Carol Ann explains to the narrator her unusual living arrangement with Gary, where they live together to care for their spouses, who both have cognitive decline. Gary's wife Hoshiyo has Alzheimer's and no longer realizes her legs don't work. Carl, Carol Ann's husband, has Alzheimer's as well. The narrator is asked to watch over Hoshiyo and Carl for an hour while Carol Ann and Gary go shopping. During this time, the narrator feeds Hoshiyo and has a thoughtful conversation with Carl about music and their memories before he begins crying. The narrator reflects on different living arrangements throughout their life and doesn't see anything strange about people living together to care for one another.
Captains Silvio and Sebastain Chastain are brothers, who own Chastain Airlines. Together, they fly elite, A-list rappers to their concerts nationwide. Their main clients are Snoop Dogg and Martha Stewart, as they fly to entertain their elite friends with dinner parties.
Silvio and Sebastain Chastain are two brothers who are successful airline pilots. The two of them fly their private jets for the elite such as Snoop Dogg, and Martha Stewart.
I spent the first two years telling people where I'm from and what I'm majoring in. I spent the last two years telling people that I have no idea what I'm going to do after college. I'm sick of people asking. I'm going to sell out and get a job that I don't like. Just like every one else. For all our hopes and dreams, for all the talk about changing the world, for all the promise we show, most of us will end up sitting behind a desk in a shitty cubical. Life ends at graduation.
Marie-Eve Vallieres - Pinterest comme générateur de trafic pour votre blogueMade in
Avec plus de 70 millions d’usagers dont 80% de femmes, Pinterest est une plateforme sociale axée sur les images qui n’a rien à envier à Google en matière de clics. Mais aussi puissant soit-il, ce moteur de recherche d’un nouveau genre se doit d’être utilisé de façon judicieuse. Quand et comment épingler vos articles pour qu’ils ressortent du lot ? Quels plugins et techniques utiliser pour maximiser les épingles de vos lecteurs ? Comment interpréter les statistiques d’utilisation ?
Apprenez les 1001 manières d’utiliser Pinterest de façon efficace et pertinente avec les conseils éprouvés de la blogueuse et spécialiste média sociaux Marie-Eve Vallières, qui compte désormais plus de 100 000 abonnés.
Captains Silvio and Sebastain Chastain are brothers, who own Chastain Airlines. Together, they fly elite, A-list rappers to their concerts nationwide. Their main clients are Snoop Dogg and Martha Stewart, as they fly to entertain their elite friends with dinner parties.
Silvio and Sebastain Chastain are two brothers who are successful airline pilots. The two of them fly their private jets for the elite such as Snoop Dogg, and Martha Stewart.
I spent the first two years telling people where I'm from and what I'm majoring in. I spent the last two years telling people that I have no idea what I'm going to do after college. I'm sick of people asking. I'm going to sell out and get a job that I don't like. Just like every one else. For all our hopes and dreams, for all the talk about changing the world, for all the promise we show, most of us will end up sitting behind a desk in a shitty cubical. Life ends at graduation.
Marie-Eve Vallieres - Pinterest comme générateur de trafic pour votre blogueMade in
Avec plus de 70 millions d’usagers dont 80% de femmes, Pinterest est une plateforme sociale axée sur les images qui n’a rien à envier à Google en matière de clics. Mais aussi puissant soit-il, ce moteur de recherche d’un nouveau genre se doit d’être utilisé de façon judicieuse. Quand et comment épingler vos articles pour qu’ils ressortent du lot ? Quels plugins et techniques utiliser pour maximiser les épingles de vos lecteurs ? Comment interpréter les statistiques d’utilisation ?
Apprenez les 1001 manières d’utiliser Pinterest de façon efficace et pertinente avec les conseils éprouvés de la blogueuse et spécialiste média sociaux Marie-Eve Vallières, qui compte désormais plus de 100 000 abonnés.
Nosso organismo precisa de nutrientes, seja para se recuperar de uma doença, seja para praticar uma determinada atividade física ou mesmo para executar as tarefas cotidianas.
