I overheard my son who said, “You can lose all of your stars but they can’t take away the battles you have won.”
I am sure they were playing a war game of some kind but from my perspective it sounded very wise.
I also remember a college graduation speaker who said that no one could take what we have learned. A liberal arts education allows us to learn a little bit about a lot of things and a lot about a few things.
Many things from those college years float into my thoughts. Botany class and an applicant for a professor’s position gave a lecture on the importance of Stem Cells. This was probably in 1976. I can still feel the jar of cells in my hand. I gazed into the cloudy mixture of undifferentiated plant cells and passed it up to the student behind me.
I remember Abnormal Psych. The professor assured us that we’d imagine we had each mental illness as we studied them. He assured us that we were okay. That was a squeaker.
Of all the courses I took back then English Lit classes come most easily in my idle moments. I was an accidental English Major, undeclared. I loved to read.
Today, this line kept surfacing. “Thirteen’s no age at all. Thirteen is nothing.” Thank you Google for making it so easy to track this down. Now I am sharing it.
Portrait of Girl with Comic Book by Phyllis McGinley
Thirteen’s no age at all. Thirteen is nothing.
It is not wit, or powder on the face.
Or Wednesday matinees, or misses’ clothing,
Or intellect, or grace.
Twelve has its tribal customs. But thirteen
Is neither boys in battered cars nor dolls,
Not Sara Crewe, or movie magazine,
Or pennants on the walls.
Thirteen keeps diaries and tropical fish
(A month, at most); scorns jumpropes in the spring;
Could not, would fortune grant it, name its wish;
Wants nothing, everything;
Has secrets from itself, friends it despises;
Admits none to the terrors that it feels;
Owns half a hundred masks but no disguises;
And walks upon its heels.
Thirteen’s anomalous–not that, not this:
Not folded bud, or wave that laps a shore,
Or moth proverbial from the chrysalis.
Is the one age defeats the metaphor.
Is not a town, like childhood, strongly walled
But easily surrounded; is no city.
Nor, quitted once, can it be quite recalled–
Not even with pity.
From: The Love Letters of Phyllis McGinley (1954)
Till next time, don’t touch anything sharp!