A Spool of Blue Thread

by Anne Tyler

For years, she had been in mourning for the way she had let her life slip through her fingers. Given another chance, she’d told herself, she would take more care to experience it. But lately, she was finding that she had experienced it after all and just forgotten, and now it was returning to her.

I used to think that when I got old, I could sit in a rocking chair and watch my entire past life stream before me like a movie. I can’t imagine where I got that idea—maybe from reading novels? But at any rate: no. Like Abby, I am visited by unexpected flashes rather than the whole narrative. Abby’s memory of that Corningware pan handle, for instance: That was my personal donation to her, from the early 1960s when all brides were given sets of Corningware for their weddings. I hadn’t thought of Corningware in years! But all at once, decades later, up it popped out of nowhere. I can’t wait to see what comes to me next.