I did some calculations in my own time, and on average for the past three years I've seen daddy approximately 10 days a year. And I've had phone calls with him on average once in two weeks, of which last roughly five minutes.
No wonder there are days when I want so much to "go home," to come back from school to where daddy is.
Saturday, November 6, 2010
The Age of Innocence, Chapter 9
"Does no one want to know the truth here, Mr. Archer? The real loneliness is living among all these kind people who only ask one to pretend!"
Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence
I love Ellen. She owns this bold beauty that penetrates my densely annotated pages of Wharton. Ellen is rebellious and lovely and peculiar and frank and ineffably charming to Newland. He just doesn't realize he loves her yet. Because he is confined to the societal expectations of New York. Because he is a coward who does not and cannot step out of his fear of being wrong or socially unacceptable. But Ellen has flouted all this effortlessly. Ironically it is she who is more independent and free than he.
Ferry Hall Advisory Board Meeting
She was talking about creative ways to bring Ferry Hall alumni together when she turned to look at me and said, "Projects like yours have lifetime trajectories." And right there I believed and confirmed that being Ferry Hall Prefect is so much more than carrying a name; it is to carry a legacy of these incredible ladies within me.
Rev. Young Winston Davis
His reason for marrying was "to give some lady the privilege and see how it feels to be called husband."
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
On Chesil Beach
And she loved Edward, not with the hot, moist passion she had read about, but warmly, deeply, sometimes like a daughter, sometimes almost maternally. ... She thought he was original, unlike anyone she had ever met. He always had a paper back book, usually history, in his jacket pocket in case he found himself in a queue or a waiting room. He marked what he read with a pencil stub. He was virtually the only man Florence had met who did not smoke. None of his socks matched. He had only one tie, narrow, knitted, dark blue, which he wore nearly all the time with a white shirt.
Ian McEwan, On Chesil Beach
Suddenly remembered this passage today. (I had to pull out my journal and flip to August 24, 2009 to find it.) I don't know how it struck me. Must have been something about Edward's originality, something about his tie. Yes, most likely his tie.
I would ask my mom, What made you fall in love with daddy? And she would say, He's, you know, kind. Yes, mom, I know already daddy's kind. What else? And the else was what I've tried to find, in people and in characters. It's just that Florence found it first in Edward.