Here you go, Lasse: lady's slippers or, as you call them in Sweden, cuckoo boots.
These are already starting to wilt. There are quite a few in the very wet ditches along our road.
***
Everett’s Grade 12 classes have ended. His exams end Thursday, and then school's out for him, as it has been for Emil since yesterday. I ask him what he would like to do to celebrate. Go out for a meal? No, he says; all he will eat in restaurants are grilled cheese sandwiches anyway, and the portions are never enough (he could have two orders, but that hasn’t occurred to him). Have a barbecue and invite friends and family, like many graduates do? No; that doesn’t interest him. Well, what? “It would be a treat to me if I could have the house all to myself for an entire day,” he says. Perhaps that could be arranged. Little bugger.
***
He phoned Dad to thank him for the gift of money, and later I joked (because everyone brings this up), "And did he ask what you're going to do now?"
"Yeah," Everett said, "and he told me I would have to do something, but that there's no point him telling me anything because I have to figure it out for myself."
He added, "That's the smartest thing anyone has said!"
***
Excerpt from a diary entry of my favourite diary-keeper, Anaïs Nin:
July5, 1939
I'm restless. Things are calling me away. My hair is being pulled by the stars again.
***
