Children's Stories

They called it a celebration. How I was invited, or rather informed, was through my friend Eileen; she's the one that goes to school there. She told me last Monday night that there was going to be a reading at Brown University. I've heard of these readings but had never been to one. At least not since long ago at some library where some lady read to us kids. I remember how wonderful it was to be quiet while she read us a story. Only it seemed more like a movie picture as she made it seem so alive. I must have been small. Where was it and how was it I was there? Being the oldest of six, I remember very little play time, let alone quiet time. But I remember that reading so long ago. Eileen and I were having our own gelling session. Our boy, Cleve, still had the flu. She dismissed herself at 7:30 to go up to her class and I walked up the hill to Manning Chapel. I took my seat up front and waited. People were coming in. It looked like Sunday morning at church. The mikes were being set up and seats were being saved for, I guess, important people. I didn't know. I'd never been to a reading before. An introduction was given by a man who looked like Dudley Moore. Then a man with a cane walked up the stairs and started reading. I tried hard to understand like I did with Buckminster Fuller and his three-hour speech or talk. I don't know. Later I found out that this reading was about a make-believe town and was a story not everyone understood. That made me feel much better. (By the way, I wore my Laura Ashley straw hat. I don't know why.) Well, anyway, a friend informed me that there was more happening on Tuesday at 10:00 in the morning and at 3:00 in the afternoon. The morning session give the critics a turn to speak and at 3:00 the writers would get their chance. I loved it all and felt I had planted myself and my new passion in great soil. There was another session sometime on Wednesday that I missed, but tonight at 8:00, I attended a reading given by author, William Gaddis that was so delightful. He read from his story entitled, "The Sunday Drive." It took me back to that library so many years ago, maybe... almost.... could be fifty years ago. Indeed, it was a celebration that put a child's heart back in me and made me feel again the way I did so long ago. Yes, the words tonight reached not only the level of my ears, but also mainlined their way through my whole being by recalling only the best of my childhood memories and the days when someone else did the driving.

Copyright; Ruth Mahoney 6-Mar-88