Losing the Lead in My Pencil

Whenever I refused to eat something as a child, my dad would coax me by saying, "It will put lead in your pencil." I think I was in college, at a large table in the dining hall, when understanding of this metaphor hit me.

The image came to me again, late last night, sitting in a silent house, copying pages from Anna Karenina. My first pen will soon run out of ink.

I have recently copied the scenes at the ball. Kitty enters, fake hair piled on her head, pink dress covered with tissuey roses, perfectly done up to attract the attention of Vronsky. She feels quite certain of her appearance, until she dances past Anna Karenina. She takes in Anna's dress, black velvet trimmed with lace, and thinks how much more beautiful she is dressed this way, instead of in violet, as Kitty had been attempting to convince her to wear. And Anna's hair, adorned only with a wreath of flowers, is beautiful in a way that Kitty could not achieve with her cake tower of a hairdo. And Anna's shoulder, bare. Her necklace, stunning, keeping one's eye drawn to her naked skin.

Anna is putting lead in everyone's pencil that night, even Kitty's.

And Vronsky's, another detail that Kitty notices.

If you are picturing Kiera Knightly right now, let me draw you a different picture. I can't quote it directly, because I used my latest round of pages to stuff care packages to my college kids, but when Vronsky first sees Anna at the train station, he notes the roundness of her woman's figure, a contrast to the constant referral to Kitty's thin arms and wispy appearance. And as a reader, I know exactly when Vronsky is smitten: when Anna alone speaks up on behalf of the poor widow standing beside the track where the her husband has been crushed by a train. On cue, Vronsky disappears to find the woman and give her money.

I admire Anna, at the ball, being Anna, an older woman, married with a child, called to Moscow to save her brother's marriage while tending to her nephews and nieces who tug on her dress with their gooey child hands, drooled over by Vronsky in a room full of made-up maidens. Anna has a beauty that has come with age and experience. She has tenderness that make her vulnerable and strong.

I am thinking this as I copy pages, late on the eve of my baby's thirteenth birthday, as my pen's ink fades from glistening black to a scratchy gray: that aging has it's own beauty.

 

 

 

Posted with Blogsy