April 24
As you might be able to gather from the title of this page, it was going to be about something different. Then, I remembered that today is Administrative Assistant Day, or whatever happy horseshit name it is now. I was going to write about that, as I usually do, about how I disagree with the day and how silly and stupid I think it is. I do not get gifts for the day, which is and always has been, fine with me. I am good at what I do. Hating what I do, an undeniable fact, is besides the point.
I came back to my office after lunch, and there were flowers on my desk. They were not any big deal, two small bouquets, and yet I stood here and knew that I was going to cry, could feel the tears beginning and was thankful there was no one around to watch. This simple gesture of kindness from someone in the lab was and still is a little bit overwhelming. I'm sure the more I attempt an explanation, the worse it'll sound. The more I think about the person who gave them to me, a very very junior lab assistant, more the piss girl than me, even, and probably how she could little afford to give them to me, the more choked up I get.
During some of my free time, I have been re-reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. I have read the book, in my life, no less than 3 dozen times. This time probably the first time in 10 or so years, and I am at a loss to try and describe how the experience is different for me now, at 31 than it was for me at 20. For example:
"There was always the music. There were songs and dancing on the Brooklyn streets in those long ago summers and the days should have been joyous. But there was something sad about those summers, something sad about the children, thin in body but with the baby curves still lingering in their faces, singing in sad monotony as they went through the figures of a ring game. It was sad the way they were still babies of four and five years of age but so precocious about taking care of themsevelves. "The Blue Danube" that the band played was sad as well as bad. The monkey had sad eyes under his bright red cap. The organ grinder's tune was sad under its lilting shrillness.
Even the minstrels who came in the back yards and sang,
If I had my way
You would never grow old.were sad, too. They were bums and they were hungry and they didn't have talent for song making. All they had in the world was the nerve to stand in a back yard with cap in hand and sing loudly. The sad thing was in the knowing that all their nerve would get them nowhere in the world and that they were lost as all people in Brooklyn seem lost when the day is nearly over and even though the sun is still bright, it is thin and doesn't give you warmth when it shines on you."
That sums everything up, doesn't it? It says so much about, on a very basic level--being a good writer and breaking rules and being alive. Good for you, Betty Smith.
Happy whatever it is, today.