A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

by Betty Smith

There’s a long, long time yet before fifty years…millions of hours of time. But one hour has gone already since I sat here…one hour less to live…one hour gone away from all the hours of my life.

“Dear God,” she prayed, “let me be something every minute of every hour of my life. Let me be gay; let me be sad. Let me be cold; let me be warm. Let me be hungry…have too much to eat. Let me be ragged or well dressed. Let me be sincere—be deceitful. Let me be truthful; let me be a liar. Let me be honorable and let me sin. Only let me be something every blessed minute. And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost.”

“To look at everything always as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time: Thus is your time on earth filled with glory.”

Eyes changed after they looked at new things. If in the years to be she were to come back, her new eyes might make everything seem different from the way she saw it now. The way it was now was the way she wanted to remember it.