Red's Wrap
Happiness. It's relative.
The Ripeness of Pears: A Dialogue about Age
It’s occurred to me that I might wake up one morning and have nothing left to say.
Is that happening today?
No. I have a bunch of things to say but they’re better left unsaid.
Doesn’t that leave a big pile of words in a heap by the door?
What a poetic way of putting that! Have you just returned from a poetry workshop?
No. Just trying to be more illustrative in my statements, more colorful.
An Orthodox Jewish woman is walking past my house with a tiny little girl with red hair.
Is that significant in some way?
When we were at a park this afternoon, my husband asked me if I wished we were young and had little kids again.
Do you?
Which? Do I wish I was young or wish I had little kids again?
You pick.
The woman next to me at a community meeting was breastfeeding her baby.
And how did that make you feel?
Are you getting me in touch with my feelings? Never mind. It made me feel envious. She was ripe, her breasts were like giant pears, and her baby was tiny, a newborn, and I wondered how she was so at home with what she was doing, so confident, and so full, and I remembered how it was for me, which was not like that, everything was hard and fraught, all of it a test which I thought I failed at the time although eventually it all turned out alright, me and the child, now much grown and beautiful.
There seems to be quite a warehouse of memories there.
More baiting, eh? Yes, there’s a warehouse, but not everything is properly catalogued. Some things are filed under ‘failure’ when they should be filed under ‘ tried to do a good job.’
At least you’re doing some reclassification, as it were.
As it was, so to speak.
One Comment on “The Ripeness of Pears: A Dialogue about Age”
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Snow Door | wisconsinacademy.org
Listen to Jan read her essay “Billy” presented on WUWM’s Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “At the Breakfast Bar” on WUWM Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “The Parish Hall,” on WUWM Lake Effect
“Fury Cannot Touch Me,” Modern Love, NYT, 9/29/11
Our memories, wishes, and dreams are our raw material. I have to say though that I’d never want to be very young again…18? Yech! Maybe as young as I was when my wife and I were dating. I wouldn’t mind having those times together again. But your comments raised a specter for me too. All the stories that I can’t or don’t dare tell.