Nosso organismo precisa de nutrientes, seja para se recuperar de uma doença, seja para praticar uma determinada atividade física ou mesmo para executar as tarefas cotidianas.
Nosso organismo precisa de nutrientes, seja para se recuperar de uma doença, seja para praticar uma determinada atividade física ou mesmo para executar as tarefas cotidianas.
Andy Brunning is a chemist, educator & the founder of Compound Chem, which has 130,000 followers on the website, Facebook & Twitter. He uses ChemDraw every day for teaching & to draw out chemical structures for publications and graphics. He presented on 5/28. The recording of the webinar is here http://insideinformatics.cambridgesoft.com/webinars/587/the-aesthetics-of-drawing-with-compound-interests-andy-brunning This year marks the 30th anniversary of ChemDraw. Celebrate with us on 6/25 at a free chemistry day. Register here http://bit.ly/1H1T25d
With 30 billion images and more than 300 million people posting to Instagram monthly, there’s no doubt the photo-sharing social network offers rich opportunities for e-retailers and brands. In this presentation, readers will learn how children’s clothing brand giggle pulls user-generated content from Instagram, Twitter and other social networks back to its own site pages to create a more engaging and authentic e-commerce experience while driving incremental sales. This presentation will show how organizing images in galleries, using hashtags and linking to relevant products, reviews and recommendations can help e-retailers in all verticals enhance site engagement and increase sales.
La Palabra de Dios contiene mucha profecía que al presente está todavía en espera de cumplirse, y es razonable, así como honroso para Dios, que nosotros
creamos que dicha profecía se cumplirá con la misma fidelidad que ha sido la característica de todas las obras, y todos los actos de El hasta nuestros días.
Now I want you to re-read your favorite piece from the term and tell.docxjuliennehar
Now I want you to re-read your favorite piece from the term and tell me why you like it. If it's from early on, tell me how you see it now that you have other ways to think about it. If it's from later, did knowing some things from our assignments influence your enjoyment? Whatever else you say, please include some research. Look for interviews with the author, especially if the piece is specifically mentioned. Maybe you can find a book written about the author or that talks about the story/poem/essay. Maybe your research can be about the topic in its era. A sci-fi piece from the mid-century had certain societal expectations of what our future would look like. A story about the course of true love never running smooth is also a topic that has been viewed differently as society has changed.
Try to speak of your favorite piece with a scholarly enthusiasm rather than just an over-coffee recommendation style. Try to smoothly work the research into your own opinions. Give me two (2) or more pages of your best.
A Wagner Matinée
By WILLA SIBERT CATHER
I RECEIVED one morning a letter, written in pale ink, on glassy, blue-lined note-paper, and bearing the postmark of a little Nebraska village. This communication, worn and rubbed, looking as though it had been carried for some days in a coat-pocket that was none too clean, was from my Uncle Howard. It informed me that his wife had been left a small legacy by a bachelor relative who had recently died, and that it had become necessary for her to come to Boston to attend to the settling of the estate. He requested me to meet her at the station, and render her whatever services might prove necessary. On examining the date indicated as that of her arrival, I found it no later than to-morrow. He had characteristically delayed writing until, had I been away from home for a day, I must have missed the good woman altogether.
The name of my Aunt Georgiana called up not alone her own figure, at once pathetic and grotesque, but opened before my feet a gulf of recollections so wide and deep that, as the letter dropped from my hand, I felt suddenly a stranger to all the present conditions of my existence, wholly ill at ease and out of place amid the surroundings of my study. I became, in short, the gangling farmer-boy my aunt had known, scourged with chilblains and bashfulness, my hands cracked and raw from the corn husking. I felt the knuckles of my thumb tentatively, as though they were raw again. I sat again before her parlor organ, thumbing the scales with my stiff, red hands, while she beside me made canvas mittens for the huskers.
The next morning, after preparing my landlady somewhat, I set out for the station. When the train arrived I had some difficulty in finding my aunt. She was the last of the passengers to alight, and when I got her into the carriage she looked not unlike one of those charred, smoked bodies that firemen lift from the
débris
of a burned building. She had come all the way in a day coac.
