Recent reads

Not long ago, I finished Francois Mauriac's Viper's Tangle.  Sometimes I ask myself why I took French in high school, especially now that we are so close to Mexico. Why didn't I take Spanish?  I had this romantic idea about French literature and travel to France. I don't think I had actually read any French literature in high school. It often seems fairly dark and cynical. I just skimmed Candide again in order to make an argument with my son's AP language teacher to pick another title, and felt justified in my remembered disapproval of its misanthropy and bitterness.  Francois Mauriac's Viper's Tangle is narrated by a character who is also filled with hate and skepticism, one of Voltaire's heirs.  But Mauriac writes a dark book with a redemptive ending.

In Mauriac's book the narrator, Louis, of a bourgeois if not peasant class background, becomes bitter, although he may naturally be depressive, when he discovers his aristocratic wife married him because her first lover left her.  Her family disapproves of him, although they hope he will make money for the family. And make money he does. He never leaves his wife, but he withholds love from her and the children after the one daughter whom he did love dies.  As his bitterness towards his wife grows, so does his pocketbook and his debasement and the hatred in his heart.  He cheats on his wife but is too cheap to become a hedonist.  

Instead he tortures his family with the threat of settling his wealth on someone else. At first his chosen heir is his sister-in-law's illegitimate son, whom he actually loves because he is everything Louis is not. When that boy dies in the War, he decides to give all his money to his own illegitimate son. But that young man is not very bright and is worried about getting in trouble with the law, so instead he takes a payoff from Louis's son and son-in-law who are spying on him to save the family millions.

The book is written as a confession from Louis to Isabella, his wife, to explain why he wanted to disinherit his family. He has always felt hated and thus hates himself. But a few events open his heart to grace. First, he is capable of love, as is seen by his early love for his wife and his devotion to his daughter Marie and his nephew Luc. Another moment is when the priest who tutors his children calls him a "good man" for forgiving him (He went on an outing to the theater in disobedience to his Superior).

The critical moment of spiritual awakening, or opening of his heart to grace, occurs when Louis learns that Isabella has died before him while he is gone and before he could return home to visit her. He at last has an emotional break down. He realizes he had really wanted reconciliation with her.  He finds charred pieces of her journals in the fireplace and realizes she desired reconciliation too - one line in particular "Forgive, not knowing what you have to forgive" opens his eyes to what he has been blind to.

 In his grief he realizes he did care.  He suddenly gives up his plan to give away his money (he was foiled anyway), and begins to experience peace.  He has a moment of honesty with his children and settles down to live at their estate on a vineyard, a place he begins to value for its beauty rather than as a commodity.  His granddaughter leaves the sanitorium where she was recovering from the breakup of her marriage and comes to live with him. After he dies and his journal is found, she is the one who testifies to his conversion, to the mysticism he experiences at the end of his life when he is able to love at last.  He can see the tangle of vipers in his heart that have nearly poisoned completely his ability to love, but the triumph of the story is that he does see that love, in particular self-sacrificing Christian love, is the only means to peace.  And he begins to forgive himself.

He realizes he needed the aid of some "person, of someone in whom we might all have been reunited, of someone who would, in the eyes of my family, have guaranteed the victory that I had won over myself, of someone who would stand my witness. . . Even the genuinely good cannot, unaided, learn to love. To penetrate beyond the absurdities, the vices, and above all, the stupidities of human creatures, one must possess the secret of a love that the world has now forgotten." 

Louis's conversion is evident when he finally falls on his feet to prayer in desire to express his weakness.  He sees he had been honest about his poisoned heart, but now he realizes that even he can be redeemed.

But this part is the shortest in the book. Most of it is the tale of Louis's hatred and bitterness.  His conversion is not explicit, other than the quote above.  Are French novelists just naturally skeptical of any goodness in human nature?   Imagine Louis lived on after his conversion. Would a novel that describes Louis's life as an attempt at reparation, at clearing his heart of the vipers, or perhaps as an education in love be a hard story to write? A boring story to read?

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The short novella of Thornton Wilder, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, also tells the story of lives of lost souls.  This was a reread for me, after a space of maybe 20 years, and a reminder of why I used to love early 20th century American literature.  It's descriptive without being flowery, direct without being dark, psychological without being sentimental, and sociological without being overtly ideological.  In 1928, it won the Pulitzer Prize for literature, one of three Wilder was awarded.

