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July 30 - July 31, 2025
I would rather be old than a grown-up. All grown-ups are angry, it’s just children and old people who laugh.”
Almost all grown adults walk around full of regret over a good-bye they wish they’d been able to go back and say better.
Mathematics has blessed the boy in that sense, because he’s no longer afraid of the thing almost everyone else is terrified of: infinity. Noah loves space because it never ends. It never dies. It’s the one thing in his life which won’t ever leave him.
“You never became ordinary to me, my love. You were electric shocks and fire.”
That’s one good thing about forgetting things. You forget the things that hurt too.”
“Like constantly searching for something in your pockets. First you lose the small things, then it’s the big ones. It starts with keys and ends with people.”
“I miss all our most ordinary things. Breakfast on the veranda. Weeds in the flower beds.”
“I miss the dawn. The way it stamped its feet at the end of the water, increasingly frustrated and impatient, until there was no more holding back the sun. The way it sparkled right across the lake, reached the stones by the jetty and came onto land, its warm hands in our garden, pouring gentle light into our house, letting us kick off the covers and start the day. I miss you then, darling sleepy you. Miss you there.”
“We lived an extraordinarily ordinary life.” “An ordinarily e...
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“She got lost in my heart, I think. Couldn’t find her way out. Your grandma always had a terrible sense of direction. She could get lost on an escalator.”
once your good-bye is perfect, you have to leave me and not look back. Live your life. It’s an awful thing to miss someone who’s still here.”
“No. Because if you forget me then you’ll just get the chance to get to know me again. And you’ll like that, because I’m actually a pretty cool person to get to know.”
“But the universe gave you both Noah. He’s the bridge between you. That’s why we get the chance to spoil our grandchildren, because by doing that we’re apologizing to our children.”
It’s a big universe to be angry at but a long life to have company in.
