WTR: Happens Every Day by Isabel Gillies

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WTR (What’s Toby Reading)? provides unsolicited and unsponsored (I don’t get paid) opinions of books I have recently finished.

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I was in a hurry to grab-and-go at the library. After all, my daughter’s school was set to dismiss and I did not want to be late (again). So, off to the memoirs section I went as if on a mission.

Without much thought – other than the apparent page length – I grabbed Isabel Gillies Happens Every Day and darted toward the checkout.

If I’d taken the time to read the summary, I’d probably have passed on checking it out.

The book, you see, was about the falling apart of a fairytale life through an unexpected divorce. As a nineteen year veteran of a married I cherish, that plot would not normally have captured by attention. I’m glad that I was in a hurry, though., because I did close the book with a feeling of gratitude for the life I have.

Isabel Gillies is a successful actress and native New Yorker who falls in love with a professor of poetry named Josiah. The couple is smitten, falls in love seemingly effortlessly, and settles in suburban Cleveland, Ohio as a result of Josiah’s teaching position at Oberlin College. Moving to the Midwest with reservations for the life she was leaving behind, Isabel describes her growing to love the quaint, college town and the life the family of four began to build there.

The storybook feel of the book begins to hit crumble when a new, younger, attractive female professor accepts a position alongside Josiah in the English Department of Oberlin, named Sylvia.

Sylvia and Isabel were fast friends. Isabel took it upon herself to help Sylvia assimilate into the slower pace she’d become accustomed to. Sylvia’s husband had stayed behind in New York – a fact that, cruelly, brought the two friends together and, later, tore them apart.

Happen Every Day, in fact, is named after something Sylvia told Isabel during a movie they saw together. This phrase was Sylvia’s cold response to Isabel’s plead for her to leave Josiah alone so that her family could remain intact. Sylvia’s somber response, the title of the book, eludes to the expected outcome – Isabel and Josiah were abruptly divorced as a result of the attraction of Josiah and Sylvia.

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While the first half of the book walks through their marriage, the second half of the book centers on Isabel daily fight to move forward. The reader strolls through fits of rage, bouts of sadness, documents how to be a parent during a divorce, and, ultimately, how to rebuild.

Throughout the book, I thought about my marriage and that of my parents. I thought about the times when things are bad, and when they couldn’t seem to get any better. Most of all, I thought about the overwhelming work that marriage, love, and parenting takes – and the seconds it might take to dismantle.

I thought about the people we become after living through struggle. I felt oddly proud of Isabel Gillies for rebuilding a great life and, eventually, reconciling with her ex-husband and Sylvia (Josiah’s future wife). I felt compelled to tell my wife how much I love what we have.

I should make sure that me saying that phrase to her Happens Every Day.