TIME RESETS TO 1:16.
Several times in Vivian Vande Velde's novel 23 Minutes (ISBN 9781629794419) fifteen-year-old Zoe uses this ability of hers to travel back in time twenty-three minutes by hugging herself and saying "playback" to alter the outcome of a bank robbery. Beginning at 1:16 pm, for this story. Why? Certainly there's someone she doesn't want shot dead, someone she tries to convince by the sixth time or so that she's not crazy and they agree on a code word to prove she did talk to him before the latest (from her viewpoint) playback. She's had this ability for two years shortly before losing her parents and entering the foster care system ... in order to make this come out well, she has to trust and that is hard for her to do. For us to do; though it was a bit of a slog to hear the same scene come out differently several times, I found myself with the time this weekend and the relative patience and found this not quite a coming-of-age story, but a first person tale that wasn't written in first person.
First person is I, me, mine, and my.
I just finished typing "relative patience" two sentences ago and find myself appreciating the irony in that statement. For we hosted Christmas at our house this year, and our big celebration in this family I've married into comes on Christmas Eve. So after church Martha, Sarah, Jeffrey and I met back at our place where dinner had been cooking and were soon followed by ... ok, let me count them, Martha's parents Robert and Sharon (five and six), Lesa with her three boys Mathew, Brandon, and Trevor (seven through ten), Martha's sister and patron saint Mary (eleven), Margaret with her man Milton and her three kids Patrick, Breanna, and Josceline (twelve through sixteen), Donovan who I think's been adopted somewhere (seventeen) and Breanna's daughter Avery (eighteen) for her first Christmas! Eighteen people really cannot move about in our house at the same time all that much, and we're still cleaning up and walking over boxes from it.
Part of the reason for THAT is blizzard number three this winter.
Sunday morning after getting home from church we were advised to hunker down and not leave our houses because over the course of the day twenty-two inches of snow fell (about fifty-six centimeters for you who use metric). And the snow plows when they come through to clear out streets all too often leave a load of snow that you get to shovel out, and that's assuming you have already shoveled out your driveway, which Martha and I did yesterday just so she could get out. Snow for some of our people where I work was so bad that we were closed yesterday. So I had the kids to myself, we played a few games (and actually not on the iPads that they got among other Christmas presents, so now we each have one!), and we got out very carefully for a while. Today's it's quite possible Martha and the kids will do the same thing, for she wasn't feeling well and called in sick at Trinity, an especially good idea even if one of her co-workers was not pregnant!
Obviously Martha's not,
David
First person is I, me, mine, and my.
I just finished typing "relative patience" two sentences ago and find myself appreciating the irony in that statement. For we hosted Christmas at our house this year, and our big celebration in this family I've married into comes on Christmas Eve. So after church Martha, Sarah, Jeffrey and I met back at our place where dinner had been cooking and were soon followed by ... ok, let me count them, Martha's parents Robert and Sharon (five and six), Lesa with her three boys Mathew, Brandon, and Trevor (seven through ten), Martha's sister and patron saint Mary (eleven), Margaret with her man Milton and her three kids Patrick, Breanna, and Josceline (twelve through sixteen), Donovan who I think's been adopted somewhere (seventeen) and Breanna's daughter Avery (eighteen) for her first Christmas! Eighteen people really cannot move about in our house at the same time all that much, and we're still cleaning up and walking over boxes from it.
Part of the reason for THAT is blizzard number three this winter.
Sunday morning after getting home from church we were advised to hunker down and not leave our houses because over the course of the day twenty-two inches of snow fell (about fifty-six centimeters for you who use metric). And the snow plows when they come through to clear out streets all too often leave a load of snow that you get to shovel out, and that's assuming you have already shoveled out your driveway, which Martha and I did yesterday just so she could get out. Snow for some of our people where I work was so bad that we were closed yesterday. So I had the kids to myself, we played a few games (and actually not on the iPads that they got among other Christmas presents, so now we each have one!), and we got out very carefully for a while. Today's it's quite possible Martha and the kids will do the same thing, for she wasn't feeling well and called in sick at Trinity, an especially good idea even if one of her co-workers was not pregnant!
Obviously Martha's not,
David
Comments
Post a Comment