Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories: And Other Disasters by Jean Shepherd
My review
rating: 4 of 5 stars
Laugh-out-loud funny stories from a master, in my opinion. Nobody does tongue in cheek gravitas applied to kid life better. Favorite story so far is "County Fair!", but they're all pretty similar. BONUS: In just about every one, someone seems to throw up.
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Take note: as a good many email forwards and signs on local bulletin boards may have told you, today represents a momentous occasion, chronologically speaking.
Just before 5 a.m. today, if I'd have been fully conscious (I'd actually just drifted back off to sleep, after Veda helpfully tried to wake me for the occasion) I could have noted the time and date here as reading 4:56 on 7/8/09.
And, as those many emails and tacked-up signs reminded me, "THIS WILL NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN."
Now, we could get into a very interesting discussion about how arbitrary specific clock alignments are, the counting having begun at an indeterminate point of origin that isn't even universal among humankind, or how well the all-capped statement above could apply to every event, including me writing this and you reading it, but... there's no time!
If you're currently living (and sleeping) in Alaska or points west*, wake up! You've got about fifteen minutes, by the clock on my computer here, to rouse yourself and your drowsy cohorts to celebrate this momentous event.
Remember, THIS (And this, and this, and this) WILL NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN.
* Dang. I'd initially hoped I had plenty of time to notify our friends in Australia -- mainly just Leonie; I don't really know too many others yet -- but my world clock tells me it's already 10 p.m. there by now. Ah well, we can still throw a party tomorrow for 4:56 07/09/09, right?
After she'd handled a particularly tricky bout of getting Veda to sleep this evening, I offered Lope a little apple pie à la mode. When I cut the slice, I noticed that I must have really wanted her to have a nice treat -- you can kind of see where my knife-edge swerved a little deeper into the pie as I carved out from the center. A few more crumbs of richly deserved crust and cinnamon-flavored apple for good ol' Lope.
Penny and her mom, Sept. 1977
Veda and her mom, June 2009
"...there is the unmistakable in-the-middleness that parenthood illuminates for you -- the realization that you might not actually be the center of the universe after all, but that it *does* surround you, in time as well as space ... You see that just as sure as this little being came from you, you came from someone else yourself. The honor then becomes not that you started or finished anything, but simply that you get to take part..."
Yes, now that Veda's officially four and a half months old (which, incidentally, is my favorite number, and I meant to celebrate when she was four and a half weeks old, since after this my next chance is when she's four and a half years old, in August of 2013, and I hope to be around for her 4.5-decade commemorative gala as well), it's fun to look back and see what she looked like waaay back, uh, twelve weeks ago. (Trust me; if you've got somebody this young in the house, a lot happens in a dozen weeks.)
I must also point out that I didn't take these; these are the pictures from Veda's photoshoot with the magnanimous Jessica Marvel, who graciously offered her photography talents as a world-warming present to our daughter. (We have housewarming parties when you move into a new house; why not world-warming?)
Anyway, thanks again, Jess! Come back anytime!
