I’ve watched him grow up, but it caught me by surprise

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I’ve watched him grow up, but it caught me by surprise

My daughter Julie has an app on her phone that makes it simple to create a digital collage. So I am used to getting photos from her, which juxtapose images of last summer with images of this summer or that show her children at multiple ages on multiple first days of school. She recreates poses, too, driving to a spot where a picture was shot and taking a photo of the same people in the same pose, from the same angle a year or two later.

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A song, a pond, or a good book can make the pandemic feel far away

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A song, a pond, or a good book can make the pandemic feel far away

In the midst of this pandemic, which, like a monster from a 1950s horror movie feigns death but then springs to life again, I made a few discoveries. Because we didn’t travel this summer, I found some things close to home that made me forget, for at least a little while, this shape-changing creature that refuses to go away. I’ll start with Shirley Horn. I googled a song, “Here’s to Life,” because I love it and it led me to YouTube. And YouTube led me to her. I watched a clip from 1993, when this pianist and jazz singer performed with John Williams and The Boston Pops. And for a solid five minutes, I didn’t think about anything except this song because Horn infuses so much feeling into her lyrics that you feel as if you’re watching a movie, not simply listening to a person sing. Why had I never listened to her before?

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