A Velvety Cloak of Words

"When Laurel was a child, in this room and in this bed where she lay now, she closed her eyes like this and the rhythmic, nighttime sounds of the two beloved reading voices came rising in turn up the stairs every night to reach her. She could hardly fall asleep, she tried to keep awake, for pleasure. She cared for her own books, but she cared more for theirs, which meant their voices. In the lateness of the night, their two voices reading to each other where she could hear them, never letting a silence divide or interrupt them, combined into one unceasing voice and wrapped her around as she listened, as still as if she were asleep. She was sent to sleep under a velvety cloak of words, richly patterned and stitched with gold, straight out of a fairy tale, while they went reading on into her dreams."

from The Optimist's Daughter, by Eudora Welty (Random House, 1972)

Comments

[cuileann]

That's beautiful.

[Susan T.]

Culieann, I thought it was lovely, too. Glad you liked it!

[Cindy T.]

Sounds like somebody's back at home...

[Jules]

That's lovely. I read that book forever ago but don't remember that moment.

Like your new template, too!

[cloudscome]

That is really lovely. Thanks!

[Susan T.]

Cindy, Jules, and Cloudscome, I really like "The Optimist's Daughter." Parts of it are so funny. I want to read the whole novel again. In "One Writer's Beginnings," Welty also writes about her parents reading aloud to each other--it was clearly the inspiration for the passage above.