For my twelfth birthday mother gave me a signed copy of The Sun Also Rises. It was one of those rare times she didn't try to buy my loyalty with designer clothes and credit cards, and probably the only time her gifts actually meant something. My father had read it to me that summer on the beaches near Antibes where we had our last fleeting moments of happiness together, just the three of us.
September kept closing in on our family and I didn't know then that the people I loved the most would all soon become ghosts to me, alive or dead, near or on other sides of the planet. They were all just trying to escape and I learned much later that the one thing you can never really run away from is yourself.
Even she is escapable. Send yourself out for cigarettes. Pack up and leave before she gets back.
ReplyDeleteWe are always trying to run away... especially from ourselves... you're right that we can't run from ourselves, no matter how much we try. It's good you have a nice memory of the past before it all changed xox♡♡
ReplyDeleteI hope your birthday was pretty x
ReplyDeletehappy birthday, babe! to the woman with the best blog title of all time.
ReplyDeleteI was just ruminating the Old Man and the Sea and Moby Dick. I always get Hemingway and Melville mixed up. my dad would only give books as presents. he’d type up a small white square of paper explaining the reasoning behind his choice of title for that particular person. he’d tape the paper onto the cover of the paperback book, obscuring its title. I miss him.
I love that you are constant here.
ReplyDeleteHope you are well.
Much love xx