Never being one to start small (except, perhaps, in physical mass), Hattie's first encounter with the world of literature was Pablo Neruda's Las Odas, from a bilingual edition, Odes to Common Things, which was a wedding present from our friends Brian Leonard and Angela Barley. I would have thought she'd ease into reading with something lighter, like, say the collected works of Dr. Seuss, or something by Shel Silverstein, or maybe even Edward Lear's Complete Nonsense (a wedding gift from our friend Joel Short). But no. A scant 24 hours after she was born, she was listening to the Nobel laureate's "Ode to the Table." Here's an excerpt:
"The world
is a table
engulfed in honey and smoke,
smothered by apples and blood.
The table is already set,
and we know the truth
as soon as we are called:
whether we're called to war or dinner
we will have to choose sides,
have to know
how we'll dress
to sit
at the long table,
whether we'll wear the pants of hate
or the shirt of love, freshly laundered.
It's time to decide,
they're calling:
boys and girls,
let's eat!"
She obviously took this poem to heart: There was both honey and blood at her birth, and some apples in the background. I didn't see any smoke, though. She has since worn the shirt of love--many shirts of love, in fact, freshly laundered after each spit up. And she has heeded the call to the table with great gusto, sometimes eating for two hours at a stretch. Needless to say, Sarah has been tired from all of the late-night nursing sessions, but I'm happy to know that Hattie has been nourished in mind as well as body.
