My title is a quote from Jeannette Winterson's wonderful memoir "Why be Happy When you Could
be Normal?" She writes about her relationship with her adoptive mother, Mrs Winterson and her ultimately successful attempt to find her biological mother. It is also in my opinion, an extended love letter to her lover Susie Orbach, with whom she started a relationship as she was writing this book. She says in the memoir that in response to Susie's bestseller: "The Impossibility of Sex", (which she read before she met her), she had thought of writing a book called "The Possibility of Love." And this is partly what her book is about.
It made me think about the different ways we can express love and how the digital age gives us even more possibilities. About 30 years ago, Nancy Kline and Christopher Spence wrote "At Least a Hundred Principles of Love". Pity I didn't buy it when I could - probably a collector's item by now. I wonder whether attending the big events in one's family like weddings and important birthdays figured as a principle on their list? I somehow doubt it. But it certainly figures on the lists of some members of my immediate family! So when my brother who lives in London, recently celebrated an important birthday, it put me in a quandary I hadn't foreseen. My family knows me well enough and they excuse me when it comes to weddings (because I don't believe in marriage) or circumcisions (I boycott them!) but I can hardly muster a political objection to the birthday of a beloved brother. I spent a couple of days looking at flights and then my sister came up with a brilliant idea. We could collect memoirs and photos of my brother from family members and friends and compile a photobook as a surprise gift. It would be more lasting and memorable than turning up for a few days to attend a dinner and exchange a few pleasantries with cousins one hardly ever sees.
So I went into the organizing of this surprise with gusto. And my partner - who is a digital wiz - searched out photobooks online.
