These Precious Days: Essays

“…both men were central in my life: my father wanting me to be more like him, my stepfather wanting to be more like me.”

Patchett explores the relationships with her father and stepfathers in “Three Fathers.” Her biological father, Frank, and her stepfather, Mike, were particularly influential in her life as she was growing up. Patchett understands that Frank’s lack of support for her writing and Mike’s blind encouragement of it are born out of both men’s respective worldviews and personal desires. They present opposing but complementary and necessary forces in Patchett’s journey to becoming a writer.

“Her parents then invited me for the next two Thanksgivings as well, and they invited me long after we had graduated because I made excellent gravy and they had never learned how. […] And I never taught them because I loved them. I wanted to be invited back.”

After the first Thanksgiving in college that Patchett spends away from loved ones, she receives recurring invitations to her friend Erica’s home every year. Despite the success of the meal she cooks and hosts in that first year, Patchett enjoys celebrating with Erica’s family far more. The essay displays Patchett’s characteristic mix of self-reliance and need for community: She pulls off a solo Thanksgiving successfully and without complaint, but deeply cherishes time spent with loved ones. This calls to the theme of The Value of Relationships and Community.

“We were never able to keep each other from making bad decisions, not completely, but at least when we made those bad decisions, we were together.”

Patchett reflects on her relationship with her friend Marti in “The Paris Tattoo.” Through the anecdote of traveling through Europe and the different kinds of tattoos the girls see, Patchett demonstrates the importance of Marti’s presence in her life. Rather than focus on the scrapes they get into, Patchett is grateful for the company and support of her friend, calling to the theme of The Value of Relationships and Community.

“The things we buy and buy and buy are like a thick coat of Vaseline smeared on glass: we can see some shapes out there, light and dark, but in our constant craving for what we may still want, we miss too many of life’s details.”

When Patchett gives up shopping for a year, she realizes how burdensome material possessions can truly be in the context of appreciating the more important things in life. This is a recurrent idea across multiple essays and is explored in the theme of Life, Death, and Letting Go.

“I find it shocking to realize how simple it would be to see myself as a worthless servant, to find joy in the service of others, to open my heart and let it remain open to everyone, everyone, all the time. The trick is in the decision to wake up every morning and meet the world again with love.”

Patchett is awed and moved by the life of service that Strobel lives. She recognizes that anyone can do so if one makes a conscious choice. This highlights Patchett’s personal worldview, in which she prioritizes the ideal of service and appreciates self-reliance and agency. It also explains Patchett’s recurring attempts to practice similar values in her own life, whether through purging material possessions, attempting to give back to the community through the bookstore she opens, or welcoming a constant stream of houseguests into her heart and home.

“This was the practice: I was starting to get rid of my possessions, […] because possessions stood between me and death. They […] created a barrier in my understanding, […] so that instead of thinking about what was coming and the beauty that was here now, I was thinking about the piles of shiny trinkets I’d accumulated.”

Following her friend Tavia’s father’s death, Patchett begins to declutter her possessions. She chances upon the same realization she did in “My Year of No Shopping”—that the constant accumulation of material possessions takes the focus away from the important things in one’s life. Letting go of things to appreciate better what one already has is a recurrent idea explored in the theme of Life, Death, and Letting Go.

“Snoopy wasn’t just my role model, he was my dream dog. Because he had an inner life, I ascribed an inner life to all the dogs I knew, and they proved me right. I have lived with many dogs I considered to be my equals, and a couple I knew to be my betters. The times I’ve lived without a dog, the world has not been right, as if the days were out of balance.”

Patchett describes how Snoopy the dog from the Peanuts comics was an important literary influence in her life. Though a comparatively light-hearted piece, it nevertheless provides an insight into Patchett’s character; this passage, in particular, highlights Patchett’s deep love of dogs and partially explains why the book jacket sports the painting of a dog.