This is the inspiring tale of a humble Salvadoran campesino who rose from his precarious status as an illegal immigrant in the United States to realize the American Dream and became a millionaire. It is the story of a man who left his small village barefoot, his pockets empty, with only a single change of clothing and a suitcase full of dreams, who reached the pinnacle of success in the world´s greatest economic power.
Visítanos: http://www.elsalvadorebooks.com
Eveline by James JoyceSHE sat at the window watching the evening .docxturveycharlyn
Eveline by James Joyce
SHE sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue. Her head was leaned against the window curtains and in her nostrils was the odour of dusty cretonne. She was tired.
Few people passed. The man out of the last house passed on his way home; she heard his footsteps clacking along the concrete pavement and afterwards crunching on the cinder path before the new red houses. One time there used to be a field there in which they used to play every evening with other people's children. Then a man from Belfast bought the field and built houses in it -- not like their little brown houses but bright brick houses with shining roofs. The children of the avenue used to play together in that field -- the Devines, the Waters, the Dunns, little Keogh the cripple, she and her brothers and sisters. Ernest, however, never played: he was too grown up. Her father used often to hunt them in out of the field with his blackthorn stick; but usually little Keogh used to keep nix and call out when he saw her father coming. Still they seemed to have been rather happy then. Her father was not so bad then; and besides, her mother was alive. That was a long time ago; she and her brothers and sisters were all grown up her mother was dead. Tizzie Dunn was dead, too, and the Waters had gone back to England. Everything changes. Now she was going to go away like the others, to leave her home.
Home! She looked round the room, reviewing all its familiar objects which she had dusted once a week for so many years, wondering where on earth all the dust came from. Perhaps she would never see again those familiar objects from which she had never dreamed of being divided. And yet during all those years she had never found out the name of the priest whose yellowing photograph hung on the wall above the broken harmonium beside the coloured print of the promises made to Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque. He had been a school friend of her father. Whenever he showed the photograph to a visitor her father used to pass it with a casual word:
"He is in Melbourne now."
She had consented to go away, to leave her home. Was that wise? She tried to weigh each side of the question. In her home anyway she had shelter and food; she had those whom she had known all her life about her. O course she had to work hard, both in the house and at business. What would they say of her in the Stores when they found out that she had run away with a fellow? Say she was a fool, perhaps; and her place would be filled up by advertisement. Miss Gavan would be glad. She had always had an edge on her, especially whenever there were people listening.
"Miss Hill, don't you see these ladies are waiting?"
"Look lively, Miss Hill, please."
She would not cry many tears at leaving the Stores.
But in her new home, in a distant unknown country, it would not be like that. Then she would be married -- she, Eveline. People would treat her with respect then. She would not be treated as her mot.
MAXINE HONG KINGSTONTHE WOMAN WARRIORMaxine HongAbramMartino96
MAXINE HONG KINGSTON
THE WOMAN WARRIOR
Maxine Hong Kingston is Senior Lecturer for Creative Writing at the
University of California, Berkeley. For her memoirs and fiction, The
Fifth Book of Peace, The Woman Warrior, China Men, Tripmaster
Monkey, and Hawai’i One Summer, Kingston has earned numerous
awards, among them the National Book Award, the National Book
Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, the PEN West Award for Fiction,
an American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Literature
Award, and a National Humanities Medal from the National
Endowment for the Humanities, as well as the rare title of “Living
Treasure of Hawai’i.”
2
ALSO BY MAXINE HONG KINGSTON
China Men
Tripmaster Monkey
Hawai’i One Summer
The Fifth Book of Peace
3
4
To Mother and Father
5
Contents
No Name Woman
White Tigers
Shaman
At the Western Palace
A Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe
6
No
Name
Woman
7
“You must not tell anyone,” my mother said, “what I am about to tell you.
In China your father had a sister who killed herself. She jumped into the
family well. We say that your father has all brothers because it is as if she
had never been born.
