The narrator, who has two daughters, tells it like this:
‘There are so few people given us to love. I want to tell my daughters this, that each time you fall in love, it is important, even at nineteen. Especially at nineteen. And if you can, at nineteen, count the people you love on one hand, you will not, at forty have run out of fingers on the other. There are so few people given us to love and they all stick.’
I think the author of this text, Anne Enright, is right. Quite seriously, circumstances are presented to us in such a way that, really, there are not that many people ‘to love.’
And now, for some reason, I can hear the wonderful Gracie Slick of Jefferson Airplane singing ‘Somebody to love’ …
Footnote: The photograph of the lone tree was taken on the west coast of France near to La Rochelle, May 2017.
The quote is from Anne Enright’s brilliant work: ‘The Gathering‘.
Go Ask Alice 