“This is why we have to go back, because even as the text stays completely true to the writer’s intention, we readers never cease to change. If you’ve read these stories before, I beg you, read them again. Chances are you’ll find them to be completely new.”

Patchett reflects on the idea presented by Eudora Welty in her foreword to Virginia Woolf’s work—that good, original work offers new meaning to its readers with each reading. Patchett has seen the merit of this in her own life, coincidentally with Welty’s writing itself. As much as she is a writer, Patchett is also an avid and involved reader; this passage displays Patchett’s unwavering enthusiasm for and engagement with literature, seen across multiple other essays as well.

“What I understood was that there was no keeping anyone safe […] and, in the end, it […] will be life and time, the things that come for us all.”

Patchett accidentally forgets to latch the door in a plane her husband is flying, putting them both in danger and forcing him to make an emergency landing. On the heels of everything she does to ensure Karl flies in the safest possible conditions, this leads her to realize that certain things about life and death are entirely out of her control. Mishaps happen constantly, and there is no way to prepare for every outcome. This quote points to the theme of Life, Death, and Letting Go.

“Sometimes I think I’ll take it apart and make something more practical, two smaller scarves, but then I think about all the people this scarf has to hold […] and all of our collective love and hope and disappointment. When I think about it that way, I’m amazed I was able to knit it all in.”

Patchett reflects on the important role knitting has played in her life. Though she indicates in the title that it is the act of knitting that saved her life twice, first helping her quit smoking and then helping her cope with the grief of a friend’s death, the conclusion of the essay indicates that the people associated with knitting are more important than the craft itself. The scarf that Patchett knits after Lucy’s death symbolizes all these important relationships in her life and points to the theme of The Value of Relationships and Community.

“…of all the myriad and conflicting words I could use to describe Tavia, lucky isn’t one of them. At every turn, happiness was her decision.”

Patchett profiles her close friend, Tavia, and their relationships. Patchett’s admiration of Tavia’s approach to life, where she chooses to be happy despite her circumstances, is consistent with Patchett’s general attitude. She admires and values self-reliance and the willingness to remain loving and open-minded despite life’s trials and tribulations. Patchett displays these same traits in the many positive reflections she gleaned from her difficult experiences across these essays.

“To have a child and neglect her in favor of a novel would be cruel, but to simply skip the child in favor of a novel was to avoid harm altogether.”

Patchett’s choice not to have children is greatly influenced by her need to write, among other things. Though Patchett also acknowledges her immediate family’s unwavering support for this decision all her life, the realization that she does not have the energy to both write books and raise a child cements this decision. Writing is such an essential part of who she is that she cannot compromise on it. This quote points to the theme of Writing as Essential to Identity.

“‘We had been in such a rush and then we were in no rush at all, proving that we were impetuous and prudent in the extreme. Proving that we were in love, and that the trip was worth waiting for.”

A serendipitously postponed trip to Vienna leads to Patchett realizing how right her relationship with Karl is. They travel together after having known each other briefly and eventually get married more than a decade later. This eventual outcome is foreshadowed by the sense of rightness Patchett feels with Karl, largely because she discovers that more important than following any set route is enjoying the journey with Karl, wherever it takes them. The “impetuousness” of their decision to travel together so early into their relationship is tempered by the ease they feel with each other, proving to Patchett that they are well and truly in love.

“For as many times as the horrible thing happens, a thousand times in every day the horrible thing passes us by. […] We’ll never know how close we came to annihilation, but today I saw it—everything I had and stood to lose and did not lose.”

A health scare that Karl experiences leads Patchett to realize everything she stands to lose without him. This realization brings about a greater clarity and appreciation of the important things in life, filling Patchett with a sense of gratitude. The closeness of death bringing about this kind of realization is a recurrent idea in the book and features prominently in the title piece as well.

“The drawer where everything from the past was crammed turned out to contain equal measures of darkness and light […]. I wonder how I had ever slept beside such luminous furniture.”

