Archive of the Day

Sorry to quote from the same book twice in one week, but I finished Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? tonight, and good lord. This is towards the end, when Berie (narrating) is sharing a waterbed with her old friend Sils during the weekend of their ten-year high school reunion. Generally, they've grown apart. Specifically, Berie has just come back to bed from taking a shower in the middle of the night.

She gave a lazy laugh. "You should invite me to where you live someday and see all the wacky things I'm going to do."

"I will," I said. "I will." Though I already imagined that by the time I got back to my new job and life, with all its distractions and busynesses, that I wouldn't know how. Or why. Despite all my curatorial impulses and training, my priestly harborings and professional, courtly suit of the past, I never knew what to do with all those years of one's life: trot around in them forever like old boots -- or sever them, let them fly free?

Of course, one couldn't really do either. But there was always the trying, and pretending. And then there was finally someplace in between, where one lived.

I curled next to Sils and closed my eyes. I slept the light, watery sleep of a sick person who has already slept off the day and then awakened to night, not knowing what to do.