I just realized that this week marks the 3 year anniversary of my blog. You’d think I’d have said more in all that time, no?
Three years ago I’d just started my first job out of college, not yet disillusioned by NYC and the working world. And now, well, I’m temporarily back at home trying to figure out what to do next. Here’s hoping.
Rules: Don’t take too long to think about it. List 15 books you’ve read that will always stick with you. They should be the first 15 you can recall in no more than 15 minutes.
These are in no particular order, and if you asked me at another time, they might be different. Well, except for a few.
1. The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
2. The Secret History – Donna Tartt
3. Grasshopper - Ruth Rendell writing as Barbara Vine
4. The House of Mirth – Edith Wharton
5. Harry Potter (all of them) – J.K. Rowling
6. Travels - Michael Crichton
7. Harrison Bergeron (technically a short story) – Kurt Vonnegut
8. The Fountainhead – Ayn Rand
9. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – James Joyce
10. Bel Canto – Ann Patchett
11. The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway
12. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle – David Wroblewski
13. Atonement – Ian McEwan
14. The Sisters Mortland - Sally Beaumann
15. Special Topics in Calamity Physics – Marisha Pessl
Today forty years ago was the day my dad entered the army. Two days earlier he watched the moon landing, and a month later he missed Woodstock. Which he really would have loved.
When he arrived at basic training the sergeant said to the group, “All you boys from New York and Philadelphia put your zip guns on the table.” Zip guns are homemade pistols, so my dad tells me. And he finds it hilarious that the sergeant possibly thought they were carrying weapons. Looking at my dad, now 60 years old, hearing aids in both ears, watching a show about factories on National Geographic, it strikes me as funny too.
He doesn’t talk much about being in the reserves. Recently I asked him why he joined. He had just been accepted to a doctoral program, but you couldn’t get out of the draft for grad school anymore. He was told his number would come up that summer. People were paying ten grand to get into the reserves at that time, but someone or other owed his dad a favor, so my dad got into the reserves and avoided going to Vietnam, where he probably would have lost his hearing to the deafening sounds of war. Instead he lost it listening to a lot of loud music. And probably because of genetics, too.
I guess I just figured I should write this down.
I’ve been back in PA two weeks now, and it still feels unreal. Let me tell you a little about my days: I wake up around 8:15, eat breakfast and watch West Wing reruns on Bravo for a couple hours, go to the gym, sit with my mom while she eats lunch, do yoga, shower, check my email/read/watch tv/run a stray errand until my parents are done with work, then we make/eat dinner and I do more reading/watching tv until bed. I feel like a trophy wife, only without a ring and husband.
We’re currently in the middle of a rain fall right now. I say ‘fall’ instead of shower, because the rain seems so gentle that it really is just falling. Not pounding the pavement or slanting sideays, just falling. The thunder is actually rolling pretty slowly, not violently. It’s a strange thing.
There’s a robin here who desperately wants to come into the house. Several times a day he perches on various window sills and flies at them. My mom calls another bird on the back deck Napoleon, because of his tendency to chase the other birds off the deck. There are bunnies, and groundhogs, and a fox so daring he often climbs up our neighbor’s deck stairs in the middle of the day. There are two baby cardinals who sit side by side on a branch sometimes.
The pharmacist greets my dad by name. The guy who cuts our grass helps me back out of the driveway with a smile and a wave. I feel like I’m in a Walgreens commercial, in a good way. For now, life is easy, if not a little boring.
|
