Amy Loves Books

My son is running for class president.

If only all campaign ads were like this:



The cartoon on the left is Arden saying: "I care. Do you like my campaign manager?"

On the right - that's Mr. T (the campaign manager) saying: "Vote Arden for President Fools!"

And the slogan at the bottom:

"Vote for someone who cares NOT with catchy slogans and Napoleon Dynamite on their posters."

What have you done?

01. Bought everyone in the bar a drink
02. Swam with wild dolphins
03. Climbed a mountain
04. Taken a Ferrari for a test drive
05. Been inside the Great Pyramid
06. Held a tarantula
07. Taken a candlelit bath with someone
08. Said “I love you” and meant it
09. Hugged a tree
10. Bungee jumped
11. Visited Paris
12. Watched a lightning storm at sea
13. Stayed up all night long and saw the sun rise
14. Seen the Northern Lights
15. Gone to a huge sports game (and survived the crush afterwards)
16. Walked the stairs to the top of the leaning Tower of Pisa
17. Grown and eaten your own vegetables
18. Touched an iceberg
19. Slept under the stars
20. Changed a baby’s diaper
21. Taken a trip in a hot air balloon
22. Watched a meteor shower
23. Gotten drunk on champagne
24. Given more than you can afford to charity
25. Looked up at the night sky through a telescope
26. Had an uncontrollable giggling fit at the worst possible moment
27. Had a food fight
28. Bet on a winning horse
29. Asked out a stranger
30. Had a snowball fight
31. Screamed as loudly as you possibly can
32. Held a lamb
33. Seen a total eclipse
34. Ridden a roller coaster
35. Hit a home run
36. Danced like a fool and not cared who was looking
37. Adopted an accent for an entire day
38. Actually felt happy about your life, even for just a moment
39. Had two hard drives for your computer
40. Visited all 50 states
41. Taken care of someone who was drunk.
42. Had amazing friends
43. Danced with a stranger in a foreign country
44. Watched wild whales
45. Stolen a sign
46. Backpacked in Europe.
47. Taken a road-trip
48. Gone rock climbing
49. Midnight walk on the beach
50. Gone sky diving
51. Visited Ireland
52. Been heartbroken longer than you were actually in love
53. In a restaurant, sat at a stranger’s table and had a meal with them
54. Visited Japan
55. Milked a cow
56. Alphabetized your CDs
57. Pretended to be a superhero
58. Sung karaoke
59. Lounged around in bed all day
60. Played touch football
61. Gone scuba diving
62. Kissed in the rain
63. Played in the mud
64. Played in the rain
65. Gone to a drive-in theater
66. Visited the Great Wall of China
67. Started a business
68. Fallen in love and not had your heart broken
69. Toured ancient sites
70. Taken a martial arts class
71. Played D&D for more than 6 hours straight
72. Gotten married
73. Been in a movie
74. Crashed a party
75. Gotten divorced
76. Gone without food for 5 days
77. Made cookies from scratch
78. Won first prize in a costume contest
79. Ridden a gondola in Venice
80. Gotten a tattoo
81. Rafted the Snake River
82. Been on television news programs as an “expert”
83. Got flowers for no reason
84. Performed on stage
85. Been to Las Vegas
86. Recorded music
87. Eaten shark
88. Kissed on the first date
89. Gone to Thailand
90. Bought a house
91. Been in a combat zone
92. Buried one/both of your parents
93. Been on a cruise ship
94. Spoken more than one language fluently
95. Performed in Rocky Horror
96. Raised children
97. Followed your favorite band/singer on tour
99. Taken an exotic bicycle tour in a foreign country
100. Picked up and moved to another city to just start over
101. Walked the Golden Gate Bridge
102. Sang loudly in the car, and didn’t stop when you knew someone was looking
103. Had plastic surgery
104. Survived an accident that you shouldn’t have survived
105. Wrote articles for a large publication
106. Lost over 100 pounds
107. Held someone while they were having a flashback
108. Piloted an airplane
109. Touched a stingray
110. Broken someone’s heart
111. Helped an animal give birth
112. Won money on a T.V. game show
113. Broken a bone
114. Gone on an African photo safari
115. Had a facial part pierced other than your ears
116. Fired a rifle, shotgun, or pistol
117. Eaten mushrooms that were gathered in the wild
118. Ridden a horse
119. Had major surgery
120. Had a snake as a pet
121. Hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon
122. Slept for more than 30 hours over the course of 48 hours
123. Visited more foreign countries than U.S. states
124. Visited all 7 continents
125. Taken a canoe trip that lasted more than 2 days
126. Eaten kangaroo meat
127. Eaten sushi
128. Had your picture in the newspaper
129. Changed someone’s mind about something you care deeply about
130. Gone back to school
131. Parasailed
132. Touched a cockroach
133. Eaten fried green tomatoes
134. Read The Iliad - and the Odyssey
135. Selected one “important” author who you missed in school, and read
136. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
137. Skipped all your school reunions
138. Communicated with someone without sharing a common spoken language
139. Been elected to public office
140. Written your own computer language
141. Thought to yourself that you’re living your dream
142. Had to put someone you love into hospice care
143. Built your own PC from parts
144. Sold your own artwork to someone who didn’t know you
145. Had a booth at a street fair
146. Dyed your hair
147. Been a DJ
148. Shaved your head
149. Caused a car accident
150. Saved someone’s life

via. today's lessons

I've discovered a new playground: it's at the bottom of a sloping hill and has a good variety of structures to play in and on. There are numerous well-shaded benches, but yesterday it was cold in the shade, so I sat in the sun on a short stone wall that safely divided the swingers from the runners and climbers.

