1. Our new lunch containers. Picked them up for $5 at Old Navy. Remind me of Bento boxes, but fewer pieces. Easy to clean and pack: room for sandwich, fruit, and crunchy thing. No more plastic baggies!
2. This passage from The Iliad, book 6. I almost started crying when I was reading it outloud in class last night. How many times have I seen a kid be shy with their dad in uniform?
Andromache, shedding tears, clinging to his arm as she spoke these words:
"Possessed is what you are, Hector. Your courage
Is going to kill you, and you have no feeling left
For your little boy or for me, the luckless woman
Who will soon be your widow....
Hector, you are my father, you are my mother,
You are my brother and my blossoming husband.
But show some pity and stay here by the tower,
Don't make your child an orphan, your wife a widow. . . .
And great Hector, helmet shining, answered her:
"Yes, Andromache, I worry about all this myself,
But my shame before the Trojans and their wives,
With their long robes trailing, would be too terrible
If I hung back from battle like a coward.
And my heart won't let me....
.. the pain I will feel for the Trojans then,
For Hecuba herself and for Priam king,
For my many fine brothers who will have by then
Fallen in the dust behind enemy lines --
all that pain is notheing to what I will feel
For you, when some bronze-armored Greek
Leads you away in tears, on your first day of slavery."
...With these words, resplendent Hector
Reached for his child, who shrank back screaming
Into his nurse's bosom, terrified of his father's
Bronze-encased face and the horsehair plume
He saw nodding down from the helmet's crest.
And Hector removed the helmet from his head
And set it on the ground all shimmering with light.
Then he kissed his dear son and swung him up gently
And said a prayer to Zeus and the other immortals . . .
3. My Riverside Shakespeare edition, slipcovered in two volumes. A graduation gift from my grandfather. I know, you’re supposed to keep these on a shelf, but I dragged it around in college. Made me feel slightly Elizabethan to read from a book with gilt edges.
4. This weather! It’s beautiful here in the south. Not too hot, not too cold. A profusion of azaleas. But no dogwoods. I heard on Felder Rushing this morning that they had died off down here (from the storm? from aggressive road trimmers? A plague?) but they’ll be back.
5. First Friday and April Fool’s Day. My kids got me twice this morning: first kid came down and told me the school phone system called last night and it was a free dress day (no uniforms.) That was more a trick on himself than me. And then another came down and reported a lizard on the ceiling. I fell for that one. Youngest son released accidentally an anole in the house last week, but I thought it had been captured and returned to its native habitat. I had visions of the time my brother noticed a three inch slug crawling down the wall behind me as we played charades.
Pink cast is not a joke. But something to love.
6. This book from the library about Audrey Hepburn, Just Being Audrey by Margaret Cardillo. Love that my 8 yr old daughter loved it. Loved that everyone seemed to enjoy watching Roman Holiday last weekend. Love Gregory Peck’s expressive look at Audrey as she answers questions from the press.
7. Having nice neighbors with a nice swimming pool. (Yes, it was that warm last weekend.) Recently found out how small the world is: I worked for a week with their son at the national spelling bee 19 years ago.
Linking back to Jen at Conversion Diary, another thing to love!
3 comments:
The worst April Fool's joke on me was my grandson telling me that I had a stink bug on my sweater.
+JMJ+
I remember that passage from the Iliad, but I never thought of it that way before.
My 20 something son requested Roman Holiday as a Christmas present a few years ago. He loves it.
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