I double-checked my numbers this am and of course I was off. So I added 1971 to yesterday’s post. Am fighting the urge to go back and make each of the preceding years a separate post like this one… At least for the moment, onward.
1972: Ninth grade turns into tenth grade and I meet the boy I will marry. The Poseidon Adventure is one of our first dates. Americans have a whole new vocabulary–Watergate, G. Gordon Liddy, wiretaps, Bernstein and Woodward, Deep Throat, impeachment. During the summer I go back to Vermont to camp, and this year cute male counselors are also part of the story. I do “50 French days” and fall in love with Middlebury College. In the fall, I study, carrying home piles of books each night. The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, Brandy, The Lion Sleeps Tonight, Morning Has Broken, Everything I Own, Rocket Man–the clock radio by my bed plays for twenty minutes from the local am station into the darkness of my room.
~
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
—Mary Oliver
I’m feeling nostalgic!!! Where did the time go!!!
Hi Chris! Where did the time go… That’s what I’m hoping to figure out with these posts. Hope all is good with you.
I like the way you view the past.
I’ve always left the time line news to others. I didn’t think to write down my own.
Thanks, May. I’m just writing it down now, what I remember. So it’s not too late…
You look so happy in that picture! I continue to be stunned at how early you found French and took to studying. I didn’t learn how to study until college, and I didn’t become absorbed in study, ever, really, until the MFA. So many things about you were planted in your first, what, 10 years, or earlier, and by the time you were 15 you were almost fully made, or so it seems from these posts. I know of course there is no substitute for the wisdom that comes with living adult decisions. But my goodness. It’s like you took an Alice pill marked “grow up” when you were 5. Does it feel that way to you? Are you marveling at how much you were devouring the world so early?
This photo was taken when I was with friends in NYC–and from there I would be on my way to 9 weeks of camp. So I was happy. (And I loved that shirt.) I went to a private school in Atlanta, and I had so much homework I had no choice but to learn how to study. Which put me way ahead in college. It is amazing to see how much of me was there from early on–maybe not at age 5 but by 10 for sure. I’m enjoying your comments!
It’s such a cute shirt, and I swear I thought that before you mentioned it!
What a beautiful, happy photo!
Thanks, Sarah!
time passes everything changes except ur smile it is still so beautiful …… all those past years are sum up into ur smile. that time will never fades out until ur smile is there on ur face.
Thanks for your kind words, Aishwarya.
ur welcome