Bookends

In the subway everybody was using a phone of some sort. Playing one game or another. I was at one end of the bench reading Dracula. Noticed  at the other end of the bench a young lady who was also reading a book . As I got off I could see the title of her book: Bargains for Brides.

Recovering

‘I am real!’ said Alice and began to cry.

‘You won’t make yourself a bit realler by crying,’ Tweedledee remarked

....

‘If I wasn’t real,’ Alice said — half-laughing though her tears, it all seemed so ridiculous —‘I shouldn’t be able to cry.’

never complained

My mother died last week, at 97. She lived through tough times and I don't know if she ever had a happy period.  Her family did not let her study medicine, so she studied philosophy. Started as a teacher and later became a psychologist. She had an extraordinary capacity to listen, but was probably too compassionate for a psychologist. She wrote several books. About twenty of her research papers on youth development were published in specialty journals.  In her seventies, she worked as a cashier. In her late eighties she started to collect cooking recipes  for cookies and  tortes. Each one had a date and the name of the provider. The last entry was her own marvelous nut cake.