Book Review: "Sweet Summer" - Bittersweet

Rarely has the turning of the years felt as welcoming as in Sweet Summer: Growing Up With and Without My Dad.  Bebe Moore Campbell's poignant memoir about her life from the 1950's through the 1970's, was penned more than a dozen years ago, but holds the same ageless truths, wonders, and questions of many childhoods. But it is Moore's chameleon like talent for capturing and expressing the personalities and emotions-the very hearts and souls- of a kaleidoscope of characters that distinguishes this memoir apart from many others I have read. Reading this book is is like watching Madame Tussaud's wax figures suddenly open their mouths, complain about their appearance, and invite you to coffee.

Moore lingers over her childhood years, breathing life into her younger self as an artist slowly saturates a canvas with color and emotion. Emotion by emotion, Bebe the 7 year old emerges and miraculously grows up right in front of you. She doesn't paper over her thoughts and actions, as some memoirs do, or attempt to interpret her life with a maze of psychological wisdom in some vain attempt to renovate or reinvent herself as heroic from cradle to grave.

As a 7 year old shuttled between her mother in North Philly and her father in Nowherespecial, North Carolina, Moore brilliantly explains the excitement and toil of her annual summer treks using the simple language and reactions of a child. The passing of the years reveals family angst, personal pride, self-doubt and the stresses many children of divorce of required to carry. Puberty brings on the requisite waves of teen anger and disillusionment from not having a "normal" life.

There are no judgments from Moore. Her beloved father is not suddenly memorialized as perfect nor are the numerous personas that pass in and out of her life over a 20 year period.

The purpose of Moore's book was to describe life as her father's pet, even while clinging to false hopes of her parents reconciliation and adopting surrogate fathers through her growing up years, taking the form of male relatives, neighbors, and acquaintances. While some critics have pointed out that Moore is obviously using her life as a comparison for the many Black children growing up without their fathers, Moore advances her point, not through social moralizing, but by explaining when she missed her father most.  Recitals, after school, as a daily balance of fun to her mother's ambitions.

Moore's father, paralyzed for many years before his tragic death, is in many ways, the ideal father. He is there when he is most needed, not wanted. He is the "provider" of an era gone by, ensuring his child has all the necessities: a strong family connection, and a way to contact him at all times.

Moore's memories raised many of my own from the grave of childhood long past. I wondered what I would find myself recalling in my 40's or 50's. What memories or absences will stand out? Who will emerge as the heroes and the villains? How will I be remembered and who will do the remembering? It will be quite impossible for you to read this book without musing over such sobering thoughts yourself.

Reluctantly, the only flaw I discovered in this remarkably human autobiography was the final page, which reads like a self-assessment or the many tests that Moore excelled at as a child. She clearly felt the need to record a "passing" grade. As if to say, "I did it. I made it through life even with only partial access to my father." For the emotional reader, such as I am, it was a clinical ending to an otherwise engaging and honest book.

You will smile, laugh, cry, get angry, wonder why, and hope for the best, just as Moore did for those in her life. You will rush to judgment and then repent. You will blame your parents and then, overwhelmed by remorse, suddenly crave their touch, even when it is beyond all earthly power to get one.

Ms. Moore was laid to rest almost 5 years ago, having succumbed to the inscrutable and relentless great equalizer at the age of 56- long before the literary world was ready to do without her. I purchased this book last year and put it on my bookshelf until now. I knew I would read it at the right time and in a reflective mindset.

I stand at my own crossroads-Ms. Moore has long crossed over into an endless summer. And you, will you dare to cross this threshold at all?