Worth-Its 1-25

No one could put it better than Maggie did: Scenes I hope pop up as my life flashes before my eyes.

1. Waltzing around the basement with my grandmother on Sunday mornings, in my flannel nightgown, to a 45 of Patti Page's "Tennessee Waltz."
2. R. proposing on the streets of New York because I picked a fight with him in Cafe Lalo where he had intended to pop the question.
3. Seeing Barbara Cook and Wally Harper live in a small venue.
4. Not just the "yes" letter from college, but the little yelp my father emitted when I called up the stairs to tell him what it said.
5. Baby R. laughing at the sight of a pompon duck and the sound of the word "chandelier."
6. My first real kiss in a red Volkswagen bug, and thinking, "this is better than ice cream."
7. The hush followed by applause when I sang "I Guess I'll Miss the Man" sitting on the edge of the stage in "Pippin," senior year of high school.
8. My first dinner party with CF and MB, shrunken chicken and burnt apple cake followed by pizza.
9. Going out for bagels early in the morning after the nor'easter of 1992, seeing the streets littered with broken umbrellas, and buying a Christmas tree on impulse.
10. Skinny-dipping in the fountain.
11. Being awoken in the early hours of the morning and "sung in" to my a cappella group.
12. Coming home from a day in the city with GBR, having become a couple, and his saying "I want everyone to know about us."
13. Kissing R. for the first time and laughing out loud at the sheer, joyful, uncomplicated rightness of it.
14. Going to a baseball game with R, CC and PM, and joking about the impossibility of resisting the strolling vendors, no matter what they were selling: "Grass clippings! Get your grass clippings!" "Dog poop heah!"
15. Longest-sip and incredible-lie contests at David's Cookies after school in H.S.
16. Driving a 15-passenger van up an icy slope in Vermont with EB blowing kisses to me at the top.
17. R. and S. explaining R.'s plan to sell original poetry at a roadside stand.
18. JM pouring glass after glass of champagne in her Madame X-like dress at our second Country House Weekend.
19. Snuggling baby M. in the music building lobby after a Reunions cloudburst, and thinking, "I thought my baby would interfere with my enjoyment of Reunions; but actually Reunions is interfering with my enjoyment of my baby."
20. Christmas morning 1974 and what seemed like a huge number of presents under the tree. It now looks quite modest in photographs but they were all things I especially loved and played with for years.
21. Dancing with my father at my wedding as he said, "Isn't this all like something in a dream?"
22. Showing my brother the dilapidated swing set in my new back yard, vaguely lamenting the need to find someone to take it down, and watching him immediately proceed to do so.
23. Hearing Mister Rogers speak at my brother's commencement.
24. My 21st-birthday costume party on the stage of the theater where I was working that summer.
25. Baby S. grinning mischievously as she slowly reopened my robe after I tried to cut short what must have been one of our last nursing sessions.