Summers at Bells

Reading the blog of my former English professor feels just a little bit shameful.

She used to mark our creative writing in pencil in the margins - suggestions more than critical comments. She's amazing really. Not only is she a twice published author, but she's bicycled across Russia, owns a country farm that she runs with her husband, has a masters degree in high math as well as English, sports a black belt in marshal arts, lays tile, teaches at the university... Is there anything she can't do?

I invited her to my wedding, not thinking that she would really show up. But she did, just long enough to congratulate me and hand me a package. It was a 1950s book called "Bride In the Kitchen". Inside she wrote, "You're beautiful - but can you cook?" And there was also a picture of me. It was photograph that her husband had snapped when I ran in to them at Bells Brewery some summers earlier. It looked like he processed the film himself.


There's a little part of me that would love to post witty comments on her blog. The other 75% of me doesn't want her to see what I've done.