Houndstooth

I was taking a short walk this evening, listening to my iPod. These first days of fall have been appropriately autumnal. Fog has been coming and going, the light is hazy.

Things We Said Today, that old Beatles song, came on, transporting me back to long ago Long Island.1964. Almost Christmas. Things We Said Today…on this particular day, that song was playing. I was in the living room of a house that no longer exists. Everyone I loved was still alive.

And I remember this detail with unequivocal clarity: I was wearing a black and white wool jumper…a houndstooth check. The jumper had a slightly swingy sort of skirt. I felt jaunty in it. I was a girl both fashionable and carefree. Like someone in a magazine.

And the song was pretty, almost sad, with its reverse nostalgia, as Paul McCartney once described it, but I wasn't that analytical then. It was just a hauntingly pretty song, romantic but imbued with loss, suggesting that the present would one day be over.

But it also implied the possibility that a soon-to-come present might contain things worth remembering. At least that's how I heard it.

And I stood in my houndstooth jumper, not far from Christmas, in the living room of a house no longer standing.  People I loved  were in rooms nearby. I could have probably heard their voices.Instead, I listened to the Beatles song. There were pine trees outside. The light was a little bit silvery, and the air smelled like maybe-snow.

This is the part where my life begins, I thought. Or almost.

I still had to pray every night, Please God, make everything turn out all right.

It occurred to me more than once that making everything turn out all right for some people would mean it didn’t turn out all right for others and thus maybe it was impossible for everything to ever be all right all at once, but I decided that this was the sort of thing God could handle.

I still say the prayer sometimes.