“In 1924 just a few days after our village celebrated seventeen hurry-up
weddings—to make sure that every young man who went ‘out on the road’
would responsibly come home—your father and his brothers and your
grandfather and his brothers and your aunt’s new husband sailed for
America, the Gold Mountain. It was your grandfather’s last trip. Those
lucky enough to get contracts waved goodbye from the decks. They fed and
guarded the stowaways and helped them off in Cuba, New York, Bali,
Hawaii. ‘We’ll meet in California next year,’ they said. All of them sent
money home.
“I remember looking at your aunt one day when she and I were dressing; I
had not noticed before that she had such a protruding melon of a stomach.
But I did not think, ‘She’s pregnant,’ until she began to look like other
pregnant women, her shirt pulling and the white tops of her black pants
showing. She could not have been pregnant, you see, because her husband
had been gone for years. No one said anything. We did not discuss it. In
early summer she was ready to have the child, long after the time when it
could have been possible.
“The village had also been counting. On the night the baby was to be born
the villagers raided our house. Some were crying. Like a great saw, teeth
strung with lights, files of people walked zigzag across our land, tearing the
rice. Their lanterns doubled in the disturbed black water, which drained
away through the broken bunds. As the villagers closed in, we could see that
some of them, probably men and women we knew well, wore white masks.
The people with long hair hung it over their faces. Women with short hair
made it stand up on end. Some had tied white bands around their foreheads,
arms, and legs.
“At first they threw mud and rocks at the house. Then they threw eggs and
began slaughtering our stock. ...
Cain's Jawbone Book by E. Powys MathersAnushka112464
Cain's Jawbone is a murder mystery puzzle written by Edward Powys Mathers under the pseudonym "Torquemada". The puzzle was first published in 1934 as part of The Torquemada Puzzle Book. In 2019, crowdfunding publisher Unbound published a new stand-alone edition of the puzzle in collaboration with the charity The Laurence Sterne Trust.
Both editions, when published, were accompanied by a competition that offered a cash prize to the first reader to solve the puzzle. Cain's Jawbone has been described as "one of the hardest and most beguiling word puzzles ever published."
The phrase Cain's Jawbone refers to the Biblical stories of Cain, Abel and Samson.
The puzzle consists of a 100-page prose narrative with its pages arranged in the wrong order. The first edition is part of a hardback book. The second edition is a boxed set of page cards. Here, you find the digital copy To solve the puzzle, the reader must determine the correct order of the pages and also the names of the murderers and victims within the story. The story's text includes a large number of quotations, references, puns, Spoonerisms and other word games. The pages can be arranged in 9.33×10157 (factorial of 100) possible combinations, but there is only one correct order. The solution to the puzzle has never been made public.
When the puzzle was first published in 1934, a prize of £15 was offered to the first reader who could re-order the pages and provide an account of the six persons murdered in Cain's Jawbone and the full names of their murderers. Two people, Mr S. Sydney-Turner and Mr W. S. Kennedy, solved the puzzle in 1935 and won £25 each.
The publishers of the 2019 edition ran the competition a second time, saying "The prize of £1,000 (roughly how much £15 was worth in 1934) will be given to the first reader to provide the names of the murderers and the murdered, the correct order of the pages and a short explanation of how the solution was obtained. The competition will run for one year from the date of publication."
In November 2020 it was announced that comedian and crossword compiler John Finnemore had correctly solved the puzzle, doing so over six months during the COVID-19 lockdown. Finnemore said "The first time I had a look at it I quickly thought 'Oh this is just way beyond me.' The only way I'd even have a shot at it was if I were for some bizarre reason trapped in my own home for months on end, with nowhere to go and no one to see. Unfortunately, the universe heard me".
Fitzgerald. “Babylon Revisited” 1
Babylon Revisited by F. Scott Fitzgerald (b. 1896-d. 1940)
I
"And where's Mr. Campbell?" Charlie asked.
"Gone to Switzerland. Mr. Campbell's a pretty sick man, Mr. Wales."
"I'm sorry to hear that. And George Hardt?" Charlie inquired.
