Reading from Kim Stafford’s The Muses Among Us a chapter called “Random Autobiography,” based on a manuscript he received from his aunt, then other random jottings from students, then his own attempts. He expresses wonder at what is recaptured, why’s and what else’s? To me this could be a mine of lost memories, but fragments to I want to preserve. I think my mind is a trove of unconscious sludge, because I forget so easily. Yet you start writing and there it is!
The night before Kathy died I played the recording of our wedding a third time.
The Redbud “Rising Sun” stands in her memory. Can’t wait till spring.
I held back in her last minutes before I hugged her. Regret. Was I afraid?
42 years feels like a bright blur.
The first day at Interlochen I was afraid to be exposed as an imposter.
Bill Boggs made me a second bass. Turned out he was right.
Nothing is my life is exact, especially pitch. What’s it like to hear it absolutely?
Bill texted he was worried about loud conflict in his neighborhood. I offered him sanctuary, but it calmed down.
Intense satisfaction at a double steal by the Red Sox last night. Velasquez, of all people!
Will I write a book in retirement? That question at every stage of my life. Should retirement be different or would there be a different answer?
Summer of selling off. So much I don’t need, but Kathy wanted. Assault on sentiment.
The Jewish girls I didn’t date, because they weren’t Christian. Has that changed? My church shares a building with a Temple.
Didn’t date much anyway, but seems like they were all from my church in some way. Including Kathy.
My best friend in childhood, Marty, was Jewish. Still communicating via e-mail. Never tried to convert him. Why did I show good sense with boys and not girls?
The willow tree where Marty and I broadcasted an imaginary radio show. He remembered it, but I had forgotten. I remembered the Broadway shows we saw together: Caberet, The Music Man.
Musicals send me into unhealthy fantasy. Had imaginary love affairs with all the leading women of our high school musicals. I thought that love was something that happened to you, and you just waited for it to come. Some unseen force brought the love of your life to your doorstep.
As a teacher I cried at all the high school musicals. Seeing kids starring and succeeding touched something deeply. I had no children, but I took pride in these. It meant a lot to them that I came, but it meant more to me.
Marty gave me an old publicity shot of our sixth grade production of HMS Pinafore. I was the captain and he was the bos’un. Saw the production at Stratford on my birthday this year.
Marty and I read Tom Swift, Jr. together. Still the best reading relationship I ever had. Now I am an erratic reader, a boy with short attention span.
Slow reading plagued my life from the day I tested a reading machine, to a summer of speed readings, to the endless weekends catching up on assignments in my dorm room, to the struggle to finish Bleak House, to the day I stopped reading Fried Green Tomatoes because I had seen the movie.
Trying to revive my prodigal reading habits with Young Adult Fiction. Strangely I am not different from a fifteen-year-old boy struggling to stay with his English reading assignments. This is one of my dark secrets: I am not really a reader, and I teach literacy education to teachers. I struggle to keep pace with them, and now I am nearing retirement.
One of my best writing episodes was writing about my high school years prior to my Fiftieth Reunion last fall. Then, of all surprises, I met entirely new characters at the Reunion. People I barely spoke to in high school. Spent a half hour getting to know Nick LaCarrubba, and then he died a week ago. How precious was that! Nick had responded warmly to my blog memories, shared my love of Mr. Davis, took time to say so on the blog site. A gift from God!
Writing about high school was a mix of confessional, putting it all in perspective, and appreciating my friends in a way I did not as a teenager. It was also an appreciation of my parents who drove me to high school 25 miles away for three months while our house was getting built in Huntington. That first year in Greenlawn was transformative for me, and my parents made it possible.
End of randomness on July 5.