Little Moments

One thing I love about Munro is how she sucks me into the little moments in life. She makes me feel like I'm in them. Maybe it's because I recognize the feelings she's describing, or maybe she's painting it before me so skilfully that I can live it through her books? I don't know, but it works. 

For instance, from Tell Me Yes or No:

We both trembled. We barely managed it, being overcome - both of us, both of us - with gratitude, and amazement. The flood of luck, of happiness undeserved, unqualified, nearly unbelieved-in. Tears stood in our eyes. Undeniably. Yes. 

Why does this work so well? Is it the word "yes", which is like a final surrender to the feeling? Is it "tears stood in our eyes", like the moment is standing still, the tears not coming out but freezing there, everything freezing in one moment? Is it the repetition of "both of us" that seems so joyful and trembling? Her use of language in that moment quivers with joy and expectation. 

But with "little moments", I also mean a different sort of thing: a little moment in a person's life when she realizes something, on her own. A little moment of falling or awakening that is not shared with anyone. These moments are harder to describe and seem less momentous, and thus most writers don't bother with them. But look at this from the same story: 

Next day, or the day after, when I was reading as usual on the couch, I felt myself drop a lovely distance, thinking of you, and that was the beginning, I suppose, the realization of what more there could still be. So I said to you, "I was in love." 

It's a little moment, barely something you an put into words. The narrator is critical of the moment and its significance, even as she relates it. But it's the reason she said "I love you" even if she's not sure she does - because the moment did mean something. 

Another little moment is described in Open Secrets. Maureen sees something - she is not sure what, and can't explain it to anyone. She feels it's another life, another dimension, "a life just as long and complicated and strange and dull as this one". The scenes are ordinary - a man carrying a parcel, herself eating cherries. Another scene is a hand being pressed against a hot stove, which could be a repressed moment from her own childhood, or who knows, a memory of a past life. Munro leaves this open for the reader; the explanation doesn't really matter. What matters is the moment's significance for Maureen. 

In kitchens hundreds and thousands of miles away, she'll watch the soft skin form on the back of a wooden spoon and her memory will twitch, but it will not quite reveal to her this moment when she seems to be looking into an open secret, something not startling until you think of trying to tell it. 

I'm no good at analyzing this stuff. I just want to live through it over and over again.