"Back in America, gone to work."
"And where is the Snow Bird?"
"He was in here last week. Anyway, his friend, Mr. Schaeffer, is in Paris."
Two familiar names from the long list of a year and a half ago. Charlie scribbled an
address in his notebook and tore out the page.
"If you see Mr. Schaeffer, give him this," he said. "It's my brother-in-law's address. I
haven't settled on a hotel yet."
He was not really disappointed to find Paris was so empty. But the stillness in the Ritz
bar was strange and portentous. It was not an American bar any more--he felt polite in it, and
not as if he owned it. It had gone back into France. He felt the stillness from the moment he got
out of the taxi and saw the doorman, usually in a frenzy of activity at this hour, gossiping with a
chasseur1 by the servants' entrance.
Passing through the corridor, he heard only a single, bored voice in the once-clamorous
women's room. When he turned into the bar he travelled the twenty feet of green carpet with
his eyes fixed straight ahead by old habit; and then, with his foot firmly on the rail, he turned
and surveyed the room, encountering only a single pair of eyes that fluttered up from a
newspaper in the corner. Charlie asked for the head barman, Paul, who in the latter days of the
bull market had come to work in his own custom-built car--disembarking, however, with due
nicety at the nearest corner. But Paul was at his country house today and Alix giving him
information.
"No, no more," Charlie said, "I'm going slow these days."
Alix congratulated him: "You were going pretty strong a couple of years ago."
"I'll stick to it all right," Charlie assured him. "I've stuck to it for over a year and a half
now."
"How do you find conditions in America?"
"I haven't been to America for months. I'm in business in Prague, representing a couple of
concerns there. They don't know about me down there."
Alix smiled.
"Remember the night of George Hardt's bachelor dinner here?" said Charlie. "By the
way, what's become of Claude Fessenden?"
Alix lowered his voice confidentially: "He's in Paris, but he doesn't come here any more.
Paul doesn't allow it. He ran up a bill of thirty thousand francs, charging all his drinks and his
lunches, and usually his dinner, for more than a year. And when Paul finally told him he had to
pay, he gave him a bad check."
Alix shook his head sadly.
"I don't understand it, such a dandy fellow. Now he's all bloated up--" He made a plump
apple of his hands.
Charlie watched a group of strident queens installing themselves in a corner.
1 bellhop
Fitzgerald. “Babylon Revisited” 2
"No ...
1. Strange Arrangement
Thingsheat up at MeadowbrookGroveas the sun goes down. Couples stroll
languidlyand hold hands, looping around the NorwegianWood culde sac
where the sky smudges violet on the horizon. As if at twilight, lifeimitates
art, everything a glossy advertisement for thetranquilretirement
community.
My mother felt well enough one evening for a walk around the block. At the
corner we fell in step with Garyand Carol Ann. They were strolling arm in
arm. The sweetness of their gesturemademe want to fall back, to allow
them their moment. But Carol Ann was pleased to see us, though I hadn’t
yet met her. She dropped Gary’sarm and beelined over.
“Have you heard about our strangearrangement?”sheasked me, a
mischievousglint in her eye. She linked her arm with mine.
It was September. I’d been homefrom Spainfor a month and had been
keeping a low profile in my mother’snew retirement community. I hadn’t
heard about any arrangement. Islowed my strideto match CarolAnn’s, my
mother and Garytaking up a conversationof their own.
“Garyand I first met in college. Siena College, have you heard of it? Small
Christianschoolupstate. He will tell you that we went on at least one date,
though I don’t really recall it, but it didn’t get much further thanthat,
because I wasbusy studying while he wasbusy partying. Well, he went off
2. to join theservice in Japanand ended up marrying a womanover there. I
moved down south to teach, and met my husband, Carl.”
One thing was clear: Carol Ann was a force to be reckoned with.
“Well, I must have madequitean impressionon Gary,” she continued.
“Whenhis wife Hoshiyo wasin decline, forty years later, he goes looking for
me on Facebook!” she paused for effect, or perhapsto take a breath. “He
finds me, and we get to talking. It turned out that my husband, Carl, was
also in decline.”
