Soon and Now

Holy smokes it's May!  

Soon will be days of slow mornings with sun on my face.  

Soon will be days of dirty dirty feet and hands from being in the garden dirt.  

Soon will be days of spur of the moment meet ups with friends and their babies to visit and pick rocks out of scraped knees.  

Soon will be sessions of visiting on the patio with a glass of wine in my hand and a beer in his.  

Soon will be days of family meals with the windows open.  

Soon.  

But for now, I'll take book club on the last Friday evening of every month.  It happens like clock work and I wouldn't miss a Friday unless I had a fish hook in my ankle because that happened once.  Book club, oh book club, you fuel my soul.  To talk about words with women who are all so different is a gift; we are like throwing salt, pepper, paprika, garlic, cajun, and cayenne all into a fiery mix and letting it simmer and meld together creating something which works.  Yes, it works.  Because we are free and open to think anything and more importantly, say anything.  

Truly a beautiful thing.  Might I also add going to book club with the sun just starting it's descent on the old car parked on the street instead of the already gone dark sky of usual was like that of a spring dance. 

 

Truly a beautiful thing.  Even if the next morning, you rise with a mild pounding in the back of your head and your run is like that of a drunk chicken on a treadmill.  Not that I would know or anything. 

We read Rules of Civility by Amor Towles in April.  

Here are a few of my favorite quotes from the charmingly crafted tale.  

"I have no doubt that they were the right choices for me.  And at the same time, I know that right choices by definition are the means by which life crystallizes loss."  

"It happens to all of us.  It's just a question of how many stops it takes.  Two for some.  Three for others.  Sixty-eighth Street.  Fifty-ninth.  Fifty-first.  Grand Central.  What a relief it was, those few minutes with our guard let down and our gaze inexact, finding the one true solace that human isolation allows."  

"It was a matter of making it through the night, which is often harder that in sounds, and always a very individual business."  

"In the master bedroom, the drapes were open and the city glittered like a diamond necklace that knows exactly whom it's within the reach of."  

"I freed my hands and put a palm on the smooth skin of his cheek, taking comfort in the well-counseled patience for that which bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and most important, endures them."  

"Slurring is the cursive of speech, I observed."  

"Whatever setbacks he had faced in his life, he said, however daunting or dispiriting the unfolding of events, he always knew that he would make it through, as long as when he woke in the morning he was looking forward to his first cup of coffee.  Only decades later would I realize that he had been giving me a piece of advice." 

 

"Uncompromising purpose and the search for eternal truth have an unquestionable sex appeal for the young and high-minded; but when a person loses the ability to take pleasure in the mundane - in the cigarette on the stoop or the gingersnap in the bath - she has probably put herself in unnecessary danger.  What my father was trying to tell me, as he neared the conclusion of his own course, was that this risk should not be treated lightly: One must be prepared to fight for one's simple pleasures and to defend against elegance and erudition and all manner of glamorous enticements." 

And this one I read while sitting in an airport in San Antonio.  I could not help nod my Midwestern blonde head along with every word.  

"One of the greatest advantages that the Midwestern girls had was that you couldn't tell them apart.  You can always tell a rich New York girl from a poor one.  And you can tell a rich Boston girl from a poor one.  After all, that's what accents and manners are there for.  But to the native New Yorker, the Midwestern girls all looked and sounded the same." 

I take that as a compliment.  Yes I do.  

Also, can we simply take a moment for early morning airport reading?  We can.  Thank you.