Not for writing In Cold Blood, not for your memorable & endearing Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and not for being the “real” boy (Dill) in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.
I thank you for “A Christmas Memory,” which I used each December in the 1970s when I taught high school English classes in California’s Napa Valley. I no longer have Capote’s story, but earlier today a friend loaned me her copy. On the internet, it is possible to hear the late Truman Capote read this non-fiction story from his youth about his friend (an older female relative) and her dog Queenie.
I opened the small book just now and heard in memory the first line from reading it so often decades ago. “Imagine a morning in late November. A coming of winter morning more than twenty years ago.” Morning resonates with its dual meaning, as a time of day and a period of grief. “Both are implied in the opening and are understood by story’s end.
Why read “A Christmas Memory?” For one’s heart. Which is why I read this story aloud to students each year before the Christmas break. The toughest kids from Rancho, home of Kaiser Steel, would ‘hear’ this story and not mock the boy Buddy and his best friend, a wonderful, wacky woman who makes fruitcakes each November and sends them out into the world. “Buddy,” she says, “do you think Mrs. Franklin Roosevelt will serve our cake at (Christmas) dinner?”
I’m deeply grateful I recalled this story. Post election, I have been feeling Scrooge-ish about Christmas this year. Yet reading the last words of Buddy’s friend gave me pause. “As for me,” she says, “I could leave the world with today in my eyes.” I thank Truman Capote for this forgotten line, which I needed to remember. I wish you a fine holiday and New Year.
Ilona and I will return to our blog the second weekend in January. Until then, my best thoughts to all. Gail
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