoops games, career markers and the like. More recently, we have mourned the deaths of some we love, our kids don’t care as much about what we think or say, and Nonny herself has been scaling down her responsibilities such that we might soon take over the hosting duty of her holiday party.
This is not to say that hope and joy are dwindling, just that they are pinned at the edges with the counterweight of an ever-increasing familiarity with loss. Something about the timing of this gift of Murakami, Nonny’s nonchalance, the wonderful and solid truth that we were both still here together exchanging books as life hammered onward --- these details amplified a new coalescing balance. The constancy with which I experience life’s messy passing through celebrations with this woman speaks to an enduring kindness that somehow, in small moments and exchanges, irons it all out. We are not related to Nonny, and she is not the type to wantonly declare that we are. Yet she has folded us into her constellation and treated us with love that perhaps is most tenderly encapsulated by the books we share.
