Christmas Day 2017
I started my first project in July 2015 at our cottage in
Old Orchard Beach in the early hours, with coffee, while the others slept. Here I am
again, but at 252 Stanley, my daughter sleeping downstairs in our old bedroom. For
some reason when I woke at 3:45, I couldn’t get back to sleep. I listened to
Christmas music on CBC, to the news, retrieved my iPad and wrote my
granddaughter an email. I am not sure why I chose her. Maybe because she
is the only one of my children who will wake up alone on Christmas morn.
Stephen Asma says in The
Evolution of Imagination that the imagination is interested in the
particular. My daughter goes off Wednesday to play the role of Etta Cone, a collector of fine art. The playwright is trying to resurrect her as the
more interesting of the two Cone sisters, the other sister, Claribel, having
been traditionally thought of as the more dynamic, a medical doctor.
We are in a revolutionary time, family life being redefined,
the relation between men and women being transformed into true equals. The
whole “Me, too” movement came about so suddenly –it only needed the crudity of
famous men to precipitate it.
Here, re-reading on January 19, 2018, I am wondering why I
have begun my exploration of imagination with a discussion of my daughter.
“Spontaneity is the key feature of the faculty of
imagination. (Asma, 17)
