Reading to Zuperfliegen

From Singles 2011

Let me begin by saying that I love Kevin. Sometimes, well, rather commonly, we have different ideas about things. For example, I think we should read children's books to Zupe and Kevin - well, Kevin thinks he doesn't understand anything yet, so we should just read OUR books to him.

A rather unromantic idea - but I can understand his logic. So, since I've been struggling to finish Joyce Carol Oates' "Little Bird of Heaven", I picked it up and read to Zupe after his lunch. I had only a page and a half to finish a chapter. I won't put it all here, just a sample.

"In these last staggering minutes of his life my father did not speak, he did not speak to me as if in the urgency of the moment he'd forgotten me, a kind of oblivion had washed over his soul, his hard-as-steel soul and he'd forgotten me, he'd forgotten his wife whom he had so desperately summoned to his side. He'd forgotten his family, his life that had gone bad. For it was his secret knowledge that death is easy, death is so much easier than life. ..I saw Daddy crouching, his shoulders hunched and his head lowered, now his face was turned from me and I could not see if he was smiling, I would never see Daddy's face again and must surrender him now, in his shaky right hand the revolver to be identified in the media as a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson in the illegal possession of Edward Diehl, I saw Daddy step confidently into that blinding light and lift this gun as if about to fire it in a seemingly spontaneous mocking gesture that would be the final gesture of his life."

I don't think it was a good idea.