“The story of your life never starts at the beginning. Don’t they teach you anything at school?”
So says the one-hundred-four-year-old Ona to the eleven-year-old boy who’s been sent to help her out every Saturday morning. As he refills the bird feeders and tidies the garden shed, Ona tells him about her long life, from first love to second chances. Soon she’s confessing secrets she has kept hidden for decades.
One Saturday, the boy doesn’t show up. Ona starts to think he’s not so special after all, but then his father arrives on her doorstep, determined to finish his son’s good deed. The boy’s mother is not so far behind. Ona is set to discover that the world can surprise us at any age and that sometimes sharing a loss is the only way to find ourselves again.
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“Ona Vitkus is 104 years old and something of a loner. Narrator Chris Ciulla adopts a slight accent to illustrate her Lithuanian roots and adds a slight tremulousness to his timbre so that Ona sounds old but still spry and spirited…Ciulla’s open performance and slightly hurried pacing for the boy perfectly translate his unfiltered but sweet nature..Ciulla makes his fundamental decency and kindness clear to the listener.”
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