A father was walking down the hill towards the playground. A little boy that looked to be around three years old lagged behind him, scuffling his feet in leaves that piled in drifts. Daddy! the child shouted. Daddy! My teacher said IT'S FALL!.

The little boy bent to examine the evidence at his feet: what was green, what he remembered as being UP was now crunchy and brown and DOWN. His father turned towards the boy. "Do you know what causes that?", he asked. The little boy did not look up from the leaves. Yes! he said. His father was unconvinced. "What causes that?", he asked. The little boy was gathering leaves. His voice was loud and excited and had that small child cadence of words being sung. Because he leaves are falling down from the trees.

"No", his father said. He moved closer to the child. I could not hear his scientific explanation; I do not know if he said that the leaves were dead or if he talked about life cycles and the spinning of the planet Earth. Satisfied with his explanation, the boy's father proceeded to the playground. His son followed reluctantly, hands full of collected leaves.

The little boy came into the circle things to climb and stood still, frozen with indecision. He held his arms straight in front of him, his small fists bulging with the leaves he had found. He would have to let go of them to play, and he hesitated for a moment, unwilling to part with his treasure. Then, almost as if they had never matter to him at all, he opened his palms and ran towards the slide.

The leaves fluttered to the ground like wings.

My daughter's great grandmother was named Marion. She had cancer and died shortly after I got engaged, and so, I met most of my husband's extended family for the first time at her funeral.

I met her once, days before her death. I was taken to her bedside in a private suite in Atlanta's most prestigious hospital. She was clearly dying, and the family had all gathered. Wasted by cancer and tiny in the hospital bed and robe, she reminded me of a baby bird. She kept repeating. I never saw the pyramids.

I have been told that she loved to travel. I also knew that she arranged flowers as a hobby. Her china pattern was bright and oriental with a style that each of her three daughters tried to copy, to some extent, in their own decor. My husband never liked her very much.

Gradually, I've been given a few things that were hers: I have the dressmaker's model that she had custom-built so that her gowns and dresses could be hand-tailored. I have a purple velvet gown and a velvet hooded cape the color of port wine. I have her Red Cross nurse's uniform from World War II. It is the color of butter, unstained and untorn.

I have a packet of her papers from her literature classes at an expensive private university. Literature 204: Milton with Miss Hawk and Literature 206: History of the Novel with Miss Tuelle. First and second semester 1934 to 1935.

There is a paper about light imagery and Satan inParadise Lost, a notebook filled with meticulous summaries of each book of The Aenead, and a thirty-two page paper titled "Jane Austen Through Her Letters".

Her writing is thorough and properly annotated, but dull and uninspired. She misspelled the word "dazzled", and Miss Hawk pointed out the mistake with a penciled note in the margin. In the notes on her Jane Austen paper, Miss Tuelle made the following observation: "I feel that your style is immensely wordy, and that the laxity of the sentence-grip is a real limitation, not only keeping your work in the class of immature writing, but blinding your meaning." She went on to criticize Marion for focusing her paper only on the trivial matters in Austen's correspondence.

I think that if these were my papers, I would have been upset by the remarks and would have thrown them out. Instead, my husband's grandmother labeled manilla envelopes in the same careful manuscript that she used to chronicle the destruction of Troy, placed her classwork inside, and kept the papers for the remainder of her life. I wonder about this. Did she keep them as a sort of a protest? Despite the harsh comments, did she not realize that they were not any good? Did she simply keep everything?

I'm drawn to these papers. Underneath Marion's label, my mother-in-law added "For Amy" in black Sharpie marker. I suppose it seemed like a shame to throw them away, and it seemed that I ought to inherit them since they dealt with books. I read and re-read them looking for some break, some spark of who Marion was - perhaps a doodle or a personal note on the margin of the notes - some insertion of what she about Dido. A question mark. There is nothing.

Marion grew up with money. Lots of money. She was an Episcopalian. She married a lawyer who was a non-practicing Jew, the only member of his family to abandon the faith of his fathers. He was from an appropriate social class despite his inappropriate religion, but she did not marry him for his money, as her family was wealthier.

She had four children, three girls and a boy. She named her oldest daughter after herself.

I attended Marion's funeral in 1991. She was buried, per her request, on the side of a mountain in North Carolina, where she had owned a summer house. She had asked for her burial to be accompanied by a single bagpipe player. She wanted him to play, "When The Saints Go Marching In". It was decided, later, that Dixieland jazz was inappropriate for a burial and instead, the bagpipe player played "Amazing Grace", and he walked down the mountainside in his kilt so that the mournful notes faded slowly away. It was hushing and beautiful. I do not think my own funeral will be as lovely.

I have fit what pieces I have together and I find that I do not like Marion very much. I am glad that, in the end, her blood is not my blood. Still, I am haunted by her papers.