“Here is your country. Cherish these natural wonders, cherish the natural resources, cherish the history and romance as a sacred heritage, for your children and your children's children.”
-Theodore Roosevelt
Wrestling this morning with an inchoate sense of dread, of impending doom. This arrives from time-to-time, and usually when I dig a little, it seems to emanate from my work. It was already upon me when I scanned the sixty emails that sat unread this morning and found a motion directed at an error in one of our filings. The error was relatively minor, but the lawyer on the other side is of a type to pounce on trivial things that could be handled with a phone call. The least professional among us mistake bare dagger attacks for zealous advocacy.
But the dread was already there before I opened the email. Maybe it's the knowledge that I'll be in Texas in two days to see my father, maybe for the last time, then will spend Monday picking through the remnants of Hurricane Beryl trying to make my way back to Florida in the Columbia for work.
This gray, gloomy morning, oppressively warm and humid, isn't helping much.
Peg just sent me a photo from six years ago, of Mom, Bobby, and me waiting for a table at their favorite restaurant. The last two or three years of her life that would've been impossible, going into a restaurant for a sit-down meal. I hate that now every time I think of her, my memory pulls up that last, horrifying image in the ICU, with me in the middle of the tragedy acting as businesslike and matter-of-fact as if we were trying to decide what to watch on TV rather than whether Mom should be allowed to die that night, which she did.
Enough of this.
Yesterday was a great one, reminding us of what's great about our country at a time when we all need reminding.
We spent the night up at the Cliff, and the next morning Peg was a whirling dervish in the kitchen, preparing for the arrival of friends who were both born in India and now are raising kids and building a life here. Both professionals, well-traveled and well read, they arrived at the condo just as P was putting the finishing touches on her kitchen prep. We might've spent more time out on the veranda during their visit, but for the heat and still air. We mostly admired the boat-filled Canandaigua Lake from within our air-conditioned space.
The conversation flowed from discussion of regional cultural and linguistic differences in India, painting a picture of something that is more a mosaic of jostling tribes than I had imagined, to tales of American history and culture they also seemed to be hearing for the first time.
We wanted the mid-afternoon meal to be an Americana feast, which required P and me to go way, way off diet. It also required a little creativity, given that our guests were Hindus who don't touch beef or pork. Peg's menu included air fryer chicken wings, turkey franks, macaroni salad, and baked beans, topped off with apple cobbler and ice cream. I dialed up a Spotify Fourth of July playlist that included everything from "Sweet Home Alabama" to "Stars and Stripes Forever" to Ray Charles singing "America the Beautiful". That I still mist up a little at that last one shows I've not become completely cynical about this experiment in self-governance.
By late afternoon our friends bid their farewells for the long drive back to Horseheads, but not before snapping one selfie of our gathering out on the veranda.
This country needs more folks like them, creating another American family success story with roots halfway around the planet. That takes a lot of courage and optimism, which can be contagious.
Afterward P and I lounged about outside, decided we were too whipped to drive back to Corning, and then curled up on the couch for a few minutes of television before the flashes across the lake signaled that some illicit fireworks had made their way onto the shoreline. Soon all up and down the lake there were bursts of bright colors as folks put on a homemade pyrotechnic spectacle. It was simply beautiful.
My one and only scheduled work call is right around the corner. Time to dive back into it.
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