The Least Important Day

In observation of Groundhog Day, my childhood friend and neighbor Rebecca Sprigg provided a facebook prompt: "If you had to live one day of your life over and over again, what day would you choose, and why?"

Becky had the movie Groundhog Day in mind, but I was immediately reminded of Thornton Wilder's Our Town. This play is dear to my heart -- as you can see above from the leading quotation of this blog -- and has been ever since way back in 1973, when my brother Bruce portrayed the character of George. Bruce, of course, knew what I was talking about when I said to Becky that "This play breaks my heart every time." The was he explains it:

"This play is when I learned how to 'be in the moment.' In the scene where George goes to the graveyard to visit Emily's (Yvonne Brooks') grave, I actually cried . . . real tears."

Shortly after Emily's untimely death (at age 26, during childbirth), she is allowed to revisit Earth for a day, and she wants to choose a "happy day," but the Dead advise her "No! At least, choose an unimportant day. Choose the least important day in your life. It will be important enough."

Here are the lines, in context:
Emily: Live people don't understand, do they?

Mrs. Gibbs: No, dear, not very much.

Emily: They're sort of shut up in little boxes, aren't they? I feel as though I knew them
last a thousand years ago. . . . I never realized before how troubled and
how, how in the dark live persons are. . . . From morning till night, that's all they are, troubled. . . .
But . . . one can go back; one can go back there again, into living. I feel it. I know it. . . .

Mrs. Gibbs: Yes, of course you can.

Emily: I can go back there and live all those days over again...why not?

Mrs. Gibbs: All I can say is, Emily, don't.

Emily (To the Stage Manager): But it's true, isn't it? I can go and live, back there, again.

Stage Manager: Yes, some have tried but they soon come back here.

Mrs. Gibbs: Don't do it, Emily.

Mrs. Soames: Emily, don't. It's not what you think it'd be.

Emily: But I won't live over a sad day. I'll choose a happy one. I'll choose the day I first knew that I loved George. Why should that be painful?

Stage Manager: You not only live it but you watch yourself living it.

Emily: Yes?

Stage Manager: And as you watch it, you see the thing that they, down there, never know. You see the future. You know what's going to happen afterwards.

Emily: But is that -- painful? Why?

Mrs. Gibbs: That's not the only reason why you shouldn't do it, Emily. When you've been here longer you'll see that our life here is to forget all that and think only of what's ahead and be ready for what's ahead. When you've been here longer you'll understand.

Emily: But, Mother Gibbs, how can I ever forget that life? It's all I know. It's all I had.

Mrs. Soames: Oh, Emily. It isn't wise. Really, it isn't.

Emily: But it's a thing I must know for myself. I'll choose a happy day, anyway.

Mrs. Gibbs: No! At least, choose an unimportant day. Choose the least important day in your life. It will be important enough.

Emily: . . . I can choose a birthday at least, can't I? I choose my twelfth birthday.

Stage Manager: All right. February 11th, 1899. A Tuesday. Do you want any special time of
day?

Emily: Oh, I want the whole day.

But, as it turns out, she can't bear the whole day.
After only an hour or so, she cries out to the Stage Manager:
Emily: I can't. I can't go on. It goes so fast. We don't have time to look at one another. . . . I didn't realize. . . . Take me back -- up the hill -- to my grave. But first: Wait! One more look.

Good-by, Good-by, world. Good-by, Grover's Corners -- Mama and Papa. Goodby to clocks ticking…and Mama's sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new ironed dresses and hot baths…and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you.

Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it -- every, every minute?

Stage Manager: No. The saints and poets, maybe—they do some.

************************
So, to make a short story long, this poignant scene is what came to mind when I read Becky's question about repeatedly reliving a day from the past.

Reading over the responses to the Becky's prompt, I was interested to see that some commenters had interpreted living "one day of your life over and over again," as a good day that they would like to experience perpetually; but others had interpreted it as a do - over day that they would like to improve upon or change.

I asked Becky which she preferred, and she explained what she had in mind originally:

"Yesterday I was thinking about the movie Groundhog Day, but had forgotten the plot. Living that day over and over again was not a good thing for the character Bill Murray played. He only got out of that vicious cycle by slowly changing, realizing his mistakes, doing things for others and being a nice guy. So my initial thought was that people would share a blissful day that they wouldn't mind re-living.

In that vein, I love the touching memories my friends and family have shared. However, equally touching are the do-over stories. I appreciate the bravery of those willing to share about their losses (none shared here related to any personal failings) that evoke regret. Everyone has them. Sharing them seems to me a path to peace with our past. This is a long way to get to your answer, but please feel free to share either a happy day or a do-over day."

