THE THEATER was small and dank. We stuck together, an uncertain little trio, trying to hide our uncertainty, . . .

I SHUFFLED ALONG with the line. Silently I rehearsed saying “Three, under twelve,” so that I wouldn’t screw up when my turn came. . . .

AN ASIDE, on the Babbington dialect. When we got to the theater, Margot and Martha sent me to wait on line, while they hung out at the curb, talking with their friends. I did not learn until years later that not everyone waits “on” line, that some people wait “in” line. . . .

     Like a photographic print in a developing bath in a darkroom, my understanding of some of the things Rosetta told me developed slowly as the seasons came around again to early fall. Two impressions stood out from all the others: . . .

NEARLY A YEAR PASSED. Over the course of that year’s Saturday visits to the Glynns, a year of drawing lessons and contest entries, I got to know Andy and Rosetta. I learned quite a lot about their remarkable lives, . . .

“HAVE A TRY,” she said. “I have announcements for dozens of contests here. I don’t have time to enter them all. Why don’t you try some of them?” She lifted some sheets from the stack of coupons and pages torn from magazines and placed them in front of me. . . .

     “I enter these contests,” she said. She indicated a pile of pages torn from magazines. “They all ask you to do the same thing. They want you to tell them, ‘in your own words,’ or ‘in twenty-five words or less,’ why you like the thing they make, whatever it is.

I BEGAN SPENDING more and more time at the Glynns’, and my time with them began to take on the rhythms of a welcome and happy routine. . . .

EVENTUALLY, THEY REACHED IRELAND, at that time a haven for scholars, artists, and intellectuals whose homelands had fallen under the control of yahoos, fascists, and philistines. . . .

     He made a gesture for me to follow, and he headed toward his studio. I found that I was full of nervous expectation. When I began to walk, my legs seemed not to recall how it was done.