Oh, for a family like a flock of noisy birds nesting in a nearby wood!
From Before We Were Young, one of 296 sayings written by John Sarris over thirty years.
From Alfred’s journal
Thanksgiving at the brick house on Ellis Street, and I watched it through the kitchen window for most of an hour. Nine of them around a table built for six, three conversations running at once, a boy under the table with a plate he had stolen. For years I thought the quiet families were the lucky ones, the ones who passed dishes without a word and did not interrupt. Oh, for a family like a flock of noisy birds nesting in a nearby wood. Nesting in a nearby wood, mind, not in the same hole; starlings roost by the hundreds and each one keeps its own twig. When the father raised his voice nobody flinched, which was the part I kept turning over on the walk back.
He reads what you tell him and writes a page of his journal back, with a few of these chosen for you. It costs nothing and asks for nothing.
