This won’t be a ramble about how to remove ear wax with a blowtorch or polish your kitchen floor with elderberry jam.

It’s just me, passing on two nuggets of wisdom I bumped into when I was very, very young. Back then, many of us kids who studied drama at New Trier High School in Winnetka, Illinois, convinced a talented mother to help us create a summer theater, so that we could put on OUR TOWN.

The play is a fictional portrait of Grover’s Corner, New Hampshire between 1901 and 1913. The reason it is still being performed (mostly in summer theater and high schools) is that what was true about being human in 1938, when Thornton Wilder wrote it, is also true today. The values. The relationship of parent to child. The church choir. The town drunk. The local newspaper editor. The family doctor. The love between boy and girl, husband and wife. Births. Deaths. And life going on.

Yes. There have been changes over the decades. But not in essences. Not in truths.

Briefly, the play is divided into three acts: Daily life. Love and Marriage. Death and Eternity. All are pretty much what you would expect of them. The characters that concern us most, however, are Emily Webb and George Gibbs … next door neighbors who have known each other all their lives, and who fall in love and get married.

One monumental brilliance of Thornton Wilder’s play is that just about every stage direction requiring an actor to interact with an object is performed in pantomime, such as when Mrs. Gibbs is opening a cabinet door, or the milkman is delivering bottles of cream. Also, the narrator takes on various personas as he walks the audience through the play. As the Stage Manager, he introduces us to the layout of Grover’s Corners, its population, its citizens, and its benign personality. 


As the drama progresses, the Stage Manager becomes the preacher who marries Emily and George. Then, when Emily dies in childbirth, he assumes a godlike role as, realizing that she is dead, Emily begs him to – just once more – let her go back to earth to say good bye.

Oklay. Now, we’re at the scene that permanently affected my life. Literally. Just about every single day, I replay it in my mind as circumstances arise. So, without further ado, here is Emily, after having revisited earth, but no longer able to stand the poignant beautify of all she has lost.

“I can’t. I can’t go on. It goes so fast. We don’t have time to look at one another. I didn’t realize. All that was going on in life, and we never noticed. Take me back – up the hill – to my grave.

“But first: Wait! One more look. Good-by, Good-by, world. Good-by, Grover’s Corners. Mama and Papa. Good-bye to clocks ticking. And Mama’s sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new-ironed dresses and hot baths. And sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you.”

Then, just before Emily leaves the world forever, she appeals desperately to the Stage Manager: “Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? – every, every minute?”

And he responds, “No. The saints and poets, maybe they do some.”

That’s it. The nine words which affected me so deeply when I was 16 years old and still have great power over me now. Why? Simple answer: because I decided that if I wanted to appreciate life “every, every minute,” I would have to become a saint or a poet.

And we all know that I’m not a saint.

Okay. On to the second bit of wisdom I acquired during my high school years. This from Henry David Thoreau’s WALDEN POND. For the record, Thoreau is NOT my favorite philosopher. Nonetheless, just as the bible is not my favorite book, the “For Everything There is a Season” passage in Ecclesiastes – next to the Gettysburg Address – is just about the most gorgeous bit of prose that has ever been written.

Enough preamble, though. Back to Thoreau.

Over the years, it has been stated (huffily and with little grace) that the following is actually a misquote, in the same way “Lead on MacDuff” is really “Lay on MacDuff.” To which I respond…: “Who Cares?” Entire generations were brought up on this quotation, and it is worth repeating:

“Most men live lives of quiet desperation and go to their graves with the song still in them.”

I don’t think it would take a Rhodes Scholar to realize that both Thoreau’s statement and Emily’s heart-breaking request of the Stage Manager ask the same question: “Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? – every, every minute?”

And so, in defiance of (or accordance with) Thoreau’s and Wilder’s eloquent expositions about life, every morning after I wake up, instead of resenting the effort I have to put into exercising, putting on my makeup, or cooking a meal, I replay in my mind Emily’s goodbye to clocks ticking, Mama’s sunflowers, food, coffee, new-ironed dresses, hot baths, sleeping and waking up.

That’s when I remind myself to take delight in life’s minutiae. The soothing massage of my morning shower, my first sip of coffee, the scent of roses, the jangle of doorbells, and … you get the drift.

In Cole Porter enchanting lyrics to his song, “It’s De-Lovely,” he wrote:

“The night is young,

The skies are clear.

So if you want to go walking, dear,

It's delightful, it's delicious, it's de-lovely.

Such, my beloved readers, is LIFE: Delightful. Delicious. De-lovely.

To honor our unequivocal good luck in abiding upon this incredibly beautiful planet, let us usurp the prerogative of saints and poets and do as the State Manager believes we cannot do. Let us realize life while we are living it … every precious second of every precious minute.

Then, many years from now, when our time is up, let us all be confident (with or without Thoreau’s consent), that – goodly, loudly, and truly – our song has been sung.

Copyright © Shelly Reuben, 2025. Shelly Reuben’s books have been nominated for Edgar, Prometheus, and Falcon awards. For more about her writing, visit: www.shellyreuben.com