The story is based on a fictional event, although I think I believed it was based on a true event, until I consulted the all knowing Wikipedia.  There is really an Incan rope bridge over a river in Peru that was still standing in 1864, after nearly 500 years. In the story, the bridge has collapsed with 5 people on it who all died.  Wilder, and one of his characters, an 18th century monk, Brother Juniper, ask the question, "Why these five?" The first chapter is called "Perhaps An Accident." Brother Juniper, who was about to cross the bridge and saw it fall, attempts to piece together biographies of the five who have died to prove God's Providence in letting these five die, while preserving others, like himself.  Is God just in punishing them? Were their lives meant to serve as a lesson? Had they fulfilled what they were called into being to do?

The next three chapters detail the lives of the Marquesa de Montemayor, a rich woman who writes daily letters about local gossip to her estranged daughter in Spain, and her serving girl Pepita who was picked by the Abbess to follow in her footsteps; Esteban, an orphaned twin whose brother had died shortly before from a leg infection and who was left crazed with grief; and Uncle Pio, an old illegitimate Spaniard who loved theater and who helped train Camila the Perichole to become a famous actress. Camila later spurns Uncle Pio and leaves the theater in order to recreate her identity as a wealthy lady, after she becomes the lover of the Viceroy.  She has three children, then suffers smallpox and loses everything.  One of her sons dies with Uncle Pio on the bridge, because Camila was letting him go to get an education.

The last chapter is called "Perhaps an Intention."  Brother Juniper writes his book and tries to come up with a mathematical measurement of a person's goodness and usefulness. He makes a chart of people who died in a plague and comes up empty of pattern. At one point he tears up his calculations and throws them into the sea where "he gazed for an hour upon the great clouds of pearl that hang forever upon the horizon of that sea and extracted from their beauty a resignation that he did not permit his reason to examine."    Although his intentions are good, he is burned for heresy, and calls on St. Francis as hi dies.  His book supposedly survives in a university as an anthropological oddity.

Each of the five who died left behind mourners and people whose lives were transformed by their deaths, in small but notable ways. The Marquesa's last letter detailed a conversion experience upon encountering Pepita's devoted, selfless, and brave love for her Abbess (had she not died would she have remained inspired?) and her letters become famous. Her daughter eventually comes with her baby to visit Pepita's abbess. Camila was in despair at losing her fame and status and beauty by her disfiguring disease, but after she loses her son and the one man who loved her for who she was (Uncle Pio), she also goes to visit the Abbess to talk about her loss and ends up staying to do works of charity.  Esteban had tried to hang himself after the death of his twin, but was saved by a ship's captain, who is one of his few mourners.

The book leaves the question of life's meaning apparently open, as Wilder is quoted as saying on the novel's entry on Wikipedia: "However, the central idea of the work, the justification for a number of human lives that comes up as a result of the sudden collapse of a bridge, stems from friendly arguments with my father, a strict Calvinist. Strict Puritans imagine God all too easily as a petty schoolmaster who minutely weights guilt against merit, and they overlook God's 'Caritas' which is more all-encompassing and powerful. God's love has to transcend his just retribution. But in my novel I have left this question unanswered. As I said earlier, we can only pose the question correctly and clearly, and have faith one will ask the question in the right way."^[3]

The answer discovered by Louis in Viper's Tangle and the Abbess's words that end Wilder's tale seem pretty clear:  "But soon we shall die and all memory of those five will have left the earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning."

Opening the road for other runners

Lately, I have been feeling my age, especially when running.  I have not been running very much or well lately.  My feet hurt from plantar fascitis that I think is compounded by wearing flipflops too much. I've had a sore shoulder for months - it may be a rotator cuff injury or tendinitis in my shoulder, as far as I can tell from an internet diagnosis.  I feel tired most of the time.  At age 43, I am well past the age for making PRs, but I thought I had more miles to run with grace; instead I feel like a creaky grandma in running shoes.

A running friend from Guam recently visited, and we rehashed some races, and  he recounted his own successes (he's at least 10 years older) and those of other running club members we knew. It made me miss competing in races and triathlons. Another Guam friend recently participated in a local half Ironman triathlon and did well. I received an invitation to join a team for a Ragnar relay. But I haven't felt good running for weeks, maybe months.

Running used to make me feel younger, freer, stronger.  But I haven't run painfree for a long time. Cramped, achey, and tired are better adjectives for the way I feeling during and after my long runs.

