FRAN.

My dog is dying and I am inheriting family.


On Saturday night, Mr. J pulled me aside and said:



You are in a specialized field. It is okay to be frustrated. It is difficult because there are so few of you. You will feel like a fool being number 10 of 10. But every time this happens, remember that you can feel good about it all because 99.9% of the rest of the world is not doing what you are doing.




but I have become very tired while my self yearns finitely for some unplaceable nondescript entity.






My grandmother, when she was a young woman--about my age, longed to be a writer. She lived on Tracy St. in Kansas City. That area has hills so steep that when you drive to the top, it seems that there is nothing on the otherside but nighttime. She always hated the name Francis. said that if she ever published, her psudonym would be Tracy F. Hill.



She once told me this story and I'd like to write it down as it was told to me.



...and then one day, we had new neighbors. It was the depression and they had come off a Kansas farm because the father had gotten a job in Kansas City. But they had to look respectable. So the son washed with blue soap. Everyone knows the smell of this soap. This is a working-man's soap. He came around calling and I could tell he used that blue soap. He had pressed his collared shirt and had his hair well-combed. But when we danced, I could smell it!



...In those days, we sewed all of our own clothes, you know. (You should have seen some of those undergarments we made--you could turn them around in your hands for hours and still not know which way was up.) I got tired of these poor-woman's clothes. Oh sure, Mother waxed the floor and skirts twirled around and we had great dances, but I wanted a real store-bought dress. So after work one day, instead of catching the 5:11 streetcar back south, I walked into macy's. All real dresses were too much, but there on a mannequin, as pretty as any other dress in the place, was a nightgown in the foundations department. Six dollars.


...These dances at the young matrons' club, if boys didn't have enough cash to take a date, would have long stag lines. I'm telling you this so you can understand what happened. The nightgown I'd bought was cut on the bias and hung unevenly. So I sewed fishing weights into the hem. When the boy I was dancing with swung me around, those weights were--to him--rocks being thrown by boys in the stag line. He'd turn his head sharply and glare at the other boys and I never told them.


...You kids really should be dancing cheek to cheek. That's the way to meet them. Cheek to cheek.