Did Somebody Say Cake?

When I was a great deal younger and more prone to temper tantrums, I got mightily upset when a visit to the department store did not, as I expected, allow me to own a shiny new doll. Cue screaming and yelling. But then my father pierced that cacophony of consumer-induced agony with a single sentence that cowed me for the next few years: “when you’re 30, you can have all the toys you want.”

So now I’m 30, and we’re in the worst economic climate of my entire lifetime. Somehow I don’t think I’ll have all the toys I want anytime soon, if ever, but as it turns out my father’s declaration proved more metaphorical. I like my odd little peripatetic existence. I love and am loved. I get to read books for a living, however long that lasts. People want to read what I have to say. There are things to be sad and worried and nervous about but I remain weirdly optimistic about the future, and less concerned with being anyone else other than myself. But dad, since I know you read Confessions, I still kind of have my eye on the Mercedes-Benz I picked out from the road when I was eleven – though it being the toy I want is no longer set in stone…

More later.