This slump will probably end with the right healing.  I've been making some changes and trying to do some strengthening and stretching exercises and to cross-train a little more. More weights, yoga, and swimming should help recalibrate my physical well-being after the busy schedule of the spring and summer took a mental and physical toll. And spiritual as well. Slumps usually apply across the board.

The good thing is with the return of our fall routine, we've had a return of a sense of well-being throughout the house. I'm only teaching one class, the kids' schedule is full but not hectic, and although or because we've had a lot of company lately, a sense of order has been maintained - at least I've stayed on top of the dishes and laundry.

Like the nagging aches of my physical injuries, I still have a fair share of things to fret about - the new math program at the kids' school (group work every day!), trying to balance the kids' social lives and family time without causing an insurrection, trying to prevent the toddler from becoming a tyrant. (Her latest tool of manipulation: to announce "But I LOVE it!" when something or someone is about to go away) But other conditions have brought peace and have lessened my summer anxieties - the college kids are busy and happy, the middle kids are happy, the youngest are mostly happy. Teaching CRE is keeping me mindful lately at Mass. Our cups are full.

So I'm hopeful that my physical aches will fade before too long without excessive reliance on ibuprofen. I'm hopeful that I can maintain, maybe not peak fitness, but a high level of endurance and speed, not because I want to compete for something, but because I like feeling fast and I like running far.

All of this background information is predicated on pointing out an article I just read about a women and running. A couple days ago I picked up an April issue of Runner's World someone left at the Little Free Library at the beach.  It was dedicated to the Boston Marathon. One of the feature articles was a profile of Roberta Gibb, the first woman to run in the Boston Marathon - albeit illegally.  At the time, 1966, the longest race for women was a mile and a half. I couldn't believe it when I read that. I do sometimes have to acknowledge a debt to the feminist movement.  But Gibb didn't run the marathon to make some righteous statement about women's liberation, but because she liked running far. She wanted to see if she could do it.

As she says about being turned down as an entrant to the marathon because of the limitation of women's races:  “At first I just laughed, it was just so ridiculous,” Gibb says. “I was running two or three hours a day, and it made me feel so wonderful. I thought, If only everyone else could feel as good as I feel when I’m running, it would probably solve most of the world’s problems."

Gibb was going on two and three hour runs in her nursing shoes.  She didn't even have running shoes, although she bought a pair for the marathon. She wore her brother's Bermuda shorts and a black bathing suit under a hoodie and ran without energy gels or performance drinks or compression gear. She didn't do it to prove a point or to make a statement but because when she watched runners, she wanted to run, too.

"...she stood on the sidewalk, mid-marathon, and watched the runners file past. Gibb didn’t know where they had started, or where they were going. But she was mesmerized. “I felt that I had witnessed an ancient yet civilized tribe that was in touch with the most primitive human traits,” she says. “They looked so natural. That afternoon, something inside me decided that I was going to run the Boston Marathon. It was an edict from my soul.” She began her training the next day."

Her training was nothing like the sophisticated regimen many runners follow today. But she still clocked in at 3:21. That's just about 7:40 minute miles for 26 miles. She was running faster than than until late in the race - which gets hilly - when she developed blisters.

Gibb held steady through the Newton Hills, encouraged by Alton Chamberlin, an upstate New York runner. He told her they were on seven-minute pace. And Stalzer continued to tail Gibb as close as he could. “I was surprised at how strongly she took the hills,” he says. “I had to work very hard to stay close. She was a wonderful-looking runner.”

Instead of being shamed and harrassed, she was admired by most of the other runners.  The college students from Wellesley College broke into a roar when she ran into view and formed a tunnel for her to run through. She also had another moving encounter during the event:

"Beyond Wellesley, Gibb noticed a woman holding a child. As she passed, the woman chanted, “Ave Maria. Ave Maria.” The scene struck a chord, and Gibb felt her eyes dampen. “It was as if she knew I wanted children,” she says. “And that I consider motherhood among a woman’s highest callings.”

Gibb was met by photographers and journalists and the Massachusetts governor at the end of the race and featured making fudge and looking housewifely in a magazine article.  She ran the race the next two years without a race bib. The Boston Marathon wasn't opened to women until 1972, and it wasn't until 1996 that her achievements were recognized.

