Redbery Books

My niece invited me to join her family for dinner tonight at a Mexican restaurant in her neighborhood. It just so happens that it is in the neighborhood where I started my teaching career many years ago. This particular restaurant was in existence at that time and a watering hole for staff on occasion and an occasional lunch spot for the few times a year that lunch wasn’t a grab-and-go in the faculty room. I haven’t been there for years and was surprised it was still in existence.

Still, it poked the memory and prompted a connection to the book I’m currently reading, The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa. Ever since a traumatic brain injury, the professor has only eighty minutes of short-term memory.  He is defined by his past and then by eighty minute segments. That would mean by bedtime tonight I could remember my time at the restaurant from the ‘70s but not know my great-nephew from 81 minutes earlier. Would I be more mindful of living in the moment today just as I probably did when I was forty years younger? 

The Professor is a mathematical genius and a baseball fan and that becomes an avenue for connections with the Housekeeper. Both characters are referred to only by their roles, no other names identify them. When she first meets the man with notes pinned all over his jacket, the Housekeeper expects initially to be one of many in the line of housekeepers who didn’t work out. As they are drawn into each other’s lives, family is defined in a new way.A heartwarming and elegant story. The mention that math, numbers, formulas, and equations are interspersed throughout the story might put off some readers and that would be a loss. I personally am not one who spends much time thinking about numbers except when I run the z tape at the register each day. I’m loving this book.  I’d also love to see the original before translation. I’m guessing the strings of numbers would be elegant.

 So tonight, Henry the one-year old will be the prime number.