As someone who named their daughter Harper, I will never be able to write a book with the word "Mockingbird" in the title. I'm thinking of titles like:
To Kill A Mockingbird at 3am With An Axe Without Waking Your Neighbors
Silencing the Mockingbird With Poison Darts
Mockingbirds: Loud Mouth Bastards In Your Backyard All Night
Will I Ever Sleep Again? A Tail of Mockingbird Revenge
Can't wait for our own happy mockingbird to FIND A GIRLFRIEND.
Dear Dor,
Remember back in the (ahem) 70's when we were both swimming laps, day in, day out? You waking up before dawn to make the haul up the hill to Kamuela to swim lap after lap at HPA, me after school, being driven by Jen or Mom to the Kahului Pool for my practices. Remember? Man, we did our time in the water. And while I got a bit tired of the repetition of those back and forths, back and forths, I can say I am grateful to be skilled at swimming.
Remember also there was a Geritol commercial back then? A woman who tells us she takes care of herself by eating right, exercising and taking Geritol every day? The kicker to that commercial was when she says "I swim ten laps every day" - you and I would scoff, SCOFF! Hilarious that for regular people, ten laps was something tough. "Ten laps? Ha! We do that as a minor warm up!"
Well here we are in 2016 and I started swimming for exercise the other day. Haven't done laps in a good 8-10 years. I knew it was going to be tough, but O. M. G. And how many laps did I do? I could barely squeak out ten. TEN! I do give myself the tiniest bit of credit - the pool was set to a long course. (For you non-swimmers, that's 50 meters one way, the long way on an olympic sized pool. Short course is the short way across the pool, 25m one way. That pool in the picture is only a short course pool.) Thank god I know how to swim backstroke so I didn't have to hold my breath at all. Winded much?
We were so young and so smug. Where's my Geritol?
Love,
Nini