I had to brood about all these options for awhile, but finally I decided to go with the first day of 2nd grade at Eugene Field Elementary School (Neosho, Missouri, Fall 1964). Here's why, not so much because I want to relive it over and over; and not because it requires a do - over, but out of curiosity:

For as long as I can remember, I have had this memory that my grandparents -- my mother's parents Paul & Rovilla Lindsey -- drove me to school on the first day of 2nd grade. But could that really be true? It seems unlikely, but in my memory, I had stayed with them until the very last day of summer vacation, and they drove me back home either the evening before school started or that very morning (they lived about 2 hours away from Neosho, in Caney, Kansas). I can see it so clearly -- their car pulling up to the school (the door by the kindergarten side of the building), me wearing a plaid dress, jumping out of the car, running up the steps, and turning to wave to them. But where are my close - in - age siblings, Bruce and Diane? Aaron was too little for school; and David and Peggy were at high school. But it was also the first day at Field School for Bruce and Di, so they should have been there with me, jumping out of the car and running up the steps. Yet, I can see only myself.

If I could go back and live that day again, I could confirm whether or not or how much of this memory really happened or if I somehow just made it up because that's how I wanted the summer to be. She died of breast cancer in June 1966, and during her last 2 summers -- 1964 and 1965, Bruce and I spent a lot of time at their house, so maybe we really did stay that year until the very last day.
Mystery Solved!
Choosing this day (if it really happened) would also allow me to hear my grandmother's voice once again. I was only 9 when she died, and sadly the memory of her voice is nearly lost to me. How I would love to hear it once again!

In conclusion, here is a contemporary passage -- written in 2016, describing the summer of 1938. It is so in keeping with the tone of Our Town written in 1938, describing the years from 1901 - 1913; and with my own childhood memories of sitting out on the front porch rocking chairs with my grandparents, as the light faded, night after night, summer after summer, 1960 - 1966:

“She watched her nieces commencing their nightly rite of selecting chairs. They were young and they didn’t understand. They believed that one chair was better than another. They believed that it was important to make distinctions, to choose, to discern particulars. Like crows, they picked out bits from each evening and lugged them around, thinking they were hoarding treasure. They remembered the jokes, or the games or the stories, not knowing that it was all one, that each tiny vibration of difference would be sanded, over the course of years, into sameness. It doesn’t matter, Jottie assured herself. They'll get to it. Later, they’ll understand that the sameness is the important part" (47 - 48).

from the novel The Truth According to Us
by American editor and author, Annie Barrows (b 1962)

Tea sets, here and above, on display
at the Art Institute of Chicago

Our Town Too

"to find a value above all price
for the smallest events in our daily life"
Thornton Wilder
writing of Our Town (see more below)*
This post is for all my friends from Francis Howell High School who can never forget the impact that this play had on us in our formative years.


~Click to enlarge for reading essay by Donna Muzzey Postel~
Yesterday (on her birthday!) Cyndee wrote: "Funny how the things we did so long ago have stuck with us. I can still picture where we were sitting on the bleachers pouring over the program while we waited for Our Town to start. I think it was the first production they ever did in that gym because they could do it without a stage."

Yvonne wrote: " 'Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it -- every, every minute?' It's a wonderful line that's stayed with me over the years. Yes, it works in so many ways. I always thought Emily had the most poignant lines. I remember really crying while performing as Emily. I wish I had a tape of those performances to show my kids. So many good characters in the FHHS production. Ed Stockwell was such an inspiration.

Bruce wrote: "Those years we were at FHHS...with Ed Stockwell and Chuck Bright and Al McCune and Fran Darrah -- we just kind of captured lightning in a bottle, as far as the fine arts were concerned. So many talented kids and such great teachers, who understood how to get it out of us. It's funny you mentioned crying, because I almost said something last night and didn't: The graveyard scene near the end, when George goes to Emily's grave? I cried. I even surprised myself. I remember I had to walk from the back, up the aisle between the audience, and about halfway down the first night I realized I was actually crying. No one was more surprised than me. Do you remember the night in the graveyard scene, when the spirits of the dead are talking? Terry Veazey was speaking, and someone missed their cue (don't even remember who it was). Terry just picked it up and went into a monologue -- seemed like forever, probably only 30 seconds or a minute, tops -- and then closed with, 'Sorry. I didn't mean to dominate the conversation,' by which time whoever was supposed to have the next line had figured it out. It was a great ad lib, and it was one of those things where the only ones who knew it was wrong were the folks who knew the script."

Yvonne added: "We did some great work together. Sounds cliched, but the outsized stage setting should have diminished the intensity; instead, all the roughness fell away, the audience in their chairs were like witnesses, another choir, some distant relatives of the cast in the Grover's Corner cemetery."