I was accustomedtousing the word ‘decline’ in the context of speciesor
epidemics, but thiswasthe first timeI’d been in conversationwith
someone who used it to describea person.
“He has Alzheimers,” she concluded, matter-of-factly.
“So eventually,” Carol Ann continued, “Garyand I joined forces and moved
in together here, with our other halves.” She fist-bumped theair to
punctuatetheir solidarity. “Wearepartners, and together we carefor our
spouses so they don’t have to go in a home. I like to call it a commune!” She
smiled cheerfully, giving my arm a squeeze.
I looked down theroad to where my mother and Garywere walking with
Cho Cho the papillon, its tailmore like the plumageof an exotic bird than
anything that should adorn a dog’s ass. They were undoubtedlytalking
about their shared appreciationofthe Meadowbrookseptic system or the
3. efficiencyof their boilers. I quickened mypace in hopes of catching up to
them.
Several monthsafter that evening, I rang Carol Ann’s doorbell to returnthe
cookie press she’d forced upon me for her smorgasbord. Her husband, Carl,
sat in his wheelchair in the far corner of the living room, a tv traytable
before him. It was the samespot I’d seen him in each timeI’d been at Carol
Ann’s. Hoshiyo, Gary’s wife, was on the couch besideCarl. She was asleep
sitting up.
“Hoshiyo hasn’t figured out yet that her legs don’t work,” Carol Ann
informed me in a twangysottovoce. She stood at her kitchenisland,
holding court ina striped apron. “The other day I found her crawling across
the floor towardsher bedroom.” She announced thismatter-of-factly, the
sameway she might havestated a preferencefor salami on a sandwich.
She asked me if I could stay for an hour while she and Garywent to the
store. Their regular caregiver had called in sick.
“It’s our only free timetogether,” sheexplained. “And ShopRiteis having its
Can Can Sale!”
…..
I sat on the couch besideCarl’s wheelchair as he ate a piece of custard pie.
On my oppositeside, Hoshiyo was half-consciousand slumped, dwarfed by
the two blanketscovering her from neck to toe. A quickglanceto the couch
and you wouldn’t know a person was there at all.
4. Cho cho perched on the cushionabove us, licking my nose each timeI
leaned over to checkon Hoshiyo. I was supposed to feed her a bowl of
applesauce.
“Hoshiyo,” I offered, my voice hushed. Shestirred at the sound of her name
but looked nowhere.
I gingerlyspooned applesauceintoher mouth. She swallowed, shuddering
from the coldness of it. I paused betweeneach spoonful, waiting for her to
signalshe was readyfor another. There was only her cataract stare.
“Do you want more?” I asked. The sound of my voicestartled her.
“E-ah,” she affirmed, her unexpected staccatosurprisingmewith itsforce.
She parted her lips and I lifted the spoon to her mouth.
The tv was on, as it always was, a local primetimenewsprogram on theair.
New YorkCity and theoutlying suburbsthedomain. The news anchors
laughed with each other, their teeth preternaturallywhite, their hair
perfectlycoiffed. The colors of their outfitsand the newsroom scenery were
Hollywood vivid. Their report of a threealarm fire and possible overnight
precipitationwereexistentiallyreassuring.
I felt awkward sitting betweentwoadultsyet not speaking a word. I knew a
conversationwith Hoshiyo was out of the question, but beyond polite
introductionsI’d not yet had an opportunitytospeakwith Carl. I knew
from Carol Ann only two thingsabout him; that he’d been a civil rights
lawyer and that he had Alzheimers. I wasn’t sure what to expect.
5. “How was the pie?”
“Good, good,” he offered, his voicea gentle rasp.
“Would you like some more?”
“No, that’sfine.” He gestured to the emptyplate. I cleared it and wiped his
traytable.
“Carol Ann tells me you like to look out the window here at the birds,” I said.
