Teaworthy's blog

My husband walked into our home office on Monday night to find me reading in quickly fading evening light. He says to me, "Alright Milton, you gonna turn the lights on?"

So I ask him, "Is that how Milton went blind? Not some congenital thing?"

"Sure," he says.

"He dictated Paradise Lost. The whole thing. Some other things too (he says this smiling as if to make his point) like the sonnet that begins, 'When I consider how my light is spent' about his blindness." 

I love that he remembers this sort of thing -entire passages- even though Milton is not his area.

Then in seconds, he pulls Milton's Complete Poems and Prose from the shelf, flip flip and bam, there it is, Sonnet XIX and it is lovely.

I love that he brings beautiful words into my life. It's like that line in Wonderboys, "She was a junkie for the printed word, and lucky for me, I manufactured her drug of choice."