* “Our Town is not offered as a picture of life in a New Hampshire village; or as a speculation about the conditions of life after death (that element I merely took from Dante’s Purgatory). It is an attempt to find a value above all price for the smallest events in our daily life. I have made the claim as preposterous as possible, for I have set the village against the largest dimensions of time and place. The recurrent words in this play (few have noticed it) are “hundreds,” “thousands,” and “millions.” Emily’s joys and grief’s, her algebra lessons and her birthday presents—what are they when we consider all the billions of girls who have lived, who are living, and who can live? Each individual’s assertion to an absolute reality can only be inner, very inner. And here the method of staging finds its justification—in the first two acts there are at least a few chairs and tables; but when Emily revisits the earth and the kitchen to which she descended on her twelfth birthday, the very chairs and table are gone. Our claim, our hope, our despair are in the mind—not in things, not in “scenery.” Molière said that for the theatre all he needed was a platform and a passion or two. The climax of this play needs only five square feet of boarding and the passion to know what life means to us.”
Thornton Wilder
In his 1957 preface to Three Plays
My previous posts on Our Town:

My brother Bruce was also kind enough to point out that our favorite line from Our Town serves as the permanent header on my Quotidian blog page (see above). It's true! When Emily asks, "Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? -- every, every minute?" I want the answer to be "Yes, Kitti Carriker does!"Click to read:

More on Facebook

The Least Important Day

What's the Big Idea

Quinton Duval

Pretty Enough For All Normal Purposes

Our Town

The Mind of God

Our Town Redux

Quinton Duval

Take a moment to scan the above header and the QUOTIDIAN column to the right, and you will see that this blog is inspired by three governing epigrams:

Thornton Wilder's "every, every minute"
Virginia Woolf's "what is commonly thought small"
Quinton Duval's "black bread of day after day."

[Click here for further explication and explanation
of why I chose these passages: "What's the Big Idea?"]

The Quotidian Kit has been up and running for a year now, and I have yet to share with you the entire text of Duval's poem. Time to rectify that omission:

Day After Day

Each of us, alone on the way,
picks up the grip of his life
and goes.

Mama says the stars took us home,
all the porch lights up there
at night around the body of the moon.
Black stars that are invisible
are there too.

The coffee cools down. The car changes
gears in the garage and
the pen sleeps with the paper
on the white tablecloth.

When it is like this, you go
out and cut the roses back.
Clip until the thorns turn into the bush.

The car knows to stay in neutral
a little longer.
The big ideas huddle
in the jar together. You spread them
over the black bread of day after day
and swallow them.

Quinton Duval, November 6, 1948 - May 10, 2010
American poet and teacher

I have loved this poem since my first semester of college at Northeast Missouri State University (aka Truman). I discovered it in a literary magazine The Chariton Review (Volume 1, Number 1, Spring 1975) that I was assigned to read in Creative Writing. Don't ask me how I ended up in that class, the only Freshman, with a roomful of Juniors & Seniors. My guess -- some casual admissions officer put my name on the roster after seeing "Creative Writing" on my high school transcript. But of course this class was much more advanced than that, more like a writers' workshop. It was daunting but I stuck with it. I'm not so sure that I wrote anything substantial, too young really, but I do remember everything we read, many unforgettable stories and poems.

As the above dates indicate, Mr. Duval died only a few weeks ago, though I did not realize this until I googled his name just this morning to see what else of interest I might learn about the author of one of my favorite poems. You may recall that I had a similar experience last spring (2009) when I googled the name of a former professor, Jim Thomas, only to learn of his death the week before. Funny how that happens, just a little tap on your shoulder from the Universe.

There were a number of good poets at Northeast during my time there: Jim Barnes, Andrew Grossbardt, Jim Thomas. Lucky for me, I was able to take classes with each of them.

P.S.
Jim Barnes wrote the following for Andy, who died young:

Autobiography, Chapter 19: For Andrew Grossbardt, In Memoriam

Heading East Out of Rock Springs
for Andrew Grossbardt, long gone

What's the Big Idea?

The big ideas huddle in the jar together.
You spread them over the black bread of day after day
and swallow them. ~Quinton Duval
If you are a newcomer to "The Quotidian Kit," what I hope you will discover about this blog is how well it embodies the quotations above. When Emily asks, "Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? -- every, every minute?" I want the answer to be "Yes, Kitti Carriker does!"


I picked the above photo, taken in Chicago by my friend Dagmar, because the city looks to me like a big, rounded jar where big ideas might huddle, along with the miniaturized images of me and my friends. I like to think of my blog as "the plain brown bread of day after day," and if I can, I'm going to pull some of the big ideas out of that existentialist jar and spread them on the bread for you to savor. I want these entries to prove the truth of Virginia Woolf's observation that indeed life does exist fully in what is common, in what is small, and "in what is commonly thought small."

