Today’s prompt from Long and Short Reviews is, “A few happy memories from my life”. But first. WWW Wednesday!

WWW Wednesday

WHAT have you finished reading recently? Magna Carta, Dan Jones.

WHAT are you reading now? Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier. A third through and picking up steam. I think the earliest part was the slowest. I also started reading Inside Camp David yesterday when I realized I’d forgotten Rebecca at home. It strikes me as a fairly fast read.

WHAT are you reading next? I may take a look at Mansfield Park. It’s on my CCII list and would be an appropriate way to start closing April out. I’ll also be getting into Author in Chief, I think, a study of presidents who write. (Yes, inspired by Inside Camp David. No, I’m not planning on a sudden presidential obsession like the one of summer-fall 2023. No, “not planning” doesn’t mean a thing at RF, just like “planning” only rarely means something.)

Long and Short: Happy Memories

My happiest memories tend to congregate around 2007-2010, when I went off to a full university. I was leaving behind a past that had become difficult and degrading, and going to college was a genuine escape. Imagine Harry Potter going to Hogwarts for the first time and you’ll have some idea: in fact, I wrote in my journal that my residence hall, Napier, “was no Gryffindor, but it will do”. I was young, idealistic, and optimistic about the future: I lived on a beautiful campus with constant intellectual and artistic stimulation at the ready, and a group of friends whom I argued and stargazed and hiked with often. Perhaps it was simply because college is a special time of life, or perhaps it was because the campus and the town were designed for humans rather than cars: I could walk anywhere, and did, making a weekly habit of toddling down to the local public library for books. I was around people I knew and liked every day; we never planned to meet up, we just did, and I ate with friends nearly every day. Even when I was alone, there was quiet contentment to be found in curling up in a secluded corner of the university library to read or work on a paper. When I left Montevallo, I made it my purpose to recapture as much of this magic as I could, cultivating community and connection. COVID and the tornado that gutted my city have both made that a challenge, but I still find it — sitting on porches with families and friends with stories and laughs, settling under a tree with a great long book, etc. And then ther have been more extraordinary moments, like watching the sun set over St. Augustine, watching it rise over Santa Fe & the Grand Canyon, or sitting in the surf in Pensacola, hypnotized by the power of the waves.