Great Things Have Happened (1993) Alden Nowlan We were talking about the great things that have happened in our lifetimes; and I said, "Oh, I suppose the moon landing was the greatest thing that has happened in my time." But, of course, we were all lying. The truth is the moon landing didn't mean one-tenth as much to me as one night in 1963 when we lived in a three-room flat in what once had been the mansion of some Victorian merchant prince (our kitchen had been a clothes closet, I'm sure), on a street where by now nobody lived who could afford to live anywhere else. That night, the three of us, Claudine, Johnnie and me, woke up at half-past four in the morning and ate cinnamon toast together. "Is that all?" I hear somebody ask. Oh, but we were silly with sleepiness and, under our windows, the street-cleaners were working their machines and conversing in Italian, and everything was strange without being threatening, even the tea-kettle whistled differently than in the daytime: it was like the feeling you get sometimes in a country you've never visited before, when the bread doesn't taste quite the same, the butter is a small adventure, and they put paprika on the table instead of pepper, except that there was nobody in this country except the three of us, half-tipsy with the wonder of being alive, and wholly enveloped in love. --

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