"Our Town"

     "Does anyone understand the beauty of life while they live it?" Wilder's character  answers that maybe poets and saints do, to some extent. But the truth of that is too painful to bear, even for the dead. Thus is the theme of one of the  most heartbreaking works of literature.
    I'm neither saint nor poet, and it's not my 12th birthday, as was chosen in the play as to be an ordinary day to relive. I'll choose a lazy summer day somewhere in the 1970's, a day when nothing of monumental importance happened:
                  I'd been to my mother's house, as was an ordinary and daily occurrence. There'd been people all around, as usual---kids in the backyard, the adults going about their daily chores, alternating with resting on the outdoor lawn swings under the cherry tree and engaging in idle conversation. Of course there were animals and a sandbox and a crude trail wending around the maple tree and up to the garden gate, the product of endless tricycle and big-wheel tracks.
    There were no errands to be run this day---no trips to the grocery store or to doctors' offices, no bills to be paid. So I put my youngest child in the carriage which was kept at my mother's house, left my older children playing there with their cousins, under supervision of three adult relatives, and went for a walk. The simplest of activities.
     Down the sidewalk, past the Valley Inn where someone, seated at the bar, in mid-day, called out my name in greeting. I waved and kept walking, the only appropriate response, considering the circumstances. A little way further, another greeting called out, this time from Gloria and Bonnie, who are having one of their frequent sidewalk discussions in front of their houses. I push the carriage up the hill until I reach the house where Emma is sitting on her front porch. No casual greeting this time, but an order. "Come on over here. I need to hold that baby."  I go to the porch, put the baby in her arms, chat for a while, and move on. 
   We go past the house next door, where Mary and Martha, the twin sisters who live there, will soon be conducting a week-long Bible School session which the kids will attend. I've never been quite sure what the religious affiliation was, but the classes are serious and sweet, and there are treats at the end. All the little cousins will attend, but they won't get there by the sidewalk route. They will scramble up the little hill leading from their Nana's back yard right into the site where the Bible classes will be held, where there is seating arranged for them.
    After retrieving my child from Emma's arms, I hear my name called again, from across the street. This time it is Alma, who wants to see the baby, as well as talk a little bit about this and that. I push the carriage across the street. Alma asks if I had arranged the baby's hair in a single curl across the top of his head. I admitted I had, and she said she used to do the same with her son.
    So we continued, baby and I, up the street, around a few blocks and back to where we started.  A day when nothing of importance, nothing memorable took place, just the passing of a spontaneous and effortless day.   One can not even express in words the present value of such an ordinary day.