Point of View: Untethered
Returning from an ever so brief visit to D.C., where we — Mary, I should say — baby-sat two grandchildren, and I tended largely to the basic needs of a pug who had a heavily bandaged foot (the result of a torn, bleeding toenail), we listened with fascination to NPR’s “TED Radio Hour” as scientists traced (ever so briefly) what’s been going on for the past 13.8 billion years.
I would say I prefer mind travel to the normal kind. In fact, as we were about to depart last Thursday from the Rogers Memorial Library in Southampton, where Mary works two days a week, I told her hard-working boss, Penny Wright, that, at 743/4 it was all I could do to summon up the will to drive to Southampton.
Still, once at our daughter and son-in-law’s house in Kensington, Md., the next day, I drew out from the hall-length bookshelf Life magazine’s “Heaven on Earth” book with its colorful photos of 100 places one must see while on the planet. I didn’t see the Super 8 in Pennsville, N.J., in there, though I’d rank that very high.
We were in a relaxed mood, and my mind was untethered, at the Super 8. It was there that Mary told the clerk that some people had been stressed out to hear earlier that day that registration for the library’s yoga class was closed.
“Whaddya mean, it’s closed?” I chimed in, taking on the role of a stressed yoga registrant for the clerk’s amusement. “How’m I gonna relax for Chris’ sake?!”
That and Mary’s invariable sunny nature whenever dealing with other human beings, especially with other hard-working people, led to an upgrade to a suite, at a bargain-basement price.
The next morning, at the Cracker Barrel nearby, we learned there were no newspapers to be had. “That’s why they’re so happy here,” I said.
She spoke over country bacon and farm-fresh Grade A eggs and homemade country biscuits of an interesting novel she was reading about Hemingway’s first wife, Hadley, who, in fictional form, was among the characters in “The Sun Also Rises.”
“I didn’t like that one at all,” I said. “They were all drunks and didn’t give a shit about anything.”
“Well, what were you like when you were 20?” said Mary.
“I was a drunk and didn’t give a shit about anything.”
The scientific lecturers I mentioned above — David Christian, Louise Leakey, and Spencer Wells — are of a contrary mind of course, to wit, that we should give a shit.
“ ‘Can we hold it together?’ ” Ms. Leakey asked at one point, after noting that her father had “so appropriately put it that we are certainly the only animal that makes conscious choices that are bad for our survival as a species.”
I would say that species-wise our grandchildren, based on our time with them this past weekend, are wonderfully evolved.
“I’ve had fun,” Jack, the 8-year-old, said, when Mary leaned over as we were watching the World Series and asked him what he thought of life so far.
“So have I,” I said to him, “and I hope you can say the same thing when you’re 743/4.”
“Barcelona . . . I’ve always wanted to go there,” Mary said as we looked at Life’s “Heaven on Earth” book. I duly reminded myself we’d have to go there some day.
But when on Monday morning we parted, she for a dental appointment, I for work, I found myself saying, “Remember, we’ll always have the Super 8.”