With Thanks to the Rolling Stones

You can't always get what you want. But if you try sometime, you just might find, you get what you need.

I don't often listen to rock music anymore, but I did back when this song was popular.

Composing a Life by Mary Catherine Bateson has been on my mental "to read" list for a long time. I finally requested it via Interlibrary loan. And a few weeks ago, just browsing through the fiction section of my local public library, I picked up (and have sinced finished reading) Open House by Elizabeth Berg. Coming on the heels of Eat, Pray, Love and Committed that's a lot of introspection. (I did, however, take a fun romp in the middle of the above quartet with Original Sin by Beth McMullen.)

I'm still digesting all of the ideas that have been swarming through my mind as I identify with segments of all of these other womens' stories and feeling how their resolutions might fit into my life.

In Committed Elizabeth Gilbert is faced with having to marry her Brazilian born lover so that he can travel freely to and from the United States. Since both had been through difficult divorces, they were reluctant to marry again. While they wait for the beaurocracy to grind through the process, Liz researched marriage by reading vociferously and also interviewing women in the countries they visited. I, too, was resistant to getting married and am still ambivalent about legalizing my relationship with my partner of 20 years. We did so, like Liz, for practical reasons.

Open House is the story of Samantha whose husband has left her for a younger woman. During her 15-year marriage, she devoted herself totally to being a wife and mother and is now faced with learning who she really is underneath those other rolls. I see the similarities in how I viewed my job which ended before I was ready to leave. I'm now exploring other options, while often wishing - like Samantha does about her marriage - that I were still at that job.

And Composing a Life delves into the lives of 5 women who have had to make changes as their circumstances took unexpected paths.

I hadn't planned to read all of these books together; it just kind of happened. But the confluence, while not something I specifically want, may turn out to be something I need.