"In 1996, on the event’s centennial, Gibb was finally recognized for her three consecutive Boston wins. The BAA awarded both her and Sara Mae Berman—also a three-time winner, in 1969, ‘70, and ‘71—their long-overdue winner’s medals. “Next to the day my son was born, it was the happiest day of my life,” Gibb says. “I didn’t feel any anger or resentment at all [toward the BAA], just pure joy.”"

Gibb continued to run and race for years and ran her PR at age 39 in the NYC marathon. She practiced law for many years before retiring to become an artist. One year she was asked to carve statues for race trophies for the Olympic Marathon Trials in 1983. She continues to create sculptures and paintings and to practice the art of appreciation.

 “My father would take me to the beach and challenge me to figure out where the ripples in the sand came from. I felt transported by the beauty of everything I saw, and I’m still trying to piece together the miraculous patterns of life.”

"...Our stroll around Rockport meanders through a wooded preserve. I stoop to remove a turtle from the road; when I turn back to Gibb, she’s staring at a leaf in her hand. It’s mostly dead and brown, but with two spectacular veins of neon red and green. “I wonder what made this leaf produce these colors?” she asks. “Isn’t it amazing, the miracles around us, if only we take time to notice them?”"

She thought about running the marathon this year for the fiftieth anniversary of her race, but was parade marshal instead. She has nothing to prove. She's over 70 and still puts in hours on the road or trails.

"Gibb never sought recognition for what she did. Instead, she has embodied a lifestyle that will sound familiar to runners. She runs for the joy, challenge, personal exploration, and quiet fulfillment of it. She runs to commune with nature and connect with her own animalism. She runs because something stirs her, and that is enough."

 I have to admit I teared up a little bit as I read this article.

http://www.runnersworld.com/boston-marathon/first-lady-of-boston

Reading about identity

A couple nights ago I had my book club over for our discussion of Glennon Doyle Melton's Carry On, Warrior.  I was a little anxious about the meeting because Melton takes some unorthodox views towards some controversial issues, most notably abortion. She is very frank about having had an abortion in her youth.  She later gets pregnant out of wedlock again, but gets married and has the baby and gets clean after being addicted to alcohol and drugs and having an eating disorder, among other psychological and emotional dysfunctions. Some of the women in my book club loved this book because of her descriptive and funny presentation of the messiness of life, and some did not love it because of Melton's controversial views, not just of abortion, but of many of the hot button social issues.   I was a little worried about strong opinions being expressed and feelings being hurt.

Happily, the discussion was very democratic and light hearted.  People mentioned some favorite parts and some parts that were troubling and shared favorite quotes.  A few people were honest about not liking it and why, but in a way that wasn't confrontational.  Melton might be a hard person to have as a friend, but she has a great talent for storytelling and a gift for bringing out a truth from a moment of reflection.   I like her take on the "golden coin" she would like to give her kids - one side confidence from knowing they are a child of God and the other side humility from knowing that everyone else is also.  Her comment on "letting love win" in an argument, instead of defending our ego was good. Another good marriage tip was the anecdote about how her husband leaves out a glass of wine for her each night and she makes his coffee in the morning, which is definitely a Mother Teresa do small things with great love act.

Other notable parts: her anti "carpe diem" post that went viral is about how parenting is like mountain climbing and writing and other difficult things - they are hard work, but moments of joy (Kairos moments she calls them) outweigh the suffering.  She also has a Catholic perspective on the "God shaped hole" that we all try to fill with something instead of God - a St. Augustine reference.  Another Catholic moment is when she references the rule of St. Benedict - "when thorns of contention arise, daily forgive, and be ready to accept forgiveness" and "listen with the ear of the heart."    Another "Catholic" moment is when she talks about focusing on the crucifixion - when suffering happens, remember the resurrection follows.

Finally, she is good at recognizing what lessons to impart to our kids: to learn that to be human is "to love and forgive." To be compassionate toward the lonely kids. And Robert Fulghum's message that "Peace is not the absences of conflict but the ability to cope."  And the idea that we all have gifts that are sometimes hard to identify but are our bridge to others' hearts if we use them well.

I liked the book because of these moments of insight, but I struggle with how I feel about writers like Melton, Anne Lamott, Kathleen Norris, etc. These are writers who are openly and devotedly Christian, but have unorthodox views on social issues and call God "she," among other theological quirks. On the one hand, these women are really good writers - engaging tones, vivid descriptions, heart tugging stories of recovery and redemption, and honest accountings of faults.  They draw people in and present a face to Christianity that is attractive to people who are otherwise repelled by the apparent hypocrisies of many Christians.

