YRKB
11-30-2015, 04:39 PM
Note was a strident, raven haired man when we met. If it's possible to speak stridently, then I suppose he did that too. Really, every movement - purposeful and with direction.
At that party, when he walked over to myself and the blonde girl I was standing with - I don't recall honestly, it may or may not have been the host Annette's little sister - I'm not ashamed to say it was apparent that all that direction stopped where I started.
My God, that man. I hear people say now we all looked better then - 'the Golden era', the fifties. You know, held ourselves better - did our hair that certain way. I don't know about all that, but I know my husband never looked better than at Annette's birthday celebrations in 1953. A strong jaw, hazel eyes - those eyebrows so dark and thick, but still shapely, that barely moved a millimeter the entire time he spoke.
He seemed so... expressive, even so. I tried, with some measure of discretion, to alternate between them and the rest of that most impressive face to work out how it was possible. I mean, they really weren't moving at all. You'd think that might hinder some expression of character in anybody, but not Note.
He was named that way because of all the notes his Father had sent his Mother while they courted - and where those notes had got them in the end. You'd think maybe something as sentimental as all that would come from her side, but actually his father thought of it. Note.
Note Selden. Their beloved... mine too. Strident.
Oh, he was confident. All that love makes you confident, that kind of start - from the very beginning, love behind a name like that - I'm sure. Athletic too. Tall and slim. By that I mean slim like it was then, not the paltry excuse for it people make today...
Really I don't know what changed.
Sometimes I wonder if it's our little girl. I never thought you could love somebody so much it might be a distraction, I mean from yourself - that it might actually make you unrecognizable, only you didn't even know it.
She's 13 and she's his world.
I mean... girls drift away at that time, I did. They find a world away from Daddy and his jokes and his house names and his bedtime talks. Not this one. Not her Daddy either. People say that's normal, you know with Fathers, to stay that way - and maybe that's so, but I don't know it's any good.
Note listens to her go on about her day at the dinner table, as she spoons the food she won't eat into his plate. All that food, always falling from hers onto his in great heaps.
And he just listens - and eats, and eats, and eats. His and hers.
I say 'Note, she's giving you too much. That's too much. Your father can't have it all!'
He just listens - and she just talks, and heaps it up.
Then he eases up from the table with that...caveman groan, every time - and pats his big, fat stomach. Shakes it. Oh, I can't stand that he does that to make her laugh. Really, I can't.
I say to her 'It's not funny. Look at what you're doing to your father - you think that's funny?'
She never answers, because he never let's her hear it. The listening's only for him - him and her.
Then they go somewhere, sit somewhere. Sitting and sitting and sitting and talking..
Strident. That's what Note used to be. That was the word. That was Note Selden.
Copyright Yafeu-Khamisi Rodway-Brown
At that party, when he walked over to myself and the blonde girl I was standing with - I don't recall honestly, it may or may not have been the host Annette's little sister - I'm not ashamed to say it was apparent that all that direction stopped where I started.
My God, that man. I hear people say now we all looked better then - 'the Golden era', the fifties. You know, held ourselves better - did our hair that certain way. I don't know about all that, but I know my husband never looked better than at Annette's birthday celebrations in 1953. A strong jaw, hazel eyes - those eyebrows so dark and thick, but still shapely, that barely moved a millimeter the entire time he spoke.
He seemed so... expressive, even so. I tried, with some measure of discretion, to alternate between them and the rest of that most impressive face to work out how it was possible. I mean, they really weren't moving at all. You'd think that might hinder some expression of character in anybody, but not Note.
He was named that way because of all the notes his Father had sent his Mother while they courted - and where those notes had got them in the end. You'd think maybe something as sentimental as all that would come from her side, but actually his father thought of it. Note.
Note Selden. Their beloved... mine too. Strident.
Oh, he was confident. All that love makes you confident, that kind of start - from the very beginning, love behind a name like that - I'm sure. Athletic too. Tall and slim. By that I mean slim like it was then, not the paltry excuse for it people make today...
Really I don't know what changed.
Sometimes I wonder if it's our little girl. I never thought you could love somebody so much it might be a distraction, I mean from yourself - that it might actually make you unrecognizable, only you didn't even know it.
She's 13 and she's his world.
I mean... girls drift away at that time, I did. They find a world away from Daddy and his jokes and his house names and his bedtime talks. Not this one. Not her Daddy either. People say that's normal, you know with Fathers, to stay that way - and maybe that's so, but I don't know it's any good.
Note listens to her go on about her day at the dinner table, as she spoons the food she won't eat into his plate. All that food, always falling from hers onto his in great heaps.
And he just listens - and eats, and eats, and eats. His and hers.
I say 'Note, she's giving you too much. That's too much. Your father can't have it all!'
He just listens - and she just talks, and heaps it up.
Then he eases up from the table with that...caveman groan, every time - and pats his big, fat stomach. Shakes it. Oh, I can't stand that he does that to make her laugh. Really, I can't.
I say to her 'It's not funny. Look at what you're doing to your father - you think that's funny?'
She never answers, because he never let's her hear it. The listening's only for him - him and her.
Then they go somewhere, sit somewhere. Sitting and sitting and sitting and talking..
Strident. That's what Note used to be. That was the word. That was Note Selden.
Copyright Yafeu-Khamisi Rodway-Brown