With so much to do today, how can I possibly blog?
Because, Ruthie, you've got to tell that particular story before it fades and is gone forever.
It begins in the Fox Chase Branch of the Philadelphia Library. I wandered around in my thick furry coat, hands in pockets, my first time in this medium-sized library, comparing it to my home library - the Upper Moreland - and the Abington Library. Primarily, I was looking for a good fiction novel to read while waiting for a friend up the street.
Our home library has cozy reading nooks, as does the Abington, with comfy upholstered chairs. Here, readers sat at tables reading books on hard chairs, although I finally spotted some softer chairs and decided that's where I'd sit when I found the perfect book to read.
The Short Stories of Alice Adams was displayed on a white plastic one-book-only rack. I took it down and looked at her photo on the back inside jacket. A white woman with a cat in her arms. Born in Virginia, lived and died in San Francisco, 1999.
Alice Adams. Not Alice Walker. Nor Alice Munro. Alice Adams. I read the title of the first story - Verlie I Say Unto You - and then the first sentence. A great writer was in my hands. I couldn't wait to get started.
For one blissful hour I barely looked up, so deep was I into the characters of Alice Adams. One particular story "Greyhound People" about people who ride buses detailed that terrible bus-riding problem of the endlessly squalling child on the bus. Today, were Walker alive, she could write about cell-phone talkers on the bus. The folks on this particular Greyhound were united against a passive mother who did nothing to hush up the inane comments of her six-year-old retarded child.
Yesterday I was at the Willow Grove Giant Supermarket and was confronted with a similar situation. Deja vu, I said to myself. Just like in the book!
Soon as I walked into the supermarket I spotted them. The child first. He wasn't retarded, mind you, but he walked on his tiptoes. He was fully clothed in winter attire yet his little feet were cross-eyed as he tiptoed alongside his mother. I didn't feel at all sorry for him. I felt just the way the narrator did in the short story.
There is something direly wrong with his mother, I thought to myself. A child doesn't walk like that on his own.
I set up my laptop in the adjoining coffeeshop and began working on the handout for my breadmaking class this Saturday: Reviving the Ancient Art of Breadmaking, A Workshop for Curious Kids and Their Parents by Ruth Z Deming.
Suddenly I see a woman and child heading my way. There are dozens of empty tables in the coffeeshop but the mother steers him to the table right in front of me.
Did she know? Did she know of my critical disdain?
Oh, well, I thought. I'll figger out the source of the pathology and then I'll get back to writing.
The source was clear. The mother spoke loudly to the little fellow telling him every single thing to do from sitting up in the chair so he didn't spill his chocolate milk to wiping the spills on the table.
I never looked directly at them but you can gain a lot of information with your peripheral vision when you turn your head to look out the window.
Her voice was so loud and constant I tore off tiny pieces of napkin and stuffed them in my ears and then shoved my beret over my ears.
The poor little guy didn't have a chance. He would probly grow up to be a nerdy lawyer. But how would he walk into the room? On tiptoe?
