March 21

Read more about Alda Merini here

Read about Ved Mehta at VedMehta.com

About Ved Mehta's book The Red Letters

My mother stopped briefly in New York on her way to Charleston, and eager to introduce my parents to some of the people who were closest to me in New York, I arranged a dinner party for them in my apartment. I invited William Shawn, the editor-in-chief of The New Yorker, who edited my writing; his wife, Cecille, and their two grown sons, Wallace and Allen; and my friend and amanuensis, Gwyneth Cravens. Despite tremendous good will all around, I expected the evening to be difficult. I was bringing together the two men who had had the greatest influence on me — my father and Mr. Shawn. After I had gone blind, two months short of my fourth birthday, everyone at home thought that my father should plan for a modest life for me, like that of a small-time shopkeeper, but my father never faltered in his ambition that I should aspire to the highest intellectual attainments.

* * * *

When I saw Gwyn at the office the morning after the dinner party, I said to her, “I was quite confused at the strange turn things took last night. What do you think happened?”

“I was puzzled myself,” she said. “I couldn’t have imagined a nicer group of people, and yet everything seemed to go awry.”

We did what we often did with a messy draft of writing — tried to put the material in some kind of order.

“What happened after I gave my father the brandy?” I asked.

“He seemed to drink it quickly. He started talking about your accomplishments with a great deal of fatherly pride. Then without any warning, he shifted into a stream of self-accusations, but not at all in a maudlin, drunken way. He seemed suddenly to drop his social mask and to speak from the heart. His suffering was evident. He said he had always felt responsible for what he called the tragedy of your blindness — how he blamed himself for not acting promptly when you got sick. Though he suspected you had meningitis, he delayed by a day driving you to a hospital where you could be properly diagnosed and treated. I said something reassuring, but without pausing he went on to explain the reason for his delay...

Read The Giveaway by Phyllis McGinley

The Giveaway

Saint Bridget was
A problem child.
Although a lass
Demure and mild,
And one who strove
To please her dad,
Saint Bridget drove
The family mad.
For here's the fault in Bridget lay:
She would give everything away.

To any soul
Whose luck was out
She'd give her bowl
Of stirabout;
She'd give her shawl,
Divide her purse
With one or all.
And what was worse,
When she ran out of things to give
She'd borrow from a relative.

Her father's gold,
Her grandsire's dinner,
She'd hand to cold
And hungry sinner;
Give wine, give meat,
No matter whose;
Take from her feet
The very shoes,
And when the shoes had gone to others,
Fetch forth her sister's and her mother's.

She could not quit.
She had to share;
Gave bit by bit
The silverware,
The barnyard geese,
The parlor rug,
Her little niece
'S christening mug,
Even her bed to those in want,
And then the mattress of her aunt.

An easy touch
For poor and lowly,
She gave so much
And grew so holy
That when she died
Of years and fame,
The countryside
Put on her name,
And still the Isles of Erin fidget
With generous girls named Bride or Bridget.

Well, one must love her.
Nonetheless,
In thinking of her
Givingness,
There's no denial
She must have been
A sort of trial
To her kin.
The moral, too, seems rather quaint.
Who had the patience of a saint,
From evidence presented here?
Saint Bridget? Or her near and dear?