Grandma Alaska

One of my favorite books is called The Big Love by Sarah Dunn. The December I spent in Utah trying to muster enough strength to begin to make a decision about what would be good for me, rather than what would be good for Yuval, Abbie and I went down to Southern Utah. She had just finished reading this book and handed it off to me as a light, chick-lit read. I ended up laughing out loud, and Abbie would ask, "Oh, which part are you reading?" and I'd read her the page or the paragraph. After a dozen times of this happening, I just ended up reading the entire book out loud to her.

The protagonist is a formerly-religious young woman discovering dating and love as a newly non-religious, completely neurotic adult. What I loved about this protagonist is that she was so similar to me and what I loved about the book is that it read like sitting down and having a series of long talks with a close friend, or soon to be close friend.

One of the elements of the book that I related to entirely and had never heard expressed in writing was the Grandma Alaska dilemma. In the book, the protagonist finally sleeps with the man of her fantasies, but instead of actually describing the scene, she steps away from the action and apologizes. She explains that Grandma Alaska is her religious grandma, whose name, by the way, is not actually Alaska, and that Grandma Alaska will read this book and be so proud of her granddaughter for having written it. She knows that if she wrote a sex scene into the book, Grandma Alaska would clearly read it and she can't write about having sex knowing that Grandma Alaska will read it, and so, as long as Grandma Alaska is alive, there will be no sex scenes to speak of and the reader is just going to have to imagine one for herself.

My response to this is two-fold. First, I think, you have got to be kidding me! You are an adult and a writer and you need to get over Grandma Alaska and actually write. How can an artist limit themselves and their work like that? That seems weak and rather shameful. The other part of me wants to slap the author on the back and say, "You too? Man, I dream about writing a book, but the only way I can imagine doing that is as a "novel" with a pen name. I mean, what would my aunt Jaydene who spends all her time doing genealogy for the Mormon church and researching religious composers say if I wrote how I really talk, let alone how I really think? She's so sweet, she'd buy a copy of my book to support me and then have to remove it from her house as inappropriate reading material. I mean, I don't think she's seen a Rated-R movie in her life."

I don't know how to handle my own Grandma Alaska dilemma. I do dream of writing a novel, but it does seem so frightening to put my wholly improper self down in words. I don't know if I could stop worrying about Grandma Alaska.