Things to Read - Displacement, A Travelogue

I'm not usually a fan of graphic novels (though my kids all love them), for me it seems somewhat odd to try to immerse yourself in a plot while looking at pictures, too much multi-tasking. But after A Cup of Jo gave Lucy Knisley's Displacement a wonderful write-up, I decided to check it out.

And now I'm a little enamored with this book/novel/short story, in which the 20-something narrator/author goes on a cruise with her elderly grandparents. The book confronts a lot of subjects that society chooses to shy away from (i.e. Grandpa peeing his pants), yet it does so in a way that seems raw and personal. Never flippant. Never overly dramatic.

Modern media spends so much time and energy chronicling the complexities of life with kids (okay, so maybe not THAT much time and energy, but still, based on my facebook feed, it seems like this is all Huffpost Parents ever writes about). Displacement brings out that dealing with the aging is also full of moments of frustration and unconditional love. Moments that are harder to talk about because of the possibility of offense.

Anyways, this was a sad novel, but not in a traditional way. My grandparents all died way before I reached my twenties, so we never had the chance to cruise together. Yet I still wish I would have spent more time with them in their later years. Even though, much like Displacement's narrator, I never knew quite what to talk with them about.