Book Club Questions for Pivoting From Blue

Thank you for choosing Pivoting From Blue: One Year of Death, Divorce & Discovery for your book club. These thirty questions follow the book from the first squall to the last day of The Year, so the spoilers come late. Page numbers refer to the paperback edition. Questions 23 to 30 are best saved until everyone has finished.

A note from the author: Skip is happy to join your club in person or virtually, and he loves a good discussion. Be warned that he cusses a lot in the book, and a few of these questions quote it.

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Discussion questions

  1. Chapter 1 drops you into the storm before you know why anybody is out there. On page 2 of the paperback, I write, “Our direction was simple: survive by turning into the biggest fucking incoming wave that charged us, be it from the left, right, or straight ahead.” When your own life starts throwing waves from every direction, do you turn into them or try to outrun them? Which one has actually worked for you? What would you change?

  2. Below deck on page 7, the life raft is buried in the forward cabin under thousands of pounds of gear: Ralph’s luggage, engine parts, a new AC unit. That same pile of junk is what kept Blue’s bow down. On page 28 of the paperback, I write, “In time, I would thank God for the extra weight in the bow.” What’s the extra weight in your life that you cursed at the time and thanked God for later?

  3. In Chapter 2 (pages 9 and 10), I give up on the math formula for a squall line and settle on the Fujiwhara effect, two storms that dance, repel, or swallow each other, as the best description of my marriage, and my life. Can two decent people make one terrible weather system? Was this marriage one storm or two?

  4. Chapter 3 is where I wrote “no fewer than fifteen times.” The first draft trashed Annie: “I wanted her to hurt, bad, like I was hurting, and I had the ammo” (page 12). By page 13 I say, “I cannot write from a place of anger anymore.” Do you think I should have kept more from that angry first draft? Looking back now, how do you see the things you couldn’t accept in your life, and how are they different now?

  5. Every Monday at 9 a.m., in separate cars, Annie and I would show up at Margot’s office, close our eyes, and hold up fingers to show our commitment. Annie holds two or three. I float between three and five. On page 18 of the paperback, I admit, “I’d been lying to myself for years about our marriage, my job, my weight, my drinking, my family, everything.” So was I, the guy holding up five fingers, the optimist or the liar? Can you be both?

  6. That same morning in counseling, I wouldn’t give Annie an inch on “something useless,” so that night I cut a deal with myself instead. On page 24 of the paperback: “Stop drinking by 11 p.m. Walk a little farther.” Not quit. Not a vow. Just a deal I could keep. Why does a tiny promise you’ll keep with yourself beat a big one you won’t? What’s your 11 p.m. rule? It can be small and still make a difference.

  7. In a Cotswolds hotel at Thanksgiving (Chapter 6, pages 34 to 36), a man from the ten years I “can’t and won’t write about” crosses the room, and the two of us weep in each other’s arms in front of Annie, her mom, and the kids. Years earlier Annie had joked, “It’s like you were a spy or something.” My answer at the table about the man I just saw was “just an old friend.” What does a secret like that do to a marriage, even if it was kept to protect people, to keep them safe? Do you think it would build pressure with each passing year?

  8. At the Fort Pierce gas dock, before dawn, Michael quietly reties my lines, and I log it on page 36 as “Humbling moment number one, of many, on the crossing.” By the time we tie up at Spanish Cay I’ve counted “humility marker number twenty-four for the day” (page 130). If you honestly counted your humility markers for one day, what number would you hit? Is humility something you learn, or something that gets beaten into you? And do you accept humility as something good?

  9. Male menopause is real and insane, says Chapter 7. I take an axe to Annie’s professionally planted geraniums “like Nicholson in The Shining,” pass on the $750 grapefruit tree for the $100 one with a trunk like a turkey neck, then buy it a banana tree so it won’t be lonely. On page 45 of the paperback, I write, “Annie was an only child. My fruit tree would be an only child.” What do you think I was really trying to grow out there?

  10. The book opens with a “Seriously Large Disclaimer,” drops an “Uber Big Disclaimer” on page 49, and by page 143 we’ve reached “KING KONG SIZED DISCLAIMER.” Every one of them says “This Book Is Fiction,” while the title page says “Based on a True Story.” Legal shield, running joke, or a wink at you, the reader? Did the disclaimers make you trust the story more or less?

  11. After years of caring for my ailing parents and listening to my father say he was tired of living, I make a call. On page 52 of the paperback, I write, “The choice for me was to be both caregiver and son, and a toll would be paid for that decision.” I also start thinking of my dad as Nick. Can you really be both? If you’ve been a caregiver, who paid your toll?

  12. At the bridge in Chapter 9, I touch the first pillar, pause whatever song is playing, and talk to God. Early on it’s “Dear God, please…” Later it becomes “Hey God, how you doing tonight?” (page 62). I call it “a check-in with a good friend after a busy day. Something Annie and I should have done but never did” (page 61). What’s the difference between asking for things and checking in, with God or with the person you live with? If we’re supposed to fear God, but he’s a friend, how many friends do you fear that you respect and listen to?

  13. I don’t shuffle songs. I play one song on repeat for a whole walk, a habit that started with “Empire State” on the Florida Turnpike. The two that carried me home in the early months were “I Can Only Imagine” by MercyMe and “Fine Line” by Harry Styles, and on page 64 of the paperback, I write, “The songs didn’t evolve. I did.” Which song has stayed exactly the same with you while you changed completely around it?

  14. Here’s some trivia that sounds made up (page 68). Years before I met Annie, I self-published a private eye novel starring Quick Riley (the book sucked - I was young), whose love interest was a blond named Annie with green eyes who lived on a street named Chester. When I met the real Annie, she owned a home on a street named Chester and I described her down to her shoe size. Prophecy, coincidence, or me already knowing exactly what was to be? Do you believe in that kind of thing?

  15. By The Year, Friends Village has about fifty fruit trees, and Apple 2, a grafted girl with five kinds of apples, falls for Banana 1, who keeps bending his longest leaf back to touch her every time I spin him away. My neighbor David, whose marriage was also failing, signs on as a witness. On page 76 of the paperback, I write, “We were less than two plants that shared a love.” Funny, sad, or both? What did David and I need to see in that backyard?

  16. Also in Chapter 11: Wiggle Man, a thirty-foot air dancer, scares off the cardinal gangs, then gets downsized to eight feet “so I didn’t embarrass Annie anymore” (page 82). Pruning tomatoes, I learn to spot “suckers,” the little vines that drain the plant and give nothing back, and start cutting the human ones out of my life (page 83). Who gets to decide who the sucker is? Have you looked back at your own life and thought about who the suckers really are and what difference it would make to get rid of them?

  17. April 13, under a full pink moon, I have the only panic attack of my life and can barely get the word “I” out (page 91). It stops with one touch from Annie, one of the “three hands in this world that can stop me, stop my pain, stop my rage…” (page 92). What does it mean that the person who filed for divorce is still the one who can stop the storm?

  18. Three nights later, on April 16, on the bridge, I skip the first pillar and walk twenty more feet to the second one. On page 93 of the paperback, I write, “Who knew just a few feet farther could change everything you thought you knew.” That same walk takes me to the Courts of Heaven to ask God to stop the divorce. What’s your twenty feet, the small step past your usual stopping point that you keep not taking?

  19. At Bowen’s eighth-grade dance (Chapter 13), I, the guy who always sat with the other non-dancing husbands, dance for two hours, hand jive from Grease and all, and Annie can’t believe her eyes. On page 99, I admit, “I didn’t want to look foolish dancing because I thought I couldn’t.” What are you sitting out right now because you’re afraid of looking foolish?

  20. In Chapter 14, after sixty-seven years of marriage, Nick and Trisha sleep in separate rooms but still sneak into each other’s beds to cuddle, even when she forgets his name. On page 102 of the paperback, I write, “Perhaps this is one of the reasons I’ve never been able to give up hope that Annie and I can just date for the rest of our lives.” Romantic, or a sign I can’t let go? Can you keep loving someone you’re divorcing?

  21. Look at what I wore into the squalls (page 117): shorts, the new Sperry deck shoes Michael told me I wouldn’t need, and an ultra-light raincoat Annie bought me, with a European zipper that runs backwards. “I now appreciate the gift she got me.” How do the things we get from people we’re fighting with sometimes end up keeping us alive?

  22. On the dock at Spanish Cay (page 130), Michael and I couldn’t speak. We just stared at Blue’s stern, and if anybody had asked, the answer was “We’re just waiting to see if she sinks.” Afterward Michael won’t make the crossing anymore, while I go looking for the bottom. Same storm, opposite conclusions. Situations differ, and the mind reacts differently. Do you look at things 360° in your own life?

Questions 23 to 30 are best saved until everyone has finished.

  1. On the flight home to Miami (page 141), the woman next to me is terrified of flying, so I spend the hour keeping her laughing. I’ve just survived two squall lines, the best story I’ll ever have, and I never bring it up: “I didn’t even share once about our boat ride.” The old me would have told her about every wave. The fabulous Mrs. Wilson used to call me out for exactly moments like these where I would brag. And why would I do that? That flight is my answer. When did you last sit on your best story because someone else needed the attention more?

  2. At exactly 2 a.m. on July 2, in a cottage in Wisconsin, my whole life spins around me with no timeline: “Except Annie and the kids. Not once did I see them” (page 149). Then a blank scrap of paper with one word, “Go.” (Want to see it? I made a short reel of that moment: instagram.com/p/Dd2yQoUp3OH) In Chapter 23 I finally explain it: “they were my life, and I had to rebuild everything but them” (page 175). Before you got to that explanation, what was your theory?

  3. After mediation, I shake the hand of Annie’s attorney, the guy I’d hated for months, and say, “Thank you for taking care of Annie” (page 155). Days later I sign the final papers on my phone under a beach umbrella in Boca Grande and text her. On page 162 of the paperback: “It was just a label. We are 50/50 now and forever.” Is a marriage “just a label”? Would Annie agree? Would you agree?

  4. Chapters 22 and 24 tell the family fight over moving Nick and Trisha back to Florida strictly from my side, complete with the whispers about “wishes and desires” and lines like “No assertions are being made here, just questions asked” (page 184). I remind you Nick was one of six boys, and “tougher than shit” (page 181). Did the sarcasm make you trust me more or less? What does tough look like for a ninety-one-year-old man in hospice? Money changes people, so does the end of life.

  5. On Elbow Cay (Chapter 25), I give a golf-cart ride to a limping local named Jeremy, nicknamed “The World,” who has died three times that year and remembers the same party I do from seven years before. Asked which is worse, physical or psychological death, he says psychological death, because you keep reliving it (page 195). We both hit The Bottom. One of us came back to good memories and one came back to hell. What decides which side you come back on?

  6. Chapter 26 finally gives us the driveway moment: “I don’t care, Annie” (page 198). Then, “eleven months into The Year” (page 200), I’m invited back to the Courts of Heaven. On page 201 of the paperback, I say, “I’m not here tonight to ask you to let us start over, or to be married again. That time has passed.” I ask only for forgiveness, for Annie and for myself. Was April’s closed door the answer all along? And why do you think I held the driveway scene until that moment in the book?

  7. Operation: Free Mom. A state ID quietly obtained at the DMV on Friday, February 13, a house full of unhappy family members, and one question in the hallway: “It’s your choice, Mom.” She answers, “I want to go with you” (page 208), and on the plane tells me, “Why don’t you pee slow instead?” (page 209). What would you have done?

  8. In July, everything I had before Annie and the kids fits in a single banker’s box in a cottage basement (page 147). On the last night of The Year, in my father’s office, I open a box marked “Dad” and find two photographs. His life in a box, plus Trisha. Mine, plus Annie. On page 228 of the paperback, I decide on a life “so full it would never fit in a box for our kids to find.” What’s in your box today, and what are you going to add to it on purpose? What are you willing to change?

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