Upon confronting the evidence of her past—as presented in the writing Patchett stores in nightstands over the years that eventually finds its way back to her—Patchett comes to see that the past contained a fairly equal amount of joy and suffering. Characteristically, Patchett appreciates this as a fact of life and decides to treat the past with more tenderness going forward.

“We are social creatures. Even the introverted readers, the silent writers, want a place where they feel welcomed and understood. I had wanted that once, and now I can give it to others. That’s how I’ve wound up putting my degree to work.”

In a talk delivered at Nashville, Patchett reflects on how she applied the learnings from her MFA experience to her life’s work. Rather than talk about the impact on her writing, however, Patchett emphasizes the work she is able to do through Parnassus, the bookstore she founded. Patchett’s estimation of Parnassus as having greater impact on the culture and community than her writing highlights the theme of The Value of Relationships and Community.

“‘Never judge a book by its cover’ is a good way of saying that people shouldn’t be evaluated on the basis of looks alone, but the adage doesn’t apply to actual books. Where books are concerned, covers are what we have to go on.”

Patchett explores her evolving relationship with cover art in “Cover Stories.” Over time, and with her work at Parnassus, she realizes there is value in every aspect of a book, not just the content: From the typeface to the kind of paper it is printed on and most definitely its cover, her understanding is reflected in this passage.

“That’s what I got from these books, the ability to walk through the door where everything I thought had been lost was in fact waiting for me. The trick was being brave enough to look. The books had given me that bravery, which is another way of saying the ability to believe.”

Patchett reads Kate DiCamillo’s work for the first time as an adult and is blown away. Upon reading The Magician's Elephant, she has a particularly moving experience, and this passage describes what Patchett takes away from DiCamillo’s work. Besides displaying the intense power of literature, it also presents Patchett as a reader and lover of books, alongside being a writer.

“‘You look so much alike,’ the nurse would say quietly, not wanting to disturb us more than we were already disturbed.

‘Like sisters?’ I asked.

She shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Like the same person.’”

In “Sisters,” Patchett describes how she and her mother are constantly mistaken for sisters owing to their similarity in appearance. As Patchett grows up, she displays a different personality and mannerisms than her mother, professing an understanding that she and her mother are fairly dissimilar. However, Patchett loves her mother deeply and knows that they share some things elementally. She even seems to acknowledge that they are more similar than Patchett herself allows for in this passage that concludes the essay.

“The price of living with a writer was that eventually she would write about you. I was taking in every precious day.”

Even while Patchett watches her newfound friendship with Sooki unfold, Patchett knows she will write about her one day. This passage points to two things: firstly, the inextricability of writing from the person Patchett is and how she constantly uses it to process her life experiences; secondly, the use of the phrase “precious day(s),” which is a recurring motif in the book.

“As it turned out, Sooki and I needed the same thing: to find someone who could see us as our best and most complete selves. Astonishing to come across such a friendship at this point in life. At any point in life.”

Unlike all the other important relationships in Patchett’s life, her friendship with Sooki develops fairly late in both women’s lives—late into their middle age. This distinguishes the relationship, as both women are able to meet and see each other as their “best and most complete selves,” devoid of the baggage of the past. This, perhaps, is what makes Sooki’s friendship such an impactful and meaningful one to Patchett.

“People love to ask writers about their influences. […] as a writer I am first and foremost my father’s daughter. I didn’t operate out of a desire to please him so much as a desire not to offend him, and the truth is that the constraints did my work little harm."

Patchett credits her father as one of her most important influences, literary and otherwise. Frank’s “moral code” inadvertently influences Patchett’s thinking and writing and points to the theme of Writing as Essential to Identity.

“The human impulse is to look for order, but there isn’t any. People come and go.”

Patchett reflects on the lack of order in how and when people die, prompted by a visit to the portrait gallery of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. This reflection mirrors the situation of the early months of the coronavirus pandemic and perhaps is influenced by this context: people dying indiscriminately, young and old, with no rhyme or reason regarding the presentation or severity of symptoms in different people.