Barbara Lloyd McMichael

Second Wind – Cami Ostman
Seal Press – 300 pp - $16.95

Hot Flash! – Pamela Hastings
www.pamelahastings.com – 168 pp - $25

Getting older is not for sissies, as anyone in even their middling years can tell you. Despite all the valuable experiences we acquire with every passing year, there’s ever more to learn. It’s a humbling, thrilling, rewarding and occasionally exhausting proposition!

 

Two new books show two very different ways of taking that on. One author creates dolls, another runs marathons – and each shares her experiences in very personal stories.

 

“Second Wind” is Cami Ostman’s tale. A Bellingham-based marriage and family therapist, Ostman was having a personal identity crisis of her own a few years back when she laced on a pair of running shoes and started logging some miles.

 

What started out as a way to take her mind off her personal problems began to change into something else. A born-again Christian who was beginning to question her faith, Ostman found running to be freeing, “like a prayer, but without a specific petition.”

 

As she increased her distances, she began contemplating the possibility of running a marathon. And as she trained for her first race, she realized that marathons are “the perfect metaphor for living life with the long run in mind.”

 

Taking on that challenge empowered her to dream bigger, and eventually she decided to run seven marathons on seven continents.

 

“Second Wind” is about that quest. Ostman shares the messiness and the failures and the blister-burnished triumphs. From Prague to Panama, she talks about what it’s like to battle querulous emotions and physical fatigue, and to tap into resilience she didn’t know she had, even as the negative voices in her head compete for primacy. (As a former long distance runner myself, I can attest to those pernicious voices!)

 

“Second Wind” is written with wit and humility. Ostman may tend toward the back of the running pack, but she meets such interesting people along the way!

 

This was an inspiring book to read.

 

Port Angeles artist Pamela Hastings has devised another way to tackle insecurities and infirmities. “Hot Flash!” is her latest book that deals head on with the circumstances of menopause.

 

Hastings has collected musings and artworks (primarily handcrafted dolls) from women all over the country. The book’s organization is intentionally non-linear – a little too random for my taste (and sprinkled with typos, to boot), but I appreciate Hastings’ explanation that she was trying to create the feeling of women sharing confidences “like the stories told around a late-night bottle of wine.”

 

There are stories of struggle, heart-rending loss and hard-won wisdom in these pages, and there’s also great advice such as “cleaning is among the first of the expendables” and “every woman who is considering cashing in her IRA to spend on a face lift should be forced to watch a timeline video of Michael Jackson on a 24-hour loop for three days nonstop.”

 

The artworks – especially the one-of-a-kind dolls – are dazzling and audacious.

 

“Hot Flash!” is an invitation to celebrate.

The Bookmonger is Barbara Lloyd McMichael, who writes this weekly column focusing on the books, authors and publishers of the Pacific Northwest. Contact her at bkmonger@nwlink.com.