Old and Gray

Is what Lorri of The Mac and Cheese Chronicles (I love that title!) is growing, waiting for me to respond to her tag, “Whatcha Reading?”

It’s only been how long since she tagged me? Let me check.

Oh, well, two weeks in Minnesota Mom time is nothing. I’m not so bad. On the contrary, I’ve been much worse.

Without further adieu, then, (although I’m good at dishing out the adieu), here and for what it is worth is what I’m reading, as gathered up off my nightstand:

• Magnificat magazine, as always.

• By the Great Horn Spoon by Sid Fleischman. This is our current read-aloud and came to us via a solid recommendation. She was right; it’s really good!

• Emerging Son is an autobiographical work by fellow Minnesotan, Tom Bengston. Tom and I have been friends and co-workers (okay, so he’s my editor) ever since we met at a Scouting event and talked writing. This book includes the story of how he and his wife Susan came to adopt their four children, which I found fascinating.

• The Time Traveler’s Wife is one of the few novels written for grown-ups that I have read (and actually finished) in a long while. (I don’t have a lot of extra time for reading, these days–that is, not between all the children’s read-alouds and the blog-reading!) Karen recommended this book when I asked her advice on what to bring to Hawaii; her thumbs-up, however, included a caveat. This book is a love story, and well, you know. There were a couple of scenes that made me cough uncomfortably and jump ahead a few paragraphs to give the protagonists a little privacy. The rest of the book is gripping and beautifully rendered. The author, Audrey Niffenegger, has an amazing gift for words.

• I really like James Stenson, as does my husband. (We are reading this book together.) Stenson is a very wise man with a wealth of good advice for families; his is a voice crying out in the desert in a world filled with self-seeking, worldly kids and the misguided parents who raised them. We need to be reading James Stenson.

And finally, since it’s Poetry Friday (where did that start, by the way? Anyone?) and since I’ve titled this post as I have…

Here is one of my all-time favorites, one of the only poems I memorized in college and one that is always worth re-reading:

When You are Old and Gray
~ by William Butler Yeats ~

When you are old and gray and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true;
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.

And bending down beside the glowing bars
Murmur a little sadly how love fled,
And paced upon the mountains overhead,
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

Have a great day, my friend.