Reading: Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook

Moving: swam 1K; weeded back patio

Watching: "Mystic Pizza" and soon "Notting Hill"

Listening: Elvis Costello, Imperial Bedroom

21 June 2001: Stories

I might, one day, have photographs of where RDC went earlier this month. For now, it is a source of some tension, despite his contrition (is that a word?), and until he makes good (round about September, we hope), let me just say that Northern or not, Ireland is a better place for me than for him. Grrr.

I went home, I had a mostly great time, I burned my ass because apparently even I (who ordinarily tan so easily, surrrre) need sunscreen at sea level, I swam in my lake, I waded in the Sound, I clambered on the jetty, I scoped my house (my future one, not the one I grew up in), I talked with my sister, I visited my grandmother, I saw each of my parents, I walked in the rain in a way I wouldn't want search engines to find, I inhaled Essence of Phoebe, I saw the Cowboy Junkies, I sang loudly to Godspell and Imperial Bedroom. (Added 22 June: I saw Jessie. I am going to be smited for not including that earlier.) In short, I have stories.

But not now.

For now, two pictures.

In April of 1989, my sister was a bridesmaid for a high school friend of hers. I guess it must have happened over spring break. I had, with NCS's help, assembled an outfit for my interview to work at Millstone. I would still wear the houndstooth shorts if my ass fit in them; I still wear the white twill shirt. The purple linen blazer, however, was BHM's, and I wore it through his and my sister's beneficence. What I want to know is, did I really like those shoes? I'm hoping not. They epitomize the kind of shoes that Kim Rollins describes as pumps that have lost their heels in a tragic accident. My sister's outfit, as a bridesmaid, goes without saying.

I like this photograph because it's us, really being us. Our mother insisted on a "nice" one, as if this one isn't, with our sunglasses off, posed with nice smiles. That's a terrible, awkward, tense photograph, and I did not borrow it.

One quick story about being home, since this photograph is taken on its front porch: Sunday morning I was in my sister's former bed-, my grandmother's former bed-, my mother's current sewing room. It's still got lots of Granny's stuff in it. On top of a pile of books was A History of the Congregational Church of Old Lyme, Connecticut, 1666-1996. Clearly it was Granny's, not my mother's. Still I asked my mother (my grandmother being absent) if I could have it. She said no, that there were so many books here that she wanted to read, no....To my knowledge the last novel she read was The Shell-Seekers, which I gave her to recuperate with in late summer of 1991, when she had a hysterectomy, and the few feet of shelf space in her house are occupied by knicknacks, phone books, and the Bible (in clear, easy-to-understand, contemporary English). So I took the book, because she'll never miss it, because it goes with my For the Love of Books: A History of the Libraries of Old Lyme, Connecticut and The Lieutenant River, because it has lots of great historical information about the evolution of my town.

There were two new, real books: Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer and Frank McCourt's 'Tis. Apparently the high school where BDL is a "sanitation engineer" scores prominent authors, and he has received these two signed copies. He asked, tipping them off the shelf, if I had ever heard of either of these; I said of course. He said, with disappointment, that if they were first editions they'd be "real valuable." I said he might find them valuable even though they're not first editions if he actually read them. I can't help it. I'm bad. The barb did not seem to hook him, though; he's either too Christianly forgiving to be perturbed or too dense.

There's another picture I've been considering scanning for a while, hesitating because it's really dreadful. Since I finally turned the scanner on for the Blue Bridesmaid Dress that makes my slender sister look like that female who won third place in the Salzburg festival in "Sound of Music," I figured I'd finally do this one too.

When my mother and BDL married, they wanted all their four daughters to stand up with them. This was, of course, a very Right and Proper thing. For some reason, though, perhaps for the same one that placed the verb "obey" in my mother's vows but not in his, they did not consider having his two daughters stand up with him and her two with her. No, instead all four daughters stood with the bride, while the groom's brother stood with him, plus three other men apparently as important to the nuptial pair as their own offspring. Eight attendants at a second wedding. I was silently against this entire plot from the beginning, breaking my silence only to insist that I, rather than a woman she'd known for less than a year, stand second to my own mother (my mother wanted us in birth order until I put my hoof down). From the beginning I was against eight attendants for reasons of excess. Only on the day of the ceremony did I learn why else I should have bowed out of the distasteful proceedings:

(This is also why I don't wear makeup.)