Behind the circleof houses on YesterdayDrive wasa marshy area that filled
with runoff from the storm drainsafter a rainor thaw. Cattailsand
coneflower grew rampant along theedges, and an occasionalred cardinal
flower dotted the bank. At several corners, largepvc pipes snaked out from
rock piles. I admired themarsh for itsunruliness amidst thehermetically
sealed mini-mansionsofMeadowbrookGrove. Whether by design or by
flaw, the marsh had becomepopular for all manner of bird. Carol Ann had
joked that she wanted to fill it with fake pink flamingoscomespring, but I
was content watching thesongbirdsand finchesdart and careenabout in
their dominion.
“I like birds,” Carlanswered. “Do you like birds?” heasked. I found myself
spontaneously recounting thebirdsI’d seen with my father, in Florida.
Cormorants, frigatebirds, spoonbills. Herons, egrets, storks.
“Therewas a reserve near my father’shouse, we’d go to.” As I mentioned it,
the memoryof widesky and salt air filled my mind, the lilt of my father’s
6. voice in my ears. I thought of thesmall flocks of brownpelicansthat flew
low along thecoastline, how they seemed to command a certaintaciturn
authoritythat wasout of placein the Florida garishness.
“You’relucky,” Carl said, and I nodded my head in agreement. “You’re
privileged,” he said.
A commercialplayed on the tv and I hummed along. “Do you like music?” I
asked.
“Yes.” Carl’s eyes searched the distance. “Mysister, she played piano…was
beautiful.” Hisvoice scratched at histhroat, wanting tobe louder thanit
was. Tearswere in his eyes.
“And the Detroit SymphonyOrchestra,” hepaused, searching for words,
“wasbeautiful. Beautiful.”
“You grew up in Detroit,” I offered.
“Had a paper route,” he said, laboring a bit. “I canremember that
route…likeit was yesterday…but Ican’t…think of…the word for…” his voice
trailed off.
He looked at me and begantocry. I said nothing, only met his eyes and
held his gaze. I wasn’t going to talkhim out of his tears. We all had a right
to them, and god knows he’d earned his. I brought him a tissue from the far
side of the room.
7. “You’relucky,” he repeated. “You’reprivileged.”
…..
My mother was in the den watching a World War II documentarywhenI
got home. It wasn’t unusual to find her doing that anytime, dayor night.
Wrapped inher flannel blanket, din of artilleryfire coming from the
television. The dog napping ina fetal positionby her chair.
Seeing the grainyblackand whitefootageof Nazi troops or the South
Pacific stirredinme a softness for her. Her father, my grandfather, had
been the chiefnaval officer on Guam. He survived the war and resumed life
with his young bride, going on to father twogirls and run a successful
dentistrypractice. But he never set foot on a boat or plane again. Anywhere
worth going could be gottento in his Buick.
In my life, I saw my grandfather only sparingly. I knew him to be a
humorless manwho favored plaid pantsand the occasionalcigar. It had
only been since I’d comehome from Spainthat mymother offered small
insights. “Your grandma saysthewar changed him,” she had mentioned to
me recently. I knew those documentariesweremy mother’sway of bearing
witness, of keeping him close.
“How was it?” my mother inquired about mytimeat Carol Ann’s.
“I made twentybucks,” I said.
…..
8. I thinkabout the manyarrangementsI‘ve had, riddled with imperfections
and rifewith good company. My upstairsneighbor inMainewith her
menagerieof petsand the child-sized hole in her kitchenceiling that the
landlord was too senile to repair, our condemned apartmentbuildinga
pseudo co-op of kindred spirits. I thinkof Pepa, thedonkey in my dooryard
in Spain, how she brayed hello to me each morning.
I remember thelook of concernon my students’faceswhen they’d ask me
where my familywas, why I was so far from home. Donde es tu madre?
camethe accusatoryquestion, timeand again.
There aremore placeson the map where all kinds of relationslive together
under one roof. Through blood or love or plain old humancircumstance, we
belong to each other. I don’t thinkthere’s anything strangeabout that
arrangement.
“You’re lucky,” I think to myself. “You’re privileged.”