Drawer Pulls, Heel Wheels and a Most Marvelous May!!!
Wow! May has been a busy, whirlwind month. College graduations (congrats to Cee Cee and Daniel), visits with some remarkable students, two unexpected but thrilling awards for UNBOUND (each bringing with them exciting adventures in NYC) and amidst all the celebrating, helping to pack up the New Jersey home of my youth, the home my parents lived in for more than 40 years.
My sister texted that the priest speaking at the Loyola graduation was talking about not holding onto things— this— I texted back— as I am quite literally removing the hardware from mom's dresser, a dresser too cumbersome for either of my siblings to take into their homes. What makes us hold onto such things, I wondered. In UNBOUND, Grace buries a small button. Anyone ever finds this/will know we existed, she says, and perhaps that's the reason for my pilfered furniture pulls.
Whether its a book, a photo, or a piece of unburnished brass, the things we hold onto remind us of the things we hold dearest.
This past weekend, Sam, a fifth grader with wheels on his heels asked me why I write so much history stuff. I gave Sam a very writerly, grown-up answer about the importance of history and remembering the individuals who came before us.
But on the train ride home, I thought about the wheels on Sam's heels and how strange my answer may have seemed. At 11 years old, Sam zips through life (and museums if he can get away with it). It may well be that a sense of history won't be meaningful to him until he seems to stand still while the years zip by.
Right now, that's too much for me to think about. There's too much for me to do — I might even need a pair of my own heel-wheels!
My sister texted that the priest speaking at the Loyola graduation was talking about not holding onto things— this— I texted back— as I am quite literally removing the hardware from mom's dresser, a dresser too cumbersome for either of my siblings to take into their homes. What makes us hold onto such things, I wondered. In UNBOUND, Grace buries a small button. Anyone ever finds this/will know we existed, she says, and perhaps that's the reason for my pilfered furniture pulls.
Whether its a book, a photo, or a piece of unburnished brass, the things we hold onto remind us of the things we hold dearest.
This past weekend, Sam, a fifth grader with wheels on his heels asked me why I write so much history stuff. I gave Sam a very writerly, grown-up answer about the importance of history and remembering the individuals who came before us.
But on the train ride home, I thought about the wheels on Sam's heels and how strange my answer may have seemed. At 11 years old, Sam zips through life (and museums if he can get away with it). It may well be that a sense of history won't be meaningful to him until he seems to stand still while the years zip by.
Right now, that's too much for me to think about. There's too much for me to do — I might even need a pair of my own heel-wheels!
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