Monday, October 13, 2008

Crown Thy Good with Brotherhood

Plenty of people have left their birthplace and found plenty of happiness somewhere else. You can also just get so used to the ways things are elsewhere that home begins to feel foreign.

Jip’s and my version of that classic story is still evolving. Mostly we just wake up each day and accept that we live where we live. We try to be grateful, to not take much for granted.

Yet here in the States for a couple weeks, with no agenda other than hanging out with family and friends, I must say I’m surrounded by delights. Let me count a few:

a reunion or two with old mentors…

a multigenerational family birthday party…

a several-hour stroll along the edge of a favorite lake…

a Cambodian/Vietnamese meal on a street named for Martin Luther King…

a peek inside the wooden boat my brother is restoring for a round-the-world sail…

an autumn evening among evergreens, watching 10-year-old girls practice soccer, capped with goat cheese pizza at the regular neighborhood joint…

a wedding down by San Francisco Bay, full of good cookies, great dancing, and lifetime pals…

I could go on. My point is that these things can’t happen in Thailand. I’ve not saying they should. The reason they’re delights is because they don’t. Special moments wouldn’t be special if they weren’t also rare. America looked pretty beautiful this time around.

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