What is a turn off to me is when Melton uses cute phrases like "life is brutiful." She use strong language, which can be a put off to me also - for instance, the three prayers she tries to remember to pray are 'please, thank you, and wtf?" Why the last? It's memorable - but too cute. And I don't really think of myself as a warrior. Maybe I'm not fighting big enough battles. My addictions are all pretty minor compared to Melton's.  But some people find these metaphors memorable and real or authentic, which is a part of the attraction of these writers.

But this claim to "authenticity" is another part of what I struggle with. These are writers, I want to say. They specialize in storytelling - making stuff up.  Granted, writers fabricate and exaggerate and manipulate reality sometimes - a lot of the time - to get at something essential and true - but also some times that epiphany often isn't recognized until later, maybe even in the writing.  I can't help but feel a little skeptical of Melton's claim to be a truth teller.  She tells a good story, and most good stories have a big truth buried under a lot of fabrication and editing.  Melton shares some great insights, but how much does she filter what she shares based on keeping and expanding her audience?

Yesterday, I spent a good part of the day reading her second book, Love Warrior, which reveals a lot more than her first book or her blog. I actually liked this book better, mostly because it was a narrative and not a collection of edited blog posts, and it seemed more honest.  It focuses on her fall into bulimia, drug and alcohol abuse, followed by her sudden marriage, her recovery from bulimia and drug and alcohol abuse, (in which Mary plays a role), and then the failing of her marriage because of pornography, adultery, and an inability to communicate.  The book reveals what a wonderful sister and parents Melton has, along with describing some of the lessons she learned as she healed - the welcoming arms of Mary leading to Christ, the reassurance that she is loved by God as she is, the method of just focusing on doing the next right thing, the need to face pain and suffering instead of hiding from it, the ability to balance tension (developed in a yoga class), the desire to feel known, the difference between wanting to be full of beauty and beautiful and between wanting to be desired and being loved, the love and protectiveness she feels for her children, the pain and vulnerability that loving another person requires, the need to reconcile soul, mind, and body.

At the end of the book it looks like the marriage is on the road to recovery because Melton and her husband learn to be more honest with each other, but just before the book released Melton revealed that she and her husband are separating.  The reason isn't revealed online, but Melton's book does illustrate how deeply wounded she was by her husband's infidelity. I would think that kind of injury to a marriage is difficult to heal, and the marriage began on rocky ground.

It's always sad when a marriage fails, for the family, for the couple, for the greater community that needs strong marriages to flourish.   Who knows what really is at the heart of their separation, but the reason given on the website was that though they had experienced healing, she had healed into a different person. I hope that is the reason, and not that the success she now has has made her want different things.  Something about claiming to be a new person doesn't sound authentic to me.  We all are changing all the time, becoming new people every day.  There is a part in Love Warrior about her search for her true self while she is sitting on the beach that leads me to wonder who is my true self? I don't think I would find her on the beach. The faces I present to my kids, to my husband, to my family, to my friends, to strangers are all a little different, but they are all me.  My mind changes daily. 

So the books left me uncomfortable.  Maybe I do need to be more self-aware.  More likely I need to be less. I sometimes think I should write a manifesto of what I believe - or a family mission statement, or some kind of identity statement - something that would remind me what we stand for when faced with difficult choices, but my mind changes too often for that.  

New routines

The days have been a lot quieter around here with two kids off to college and only five at home.  How did we come to this stage so quickly?  The sense that I am missing something or someone is constantly gnawing at me. Five seems like a small number, but I still can't quite keep track of everything. I was late to pick up the baby at the sitters after an appointment because I thought I had time to run a quick errand.  And I completely forgot to pick up the fifth grader on Tuesday. She got left in aftercare for an hour. An hour. I didn't remember I had to go pick her up until her brother asked where she was when he came home from practice. Bad mom moment. Granted she had only had one full day of school because last week she had a week of half days, but I was in la-la land organizing photographs on the computer and trying to figure out some of our new technology (a new printer and an old laptop left behind by one of the college kids who upgraded his device).

