Memories

Hilary used the term angelic when describing Ben today. When he’s asleep, anyway. I hope he learns to walk pretty soon; he’s over ten pounds already, and that’s getting to be a heavy load on any trek over a couple of hours. I can’t remember exactly how old I was when I started walking, but if memory serves it was a couple of months or so. Oh yeah—three months. Right after I was talking in whole paragraphs, but before I had my premiere piano recital at Carnegie Hall to a packed house that called me back for almost three hours of encores. Boy, that was a night! We left the fawning mob and I helped Dad fly my homebuilt airplane back to California (I mostly navigated; I was still too short to reach the rudder pedals). When we landed, the crowd at the airport, having heard the concert on the radio, insisted on carrying me on their shoulders back to the house. “I can walk, fer gosh sakes,” I yelled in four of the six languages I spoke at the time, trying to get them to put me down. “Besides, I gotta pee!” (I hadn’t yet finished the lavatory in the plane). Mom was so embarrassed to hear me talk that way. Apparently my dialects were unpolished, and some of the crowd stared uncomprehendingly. Mom and Dad hustled me to the car, our brand new 1941 Chevrolet we bought with the advance on royalties on my soon-to-be-published autobiography, and I sat on Dad’s lap, steering, as we slipped into the night, leaving the sweeping searchlights and cheering throng behind. Oh, the memories—they serve me well.