Last night I met Margaret, Norman, Catrina, and Lizzie for dinner in Clayton before all of us attended "The Miracle Worker" in which Lizzie and her dad are performing. We had a wonderful Italian meal at Cafe Napoli, which Lizzie told her mother later was "such a fancy restaurant I will remember it my whole life." Lizzie is ten years old and one wonderkind. She charmed our waiter, and she and her mother entertained us old folks through the dinner hour. Catrina is surely a McGiver Girl--you know, one of those women you could send into the jungle with a toothpick and a cottonswab, and she would build a shopping mall. I don't know when I have had a better time.

After dinner we picked up Shirley, who couldn't join us for the dinner, and all of us went to the Clayton Community Theater (part of Washington University) for "The Miracle Worker." And it was a miracle. We saw Robbie, Catrina's husband, transformed into "Captain Keller," the brusque, blustery father of Helen Keller. HE DID A SPECTACULAR JOB OF INHABITING THE CHARACTER and showing how people can be transformed through hanging in even in difficult life events. Lizzie had a smaller part and did a wonderful job with it. She told us she tried out for the Helen Keller part but was "really happy to be in the play whatever her role." [She is ten going on twenty, you see.]