So, every other day or so, I post my observations, large and small, ideas that crop up in the course of any given day. In addition, I occasionally feature blogs run by friends, various cross references and links that you may find of interest, announcements of community events, news about my family, favorite poems -- old and new, seasonal pictures and quotations, and photos of my adorable cats (sorry, can't resist!).

(Thanks to my nephew Hans for this one!)
In the right-hand column (-> over there -> and continue strolling down) you can see a permanent list of the many inspiring one - liners and memorable quotations that I have collected over the years. I hope you will find a few there that will stick in your mind as they have stuck in mine.

On "The Quotidian," I also take the opportunity to print excerpts from my two lengthier blogs, in order to keep you informed of what is going on there. You can reach either of these sites by clicking on the big "CARRIKER" signs that you see to the right ( <- over and scroll up).

1. "The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker": my literary blog of connection and coincidence. If you scroll down to Monday's post, "Joy Luck," you'll see that it announces the most recent Fortnightly entry (these appear every couple of weeks, thus "fortnightly," i.e., every fourteen days -- on the 14th of the month & then again on the 28th).

Click Here to find out more about "The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker."

2. "Kitti's List" : my book blog, a running log, with commentary of my past and current reading. The titles are organized primarily by the date of reading but also somewhat thematically.

If you are interested in reading previous "Quotidian" posts, you may continue scrolling down, reading backward in time until you eventually reach "older posts," where you can click for even more. Or you can go the "Blog Archive" in the right - hand column (over -> and scroll down, way past the words of wisdom!). Click on the black arrows for a list of months, then click on the name of each month for that month's posts. You will find many, starting in June 2009.

Please read, enjoy, follow & comment! Thanks!

Pretty Enough For All Normal Purposes

Pretty Girls: Coyote, Ramrod & Goth (our school pictures, 1966)
Another touching scene in Our Town takes place on the front porch, while Emily is helping her mother snap the beans. Emily cannot stop pestering:

"Mama, am I good looking?"

"What I mean is: am I pretty?"

"Mama, were you pretty?"

"Am I pretty enough . . . "

Finally in exasperation, Mrs. Webb exclaims:

"Emily, you make me tired. Now stop it. You're pretty enough for all normal purposes. -- Come along now and bring that bowl with you."

Over the years, Mrs. Webb's concluding remark has become a stock phrase in our family, applicable to any number of situations. Is the car clean enough? It's clean enough for all normal purposes. Is there enough frosting on the cake? There's enough frosting for all normal purposes. Have we planted enough okra? We've planted enough okra for all normal purposes. How did the school pictures turn out this year? Good enough for all normal purposes. Have I included enough examples in this paragraph? Well, enough for all normal purposes!

dialogue from Our Town (1938)
by Thornton Wilder, American playwright (1897 - 1975)

P.S. For more on "Coyote, Ramrod, and Goth," see below:
August 3rd & 5th.

For more on Our Town see below: August 28th.

And my essay "The Mind of God"
on The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker

Our Town

On the 14th & 28th of every month, I publish a Fortnightly Literary Blog of Connection and Coincidence. So today, being the 28th, let me share with you an abbreviated version of the longer entry that you can find at kitticarriker.blogspot.com.

"Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? -- every, every minute?"

You've probably already noticed that Emily Webb's question from the classic American drama, Our Town (1938) appears as a perpetual header for this life-is-just-so-daily blog, chosen because it so accurately captures the sense of dailyness that I want to convey in the every-other-day-or-so entries that appear here on the Quotidian Kit.

"to find a value above all price
for the smallest events in our daily life"
Thornton Wilder
writing of Our Town
My friends and I fell in love with Our Town when it was produced by our highschool drama club in 1973, and my twin brother Bruce played the part of George Gibbs. One of our favorite scenes occurs at the end of Act I, when Rebecca (George's little sister, played by my friend Joni), reads out the mind-boggling address that she saw on an envelope:

Jane Crofut
The Crofut Farm
Grover's Corners
Sutton County
New Hampshire
United States of America
Continent of North America
Western Hemisphere
The Earth
The Solar System
The Universe
The Mind of God

Suddenly in awe of our own cosmic identity, we spent a lot of time recopying this long address, inserting our own names and addresses, and passing our versions around to each other in geometry class. (Sorry, Mr. Anderson!) Not that any mysteries, either universal or local, were revealed; but it sort of felt that way.

Additional Our Town Posts:

Our Town Too

What's the Big Idea

Quinton Duval

Pretty Enough For All Normal Purposes

The Mind of God