I used to think my life would not be complete without a star sapphire ring. Or a sterling silver hair-dressing set (basic brush, mirror and comb), or a silver tea service. Or an Electro-Lux vacuum cleaner.

Well, I got over the ring, and the hair dressing set.

I inherited my grandmother's tea service for a while: an ornate, full service, including the tea "slop" jar, tea pot and strainer, coffee pot plus a coffee urn sitting on a swinging tripod over a burner to keep the coffee warm, plus, of course, creamer, sugar, and so on - all in sterling silver with raised roses in the design. I never used it. I had too many children and I didn't throw large tea parties, or even small ones. My son inherited it, too, (Mother said it belonged to the first son) and he sold it on consignment and got stiffed. Small Claims Court declared him the injured party but there was no redress.

Now the vacuum cleaner....we saved 50-cent pieces until we had enough to buy a Eureka cleaner, a tank with a bag and a vacuuming wand, but not an Electro-Lux. My best friend's mother had three of them, one for each floor of the house. but I never did get one, just struggled along trying to keep things clean with machines that, as the Dyson ad goes now,"lose suction." I no longer want an Electro-lux, I'd sort of like a Dyson, but like its predecessor, it costs too much for me, and I don't vacuum much. Swiffers are easier on my weak muscles.

Eventually, you grow out of your wish list, and substitute new wishes, or not. Remember St. Augustine's line: "We do not leave our sins, our sins leave us." That's true of wish lists, too, I think. I remember a bit of doggerel from a Ladies' Home Journal magazine, two lines by a writer whose name I never noticed, but I remember it was a verse about a teen-age girl and her wish list: "Her social standing is in danger/Without the latest record changer." Lo, how technology has changed but how little has desire changed.

Be careful what you wish for. One or the other is going to go out of style.

I read two novels while I was at Ste. Anne's spa. This doesn't happen often because usually the books that are left in the minuscule "library" (read: three bookshelves) are New Age, think-beautiful-thoughts or meditate-for-a-longer-life kind of thing. But I found two novels by Willa Cather (1873-1947), (pron. gather - I'm telling you because I didn't know). I think I had read one or two short stories by Cather and had always meant to read her. After all, she won the Pulitzer Prize (in 1922, for "One of Ours"), and I've always known the title, but not the pronunciation of her novel, "My Ántonia" (1918). See that accent on the Á? You emphasize that as if you're saying "Anthony" and then end up with i-a each getting emphasis.

Well. So. I read "Lucy Gayheart" (1935) first, then "My Ántonia", and enjoyed them both. Cather's writing reminded me a little of Isaak Dinesen's style, with its precision and generosity, but it's much more dedicated to landscape and weather, which she describes beautifully. Then I came across her name after I came home, reading the New York Times book section, where a critic commented, in a review of someone else, that Cather's writing was ageless, that is, not exclusive to a certain age category. That's a good thing. I don't like sticking writers in a ghetto, as if they appealed only to a certain age and no one else should or could appreciate their work. I like to be eclectic in my reading and I'm sure writers welcome a wide-ranging audience.

Well, you learn something every day. Thank goodness for Wikipedia.