I can’t look at everything hard enough

Emily (softly, more in wonder than in grief):

I can’t bear it. They’re so young and beautiful. Why did they ever have to get old? Mama, I’m here. I’m grown up. I love you all, everything. – I can’t look at everything hard enough.

….

Emily (in a loud voice to the Stage Manager):

I can’t. I can’t go on. It goes so fast. We don’t even have time to look at one another.

She breaks down sobbing.

I didn’t realize. So all that was going on and we never noticed. Take me back – up the hill – to my grave. But first: Wait! One more look.

Good-by, Good-by, world. Good-by, Grover’s Corners … Mama and Papa. Good-by to clocks ticking … and Mama’s sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new-ironed dresses and hot baths … and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you.

She looks toward the stage manager and asks abruptly, through her tears:

Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? – every, every minute?

Stage manager:

No.

– from Our Town, Thornton Wilder

Thank you to Martha for urging me to re-read this extraordinary play … I can’t wait to talk about it. And to Katrina, for your glorious essay whose timing cannot be a coincidence.

6 thoughts on “I can’t look at everything hard enough”

  1. Well, the stage manager says no, but then,

    Saints and poets, maybe.

    I can’t speak for your potential sainthood, but the poetry in your prose just gets better and better.

  3. Wow! My son’s drama club at high school put on “Our Town” in April. The memories this brought back. And the recent things I have read that this rings so true with. Thank you, Lindsey.

  4. Lindsey, you honor Emily and Thornton with your spirit—yes you are a poet who gets it (as Luana and Renae suggest), but also a traveler between worlds imploring us to look ever harder, and at the same time more softly and tenderly.

  5. That scene makes me teary for so many reasons. For its beauty in and of itself. For my memories of being in a summer production of Our Town when I was 14. And for my memories of watching the episode of The Wonder Years where Kevin holds Winnie up with his spotlight when she begins to forget her lines.

    I hadn’t thought of those lines in years. And yet when I started reading they were instantly recognizable to me. Funny how some things become ingrained and are made permanent. Thanks for this.

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