The other day, I told E.S. I would do something. I don’t actually remember what it is I told him I would do, but, whatever it was, he didn’t believe me. I promised him. He still didn’t believe me. “I swear on my mother’s grave,” I said.
Then I realized that this oath was utterly meaningless, as my mother, rather than being buried, donated her body to science, specifically to juvenile diabetes research. After giving up to researchers whatever secrets it held, it was cremated. Instead of a funeral, we had a memorial service at the state park that was one of my mother’s favorite haunts.
We did want some sort of physical marker, though, of my mother’s life and death, so we had a gazebo built in the park in her memory. That way, visitors to the park could rest on its very comfortable benches and in its shade, and even in death she could soothe weary souls.
Not wanting to trick E.S., I told him all this. “But the promise still holds,” I said. “I swear on my mother’s gazebo.”
and there are not a lot of people who can say that !
I certainly can’t, or rather couldn’t.; ‘say that’ that is.
As an undergraduate I was once went through an entire architectural history seminar which I was leading talking about ‘gaze-bows’ But I have recovered now, thank you for asking. And don’t get me started on the ‘enceinte’ disaster.
Faustus – if only your namesake had been as punctilious as you you might have been spared that baggy old play and that truly awful opera!
Love
C
Fau
I’ve missed your little stories! Delightful.
.. and by ‘you’ I of course meant ‘we’. It is an easy mistake to make!
C
You are welcome to use my mother’s grave for swearing purposes if you like. It has a very nice headstone, which I picked out.
And people wonder why I’ve been in therapy for so long…