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then shoes, jewelry, a spray of perfume. I’d be faint with the heat in my column of clothes by the time I came downstairs.
then shoes, jewelry, a spray of perfume. I’d be faint with the heat in my column of clothes by the time I came downstairs.
helpmeet
she had the healthy, athletic, genetic—as I thought of it—confidence of one born to wealth. The first thing she asked me, in fact, was if I played tennis; she was looking for a partner. I did not.
she had the healthy, athletic, genetic—as I thought of it—confidence of one born to wealth. The first thing she asked me, in fact, was if I played tennis; she was looking for a partner. I did not.
I’d noticed this before, among girls of her tribe: they knew an easy mark, a girl of lesser means who would be reflexively—genetically—disposed to do for her whatever she asked.
Righteous indignation was exhausting to maintain, even as a silent partner.
The Catholic Intelligence Agency was the joke.
The Catholic Intelligence Agency was the joke.
I’m sure it all seems absurd to you. It does to me. How earnestly we imagined that bleak future—the diabolical disorientation that would transform our innocent lives. Although, recounting it now, it dawns on me that there are four hundred old souls in my assisted-living facility. No resident under seventy. I don’t know a single one of my contemporaries who lives with her family.
I’m sure it all seems absurd to you. It does to me. How earnestly we imagined that bleak future—the diabolical disorientation that would transform our innocent lives. Although, recounting it now, it dawns on me that there are four hundred old souls in my assisted-living facility. No resident under seventy. I don’t know a single one of my contemporaries who lives with her family.
So maybe our dystopian fantasies were not so far-fetched after all. What’s the line from Emily Dickinson? “While we were fearing it, it came.” That’s a joke. Born of this old lady’s nostalgia for a lost world, flawed as it was.
So maybe our dystopian fantasies were not so far-fetched after all. What’s the line from Emily Dickinson? “While we were fearing it, it came.” That’s a joke. Born of this old lady’s nostalgia for a lost world, flawed as it was.
“Tikkun olam.” He smiled at us all. An ancient midrash, he explained. “Your Mr. Tannen would know it,” he told me. “It means ‘repair the world.’” He gazed at Stella across the candlelight, a favorite student. “The Jews know that everything God has created is in need of repair, flawed and imperfect.” He gestured. “Kind of like this house. Fix one thing, for certain something somewhere else is already broken.” Aunt Lorraine laughed quietly, her eyes cast down. “Easy enough to live with this when you’re old like us,” he went on, “but when you’re young,” and he paused to run his hand over his bald
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“Tikkun olam.” He smiled at us all. An ancient midrash, he explained. “Your Mr. Tannen would know it,” he told me. “It means ‘repair the world.’” He gazed at Stella across the candlelight, a favorite student. “The Jews know that everything God has created is in need of repair, flawed and imperfect.” He gestured. “Kind of like this house. Fix one thing, for certain something somewhere else is already broken.” Aunt Lorraine laughed quietly, her eyes cast down. “Easy enough to live with this when you’re old like us,” he went on, “but when you’re young,” and he paused to run his hand over his bald pate, his little apostolic flame of white baby hair. “When you’re young, it’s fuel to the fire of a sympathetic heart.”
“There’s a real danger in the bestowing of gifts upon the hopeless only to inflate the ego of the one who does the bestowing.”
Poetry, he said, is in the world well before a poet finds it. Its source is the unspoken. The unspoken is always translatable.
Poetry, he said, is in the world well before a poet finds it. Its source is the unspoken. The unspoken is always translatable.
to fully understand what it meant to be a family with such a child. Impossible not to feel, ultimately, that you can’t imagine their pain or their love or their resilience. Did they ever grow numb to the disappointment? I wondered. Did they ever grow immune to the daily tug of regret, the wish, hour by hour, that the poor kid had been formed otherwise?
to fully understand what it meant to be a family with such a child. Impossible not to feel, ultimately, that you can’t imagine their pain or their love or their resilience. Did they ever grow numb to the disappointment? I wondered. Did they ever grow immune to the daily tug of regret, the wish, hour by hour, that the poor kid had been formed otherwise?
Truth salted and sweetened, of course, with the arrogance of youth. That is to say, all our ideas about the world made absolutely delicious by what we were certain no one before us had ever known or understood—not the way we did: mendacity, greed, hypocrisy, the corporate world’s hunger for profit, the political world’s hunger for power, the prevalence of evil intent, even among the people we knew, the people we loved.
Truth salted and sweetened, of course, with the arrogance of youth. That is to say, all our ideas about the world made absolutely delicious by what we were certain no one before us had ever known or understood—not the way we did: mendacity, greed, hypocrisy, the corporate world’s hunger for profit, the political world’s hunger for power, the prevalence of evil intent, even among the people we knew, the people we loved.
“Where there is love,” Charlene told me, patiently translating Minh-Linh’s words, “a smallpox scar is as charming as a dimple.”
“Where there is love,” Charlene told me, patiently translating Minh-Linh’s words, “a smallpox scar is as charming as a dimple.”
