And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer

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Among Grandpa’s dwindling memories are those of his son Ted’s childhood and the little time he spent with him as a child. Regret and sadness dance in circles around Grandpa as he barely recognizes his own son, and sees him more a a child Noah’s age than the man he’s become. Ted too has regrets, for not having the chance to really know the father who was always too busy to spare him much attention, the father who now barely remembers him at all.

That’s why we get the chance to spoil our grandchildren, because by doing that we’re apologizing to our children.” The writing is simply gorgeous, and so full of heartfelt emotions, I can’t fathom anyone making it to the end of this story with dry eyes…. My own father was diagnosed with it 2 years ago. It has been difficult to watch the progression of the disease as his recognition of me has gone from hi how are you and a laugh, to a wave and a smile, to eyebrows lifting as if to say, hey, I know you! to a vacant look - so far from the man he once was.Where does And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far? Who IS this he? Exactly which he are we talking about? Are there two or three guys in some scenes? Too many pronouns! The abundance of pronouns took me out of the story as I scrambled to figure out who’s who, all the while damming the tears that might have been tempted to flow.

Mathematics is a bonding experience for Noah and his grandfather. What is it about math that they find so appealing? How does Ted’s preference for words over numbers prevent him from connecting with his father? Do you think that the same thing will prevent Ted and Noah from forming a close relationship in the future? Why or why not? Even though Noah’s grandmother passed away before the start of the book, her presence is very much felt throughout the story. How do you think the story would have changed if she were still alive and an active participant in the story, a witness to her husband’s deteriorating mental state? Since the blurb itself says enough to inspire a choice-to-read .... ( but oh, there are gorgeous sentences filled with wisdom one after another).... I understand if this kind of story is just something that does not resonate with you… BUT IT DID FOR ME and that’s what matters because I am still emotional. I went crazy with the annotations because I just could not get over how close this story felt to the author and in turn, me. One of my idols once said, The worst part about growing old is that I don’t get any ideas anymore. Those words have never quite left me since I first heard them, because this would be my greatest fear: imagination giving up before the body does. I guess I’m not alone in this. Humans are a strange breed in the way our fear of getting old seems to be even greater than our fear of dying.

While many other books which dealt with Grandparents' death.....Let's just say it was not dealt with properly I never meant for you to read it, to be quite honest. I wrote it just because I was trying to sort out my own thoughts, and I’m the kind of person who needs to see what I’m thinking on paper to make sense of it. But it turned into a small tale of how I’m dealing with slowly losing the greatest minds I know, about missing someone who is still here, and how I wanted to explain it all to my children. I’m letting it go now, for what it’s worth. i failed. im crying again. it’s the way they just love and accept each other. and it was conveyed with so little words. i know that the way home is getting longer and longer every morning. but i loved you because your brain, your world, was always bigger than everyone else’s. there’s still a lot of it left.”

This reading group guide for And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer includes an introduction, discussion questions, and ideas for enhancing your book club. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book. The narrator was perfect. I suppose the grandson Noah was my favorite, but it was because he embodied the spirit of his grandfather. One of them is getting bigger and one of them is getting smaller, the years allow them to meet in the middle." I also loved how much his late wife was still present in his brain. His whole life was so influenced by her that even now he has her voice in his head, and he still consults her about how to explain things to Noah or remember something important. Even when everything else is failing, she’s still there for him. What was one of the most memorable moments of And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer?

Noah holds the old man's hand, the man who taught him to fish and to never be afraid of big thoughts and to look at the night's sky and understand that it's made of numbers. Mathematics has blessed the boy in that sense, because he's no longer afraid of the thing almost everyone else is terrified of: infinity. Noah loves space because it never ends. It never dies. It's the one thing in his life which won't ever leave him." Isn’t that the best of all life’s ages, an old man thinks as he looks at his grandchild, when a boy is just big enough to know how the world works but still young enough to refuse to accept it.”

Some books should come with instructions, this is one of them. Here's my instructions to you: Plan on crying. Have tissues handy. I’m thinking (sometimes with confidence, sometimes not) that we’re supposed to just imagine these physical changes in location while we remain in grandpa’s head, but that’s hard for me. And here is where they will learn to say goodbye, the scent of hyacinths in the air, nothing to fear.

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Actually it’s so short that reviewing it feels weird - like if I write a couple more paragraphs my word count will probably exceed the text, although that likely wouldn’t be the first time #longwinded - but nobody besides possibly Riri or Fred is reading anyway, so. There's a hospital room at the end of a life where someone, right in the middle of the floor, has pitched a green tent. A person wakes up inside it, breathless and afraid, not knowing where he is. A young man sitting next to him whispers: