Just back from an exciting night – an event called “Grown-ups Read Stuff They Wrote as Kids.” Apparently, this is the 11th such night, in which several hundred people gather to laugh at their own young selves and each other. I’d heard about them but had been unable to attend because they were always on Mondays, when I teach. But my Monday class ended last week, so a few months ago, when I heard about this date, I signed up immediately. It is what it says – adults reading their childhood writings, from sentience to age 18.
October 1965
“I love him, I love him, I love him,” my heart sang as I washed the dishes, polished the floor and made the beds.
“He is the sweetest man on earth,” I repeated as I folded his clothes, washed his socks and tidied his papers.
Work goes fast that way, when one’s whole person is singing with love.
4 Responses to “a grown-up, singing with love”
You speak with modesty, Beth.
The room was eating out of your hand, and I felt so lucky to watch it happen.
xJ.
Jason, dear friend, thank you, but you are hardly an objective observer since you and I – and Peg, who was there too – form a passionate mutual admiration society.
But – thank you.
Well, I think Paul missed the boat, Beth! Devotion and domestic skills — a vital combination! (Though I have a vivid memory of imagining him into my life in 1964 in the Halifax suburb of Spryfield. In my fantasy, we met on a trail leading to Kidstone Lake and he took my hand, told me I was what he was looking for…I couldn't listen to "I want to hold your hand" without crying.)
Oh Theresa, too bad we didn't know each other then, there I was in Halifax imagining the same sort of thing. I wrote one story where Paul nearly dies of pneumonia but I hold his hand under the oxygen tent, and colour comes back into his cheeks. "It's a miracle, Mrs. McCartney!" says the doctor.
Sigh.