1) Mother would have been 94 today. This was Daddy’s favorite photo of her, a candid he took one morning without any warning. (Mother did not prefer candids; she liked everyone posed and smiling best.) He just said her name or “Look up,” and this is the result. And we really see her at her best here.
1a) This was taken during her morning devotional, which would end with the newspaper, a practice I’ve added to my own routine over the last few years — little realizing I was imitating her. And seeing this photo again makes me doubly glad I chose to take her Lamsa Bible, with which I begin my own morning devotional. Of course my selection of devotional literature is broader than hers; while I sometimes include the C.S. Lewis daily readings she gave me, I also range through Baltasar Gracian, Walt Whitman, Henry Beston, Marie Kondo, always finishing with Mason Currey’s Daily Rituals: How Artists Work.
1b) And also my cousin Roger Hutchison’s The Art of Calm, which came out last year. Today’s reading, “Friend,” included this: “While true friendship is one of life’s greatest gifts, ceasing to be friends with a person is one of its most challenging moments. Why do these endings hurt so much? And then there are friendships that you thought were everlasting. They sometimes end too, and you don’t know why . . . But, like with anything, friendships change and grow. Friendships end. Friendships have a life of their own.” This hit me poignantly as I adjust to someone’s change toward me which I don’t understand.
2) In other news, I continue to plough slowly through my dozens of unread or partially read books. I have finished M.F.K. Fisher’s Here Let Us Feast, which really was a delightful feast; its most lasting image, I’m afraid, was the fascinating, horrifying dinner in Booth Tarkington’s Alice Adams. And I also polished off 21: Every Day Was New Year’s Eve by H. Peter Kriendler, his memoir of his family’s fabled elite Manhattan restaurant (which I was surprised to learn was a victim of the pandemic.)
2b) I don’t quite know how I ended up with a collection of Manhattan nightspot memoirs, but the 21 Club now joins my books about the Stork Club and the Algonquin Hotel and the Colony Bar in the High Society section of my library.
2b) I’ve now snatched off the stack Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own, by Eddie S. Glaude, Jr. This will be a very different sort of read altogether! But necessary, and not just for me either.
3) This afternoon will probably be passed in searching for Mother’s bride’s book and other family wedding paraphernalia (news clippings from my grandparents’ weddings, specifically), in anticipation of National Weddings Month next month. And for dinner, recipes from the Pirate’s Pantry, which pleased her so much to give me for Christmas many years ago, and from which I’ve gotten some good recipes.