Word After Word

We were walking to a tea party at a Victorian House, me and three girls I know. “I wish Chivalry wasn’t dead,” Alyssa said as we crossed the streets, the streets soupy with grey slush.  She swept out her hands. “I wish men still put coats down for us to walk on!”

Amelia, age seven, said, “Who was Chivalry?” And in my mind’s eye, I saw him, swooping up on a horse (I think “cavalry” may be infecting my wordy dream).  “Oh there’s no chivarly in boys anymore,” Veronica said. She’s eleven and she takes care of two little brothers.

Well, I said to the girls as we walked alongside the tall Victorian house to the tea. “There are so many good men. There is Chivalry.  We can find these good men and these boys who are good.”

“Are you seeing someone?” Alyssa said. “Someone you will keep?”

I told her I didn’t know. I want all three girls to only pick the most wonderful boys. I worry about how easy it is to fall in love with someone who isn’t kind and whole. I want to bless them, give them cloaks of confidence and trust that the good is alive and well and not dead at all.

So we rounded the corner and my most elegant friend and her mother took the girls over, and I watched as a row of women, led by a docent, ended by a dowager, filed into the grand dun-grey house on the corner, in the late light, headed for tea.

Related posts:

1. BOYS GETTING DRESSED TO GO OUT
2. BOYS GETTING DRESSED UP TO GO OUT
3. High Point of the Day
4. I wrote the last sentence today
5. Boys Enter the English Professor’s Office (with apologies to Rick Moody)