Not a book review. Really.

When I told a co-worker I was reading the best book I'd ever read, she asked me what it was about. "It's hard to explain," I said. "It's the fourth book in a science fiction series, so I'd have to tell you about all four books to explain what makes them so great."

When the series had been recommended to me, it had been from a friend of Michael's, an intellectual but obnoxious friend, so I placed it in the back of my mind, where I promptly forgot about it. About a year later, I saw it at a yard sale and purchased it on impulse. I set it aside, though, thinking that it didn't look like the kind of book I'd be interested in. Then one night, about a month ago, I came across the book again. This time, I checked on Wikipedia. That gave me a plot line and reviews, descriptions of the characters, publishing history. Facts that told me nothing. The reviews were all from people who had read the book (as they should be) but they weren't directed at people who had never read it (which is what I was looking for) and they weren't trying to talk me into reading it (which is, apparently, what I was really looking for). So I read it anyway.

It was good, but it wasn't great. What I liked most was not the plot, nor the characters, but the writing style of the author. I could see that, in its day, it would have been a new and radical concept. The first of its kind, in a way. But I found the story distasteful. The government, fighting a war, recruiting children, lying to them, taking them away from their families to go to "battle school", teaching them to fight. And the main character, a six-year-old named Andrew, "recruited" because he was intelligent, but also because he had beaten another boy to a bloody pulp.

When I went back and reread the wikipedia page, thinking that now, I had the context to digest the reviews, I saw that the author had many more titles. Some of them were sequels to this book. So I went to my public library to check out the second book. When I got my hands on it, I devoured it. It was the perfect sci-fi book. The great writing style that kept me reading the first one to its conclusion. A better plot than the first one, with the grown boy, Andrew, and his sister traveling the stars at near-light speed, so that they age a month when humanity undergoes twenty years or more of progress, so that by the time they settle on a planet, they are, literally speaking, over 3000 years old, although, relativistically, they're in their thirties. It was complicated, but not convoluted. So I read the third book, and now have finished the fourth.

And people ask me, "what is it about?" and I can't even begin to explain it. Because I know myself well enough that the explanation would take hours, and a simple, boiled down explanation would not explain the magnitude of the book. But part of the series, the part that really touched me, is about the aiua. It's like a soul, but its not. There's another place, "The Outside". Think of it like Heaven, where the souls come from, if you're more comfortable thinking like that. They exist in a place outside of our place, yes, but also outside of our time. They have always been there, before our universe was created, and will always be there, after our universe is gone. The aiuas aren't all human souls. They are more like clay on the river (stolen right from the book, I confess) which can become anything. They are not atoms, nor any such scientific construct. But they can become people. Or insects. Or trees. Every living creature binds its aiua to its environment. Except for people, who bind to other people. When two people have a baby, they twine their own aiuas together, forming a bond between them, but also a net. The net captures an aiua from Outside and brings it Inside. This is the baby's soul, which is now twined with the net formed by its parents. People alone can direct their aiuas, through an act of great love, and weaken the threads of the family net to form stronger threads with others, twining and twining until the thread becomes a yarn, until the yarn becomes a rope. The threads of our families are often worn thin when we use our aiua to bond with a spouse and children of our own, but are only truly broken in death, when the aiua returns to the Outside.

When I met my spouse, I felt like I had found my soul-mate. I even said as much, as did he. But the concept of the aiua fits so much better than the thought of a soul-mate. The souls, Outside, do not have mates. They are, each one of them, distinguished and separate. But Inside, we Bond, we Twine, until we form a mate. Or a sister. Or a child. The person who was born your brother isn't necessarily bound to you. He is bound to your parents and your parents to you, but there is no direct connection until you make one. And you can only make the connection through love. The books refer to them as Philotic connections. And the word fits.

Phiolotic. This is why I felt broken when Michael left. Why we referred to divorced families as "broken homes". He walked away, yes, but he also went away. He pulled and stretched at our connection until he thought it was broken. But it's still there. It is not strong. But it is there. I have formed a web between him and our children. He has attempted to pull his thread out without breaking the web and he couldn't. So he put out the illusion of a broken thread. Separation. Divorce. THIS is why I couldn't date, why every kiss to another man felt like betrayal. This is why I ache when my children notice their lack of a father and I want to scream at him for leaving. Because screaming at him would be screaming at me. I formed the bond. I stretched out my love to him over a decade ago. I cannot ever draw it back. And I don't know that I'd want to. For my children are tied there as well. Into the web, entwined with me. Part of me in them, part of him in them, part of them in us.

In the books, Andrew and his sister were separated for thirty years before they met again, their children grown, some with children of their own. And after all that time, they embrace and laugh as if no time had passed. When Michael brought Christmas presents in January of '09, my sister Sue was on the phone as the kids unwrapped and he put together their toys. She said I sounded so strange, laughing and joking as if he'd never left. I checked myself. I was. He and I were not behaving like a couple in the process of divorce. We were behaving like a couple. Me jibing him for smoking - see how he couldn't inflate the toys? Him jibing right back, saying that's what he gets for being an addict. The both of us acting like nothing had ever happened to drive us apart, but not acting. None of it intentional, like we needed to put on a face. Just being ourselves. Loving each other, still, in our own, weird, human way.