25

I wasn't sure quite what to post in honor of my quarter-century celebration. Tonight I'm going to see The Nields, which feels appropriately nostalgic and happy. So, I have decided to post an excerpt from something equally as nostalgic and happy, something else that has remained with me over the years and has also helped shape me:

"Melinda Pratt rides city bus number twelve to her cello lesson, wearing her mother’s jean jacket and only one sock. Hallo world, says Minna. Minna often addresses the world, sometimes silently, sometimes out loud...

...Minna looks out the bus window and thinks about her life. Her one life. She likes artichokes and blue fingernail polish and Mozart played too fast. She loves baseball, and the month of March because no one else much likes March, and every shade of brown she has ever seen. "

—from The Facts and Fictions of Minna Pratt, by Patricia MacLachlan, © 1988.

In the space of 136 pages, Minna grapples with the idea of impending womanhood, falls in love, and tries endlessly to develop her vibrato. The orchestral and city backdrops running throughout the book obviously drew me in, but Minna was at the heart of it—I always identified with her. At the end of the book, she grows up; we close the back cover (reluctantly!) on a more mature Minna; the confident, graceful, owner of a rich vibrato.

It's taken a lot for me to reach this point, but I'm happy where I am. I do feel a bit like Minna at the end of her journey, and revisiting this passage has given me new resolve to use my (literal and figurative) vibrato in decorating the days to come.