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hand ballet
The day Lou Reed died shouldn’t have been particularly relevant, but I remember it. I remember the way the afternoon sun made shadows on my daughter’s fingers. Graceful and elegant. Just a twinkling ago, my baby girl first discovered her hands. For me, her besotted mother, it was a magical milestone in her development. She was surely the first child to ever make such a discovery, her little fingers in constant motion. Her father and I called it “hand ballet.” Transfixed, as though under a spell, she paid rapt attention, staring intently, unblinking, at the dancing fingers that would soon cooperate to clap hands, tie laces, make music, whisk eggs, and wipe…
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Selective recall …
It used to be that I'd file stuff away in a mental cabinet and retrieve it later, usually right after the time I needed it … people's names, titles of movies, passwords, the season finale of whatever series that won't be back until next year.
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What Goes Around … Murphy Brown
Half-watching The Emmy’s, I looked up when Candice Bergen took the stage in a sparkly dress. Bergen has always had a relevance in my “American life.” In December 1988, shortly after she showed up as Murphy Brown on primetime TV, I took up permanent residence in the USA. And for the next decade, I liked knowing I could find her if I needed her on a Thursday night at nine o’clock. For many women, Murphy Brown was what Mary Tyler Moore had been to Candice Bergen, “I think Mary Tyler Moore really made women feel they were entitled to a career and to be defined without a man.” Following Moore’s…
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9/11, Anything can Happen, Billy Collins, Healing Field Tempe, Memoir, Remembering September 11th, Seamus Heaney, Terrorism, Themes of childhood
In the Bluest Sky
In the parlance of aviation, a "severe clear" sky, so intensely blue with seemingly unlimited visibility and air so pure, it can blind a pilot.