Despite those lapses, for the most part we are resuming order around here.  When we returned from summer vacation and dropping the college kids off at school, the youngers quickly rearranged the bedrooms to establish a new layout in which three of them now have their own rooms. Yes, we have five bedrooms, a luxury. When the college kids come home, they will get their spaces back, but despite the clouds of dust the moving around kicked up, I'm happy about the arrangement myself. Everyone filled at least one bag of give away clothes and toys. Piles of dust and hairballs from under the bed spaces were swept out for the first time in a long time. No one can blame someone else for the mess on the floor. I cleaned out some of my clothes that have been hanging around for fifteen years, and gave away some of the baby's things that she didn't really wear at all because she grew a lot all of a sudden, and now we are feeling all tidied up and ready for the fresh start that fall brings.

New school and activity schedules are posted on the calendar. New folders and binders are organized for assignments. My desk is cleaned out and a large stack of papers has been either filed (i.e. stashed in a box in the basement) or recycled. I even posted a couple of a change of address forms for some financial documents that I hadn't yet sent in even though we have been in this house for a year.

I have this feeling that I need to tidy up a lot more than desks and closets.  The busy busy summer resulted in short tempers, gray hairs, five extra pounds, and a constant gnawing sense of loss.  Time, time, I need more time! The baby talks in complete sentences. The second child is off to college. The fourth child is in high school. What happened to the long days of summer spent lolling around the neighborhood pool or some playground while pudgy kids splashed and climbed, and it seemed that all we had was time?

I am still feeling thankful for vacation, for the opportunity to reset and refocus. We at least had a few days of nothing to do. Trying to work, albeit from home online, and keep up with the kids left me wrung out and anxious from all that I was failing to do.

Now that the house is quiet for a moment (the baby - I should say toddler - is napping and the kids are at school), and my class load has shrunk from four to one course, I can hear thoughts rattling around again. I made it to morning Mass one day last week. The toddler looked at picture books, and I listened, instead of listing. I missed having our big kids at Sunday Mass, but I was full of gratitude and happiness for them to be in their world.  I was grateful to see the other kids happy to be heading back to school.  Things are good.  I can think of a million little ways to improve upon their school, their faith formation, our routines at home, etc, but things are good.  For the moment: relief.  Praise and thanksgiving are again in the routine.

In memoriam

On September 11, 2001, I got a call from my mother- in-law asking if everything was okay on base. We were living in northern Illinois at the time, and my husband was stationed at the Navy's only boot camp. I had no idea why she was asking me if we were okay. It reminded me of the call years before when my mom called to see if my husband's - then boyfriend's - mom and dad were okay - that was the day the Oklahoma City Federal Building was destroyed in April, 1995. Six years later I pulled our tv out of the closet where we stored it and turned on the news.

I am not alone in remembering the surreal feeling of watching what was happening in New York City and then hearing the reports of the Pentagon and Flight 93.

My mom called a little later to ask if my husband knew anything more. Of course not. He was a lieutenant on shore duty. During another call she asked if this would affect him - would he have to do anything or go anywhere?  No, I assured her. He's a lieutenant on shore duty.

Fifteen years later I've had to revise that answer.  He has spent time in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Not as long as many people, but enough for me.  And when I hear about what others have had to go through - deployment after deployment - I am grateful our time apart has been so minimal in comparison.  But the events of 9/11 changed my husband's commitment to the Navy from paying back for an ROTC scholarship to a career.  And while those events therefore also changed the way I imagined our life together, they didn't change it as drastically as they changed the lives of those who died and of their families.

In fifteen years there is no one whose life has not been touched in some way by this interminable war. On Sunday evening we went to our community's service to mark the fifteenth anniversary of 9/11.  The words of the speaker were moving, but not so much as the reports of a friend's son who died or a neighbor's fiance.  More moving was the playing of Taps, uninterrupted by another sound in the big park filled with hundreds of people, including a passel of kids to whom 15 years is as far away as the Vietnam War, and the Korean War, and the World Wars.

I was up early Saturday to run. I was a mile or so from the base when the National Anthem began to play over the base loudspeakers. They were raising the flags on the base.  I saw an older gentleman walking down the bike path stop and stand at attention.  Most people, myself included, don't always stop what they are doing when they aren't on base or in front of a flag for the playing of the National Anthem.  But this weekend, I did.

A Kate Chopin story

Here is a link to a Kate Chopin story I hadn't read that I came across looking for something for my class. It's a good one about a Creole woman suddenly put in charge of four children. It takes a different turn than many of Chopin's stories.

https://americanliterature.com/author/kate-chopin/short-story/regret