On the eve of my twentieth year, I declared

Perhaps the greatest gift that a speaking invitation yields is the chance (the excuse) to stop and collect one's thoughts.  That's what I've been doing these past few days, as I prepare for the talk I'll be giving at the Radnor Memorial Library in mid-November.  I want to read from Dangerous Neighbors that night, and I briefly will.  But I also want to look back at the road that brought me here—at the bad poems and the kind criticism, at the doors that opened and shut, and, mostly, at the percolating passion I have always had for my city.

In hunting for proof (or explanation) of this passion, I have come upon strange, forgotten queries, notes, promises, explorations, and exhortations, including a history of West Philadelphia that I decided to write (apparently for no one) at the age of 23.  I have also discovered this fragment of a poem, penned on the eve of my twentieth birthday, misplaced apostrophe and all. 

"The city is my lifetime," I declared, hints of the grandiose abounding.  It could not yet have been (despite my "long living").  It is, perhaps, now.

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Living my World

The truth is that most of the time I wander toward my readings and talks in undercover fashion—slipping in and out, not mentioning a word to friends. But a few weeks ago, as I began to prepare for the Tredyffrin Library talk, I began as well to tell my friends—to celebrate the idea in my own head. I'd be sharing my photographs. I'd be talking about the things I love and how they've shaped me. I'd be living out loud, and I wanted their blessed companionship.

Last night they came. My neighborhood friends and their friends—the ones with whom I watch the horse show carriages roll by, the ones who come singing Christmas songs in winter. The St. Johners from down the street (I adore them). Claire, the first baby I ever held (she's 20 now), and Soup (she knows who she is), and the Chanticleer gardeners, and the dancers who inspire me (Mike and Mercy, too), and Ann, and Heidi, and Jamie, and JC, and Libby, and Joe, and Kathy, and Simona, and Adam, and my father and husband, and also B&BM (you've met her here, you've read her blog), and Helen, who came by way of that gorgeous Southern California comedienne, Anna Lefler, and endearingly introduced herself.

I looked out, and I thought, Beth, this is it. This is the life you've built and the luck you have, and when things get dark, because they do, this is what you hold to.

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