December 19, 2022

Winter set in with cold rain. The mountains just north of here are gray through a white mist. Blizzards are raging in northern and western parts, we get a raw chill. We put up the Christmas tree, we put up the lights along the eaves. We lit the Advent candles.

Two Sundays before Christmas, we stopped in at the monthly church pancake breakfast. The large hall, decorated with lights and wreaths, was filled with round tables with chairs for eight, a few people were seated. We picked up our pancakes and tiny pile of scrambled eggs and looked around. We headed for the table nearest the coffee stand. A woman sat there alone, sipping coffee.

We set our trays down a couple of seats away from her. I walked around. “Hi, I’m Ed Walsh,” I said. “This is my wife, Sandy.” She looked up and smiled. “I’m Danielle. Nice to meet you.” She turned back to her coffee. I poured syrup on my pancakes. “This is very nice,” I said. Danielle nodded. “Yes, they do a good job. My husband Tom is helping the servers.”

People were wandering in, the line for breakfast grew longer. Four older guys dished the pancakes, eggs, and grits. People with trays drifted to the tables throughout the hall, filling in the empty ones. A few glanced our way but passed on.

“This is a regular thing,” Danielle said. “We come once in a while.”

“Are you from the area?” I asked, pushing my pancakes around.

“We’re from Syracuse originally, but lived in Pittsburgh for twenty years. We’ve been here two years. We really think of Pittsburgh as our home town.  So much life there, museums, culture.”

“It’s a great city, but it does get cold,” I said.

Danielle nodded. I guessed she was twenty years younger than me, maybe more. “Do you have family here,” I asked.

“My parents are here, they have a lot next to ours just outside Greer. I care for my mother, she has Alzheimer’s. She’s 85. My dad is 87, in perfect health. But he can’t, or won’t help much. They moved here to be near us, so I could care for her. So that’s what I do. I don’t get to many of these things.”

“She lives at home with him?” I recalled Sandy’s mom’s dementia. Before she went to assisted care she lived alone. She sometimes left the house and wandered the streets. Neighbors would call Sandy’s sister, who lived nearby, to take her home. Once she turned on the stove and forgot about it and nearly started a fire. After being admitted to the facility, she declined quickly. Within weeks she could not recognize her children. She passed eight years ago at 86.

Danielle looked away. “We asked Dad to find assisted care. He didn’t want to, but finally put her in a nice place. It had all the services she needed. But he didn’t like it. He said she was lonely. So he brought her home. He’s afraid of what happened to her. I do it all. Feeding, dressing, cleaning, bathing. He’ll help me lift her but that’s it.”

“What about other family,” I asked.

“We don’t have anyone else here. I have a brother in Syracuse. He’ll come down once in a while, if we want to get away for a few days. But if she has an emergency he can’t handle it. He’ll call and I’ll come back.”

“How is your mom?

“She’s late stage. She can’t move, she can’t really talk. I have trouble understanding her. I’ll have to leave in a few minutes. Dad can’t stay alone with her for very long.”

She glanced at me, then looked away, saying nothing. I wondered if she was thinking about her day: checking on her mom’s needs, listening, caring, dressing her, brushing her hair, and all the countless other little things that have become big things.

According to the National Institutes of Health, deaths from Alzheimer’s disease increased 145 percent between 2000 and 2019. The total cost in 2021 for health care, long-term care, and hospice services for people age 65 and older with dementia was about $355 billion. About 6.5 million Americans age 65 and older suffer from Alzheimer’s today. Barring medical breakthroughs, the number could rise to 13.8 million by 2060. 

Sanjay Gupta, the neurosurgeon and CNN medical correspondent, in his 2021 book, Keep Sharp, says that 60 million Americans are caring for Alzheimer’s patients, more than twice the population of Texas. The deterioration of brain cells caused by buildup of destructive proteins, he writes, may begin for some in their thirties or even twenties.

In late November The New England Journal of Medicine reported on an 18-month clinical trial with a new drug, lecanemab, with subjects experiencing early-onset Alzheimer’s. The trial, in which 898 persons received the drug and 897 received a placebo, found “moderately less decline in measures of cognition and function” in those receiving the drug than in those getting the placebo. “Longer trials are warranted,” the researchers said.

But the drug showed serious side effects, including brain swelling, which forced some participants to drop from the trial. It’s given through an IV, meaning a visit to a doctor’s office. Large doses are required. So some modest good news, not a breakthrough.

We were strangers who strolled in for a quick breakfast. Danielle spoke quietly. “That’s my life,” she said with a little smile. For a few moments we said nothing. I looked up, her husband Tom took a seat between his wife and Sandy and me. We shook hands and introduced ourselves.

“Man, it’s dreary outside,” he said. “But it’s better than Syracuse. Last winter they had something like 60 straight days of cloud cover. I couldn’t take that. I like sunshine.”

“Me, too,” I answered.

Danielle finished her coffee. “I have to go,” she said. “Very nice to talk to you both.”

I watched her walk quickly toward the door, back to the rest of her life of giving to someone who may not know the person, her daughter, who had surrendered a part of herself for someone she loved, for no thanks, no recognition, but the certainty of love. And the love is all that mattered.

It occurred to me that Danielle’s life, her singular calling, her giving of herself to a deeply wounded person, enriched the lives of her father, Tom, her brother, and the rest of us. We can hope now that, when the time comes, and it likely will come, we’ll have our own Danielle.  

December 12, 2022

I squinted at the photo of one of the third-grade classes at Our Lady of Mount Carmel School in Ridgewood, N.J. It shows 38 children, the girls mostly smiling, the boys deadpan or wearing awkward grins. The girls, in their dark-blue uniforms with neat bow ties, sit primly at their desks, hands folded in their laps. The boys stand on the perimeter in jackets and ties.

One of the boys, with a blank expression, stands in the corner in the back row to the right of the teacher, who stares unsmiling at the camera. I looked at the other faces, then back at the boy in the corner. Yes, it’s me.

 It was 1957. Around then, a local builder erected a model of a concrete bomb shelter a few blocks from the school, complete with shelves stacked with canned goods. People walked inside, wondering about the protection it might provide against nuclear attack. Nineteen fifty-seven: 44 years before 9/11. Before Vietnam and the civil rights movement. Before the Kennedy assassination, before the Cuban missile crisis.

As I stared at the photo I recalled how we ducked under those desks during air-raid drills.

A few years ago another Mount Carmel alumnus set up a Facebook page for the school. Some folks look back on those days with affection. I’m not one of them. But my brother sent me the photo from the page, a fairly sharp one, of my third-grade class. We were eight years old when it was taken, using film, digital cameras didn’t exist.

I was blank on all but three or four names:  a girl who lived up the street from our family, another whom I stayed friends with until high school. One boy with bright red hair stood out in my memory, and another with a handsome little-kid smile.

A few comments appear below the photo. One woman, a member of the class with an amazing memory, filled in about a dozen names. I glanced from her list to the photo and made connections: this one is Linda, that one is Tom, and so on.

The photo is an image of children 65 years ago. What happened to them, where are they now? They’re 72 or 73, like me. No doubt some have passed from the scene. Their parents, and mine, were mostly in their thirties, they’re probably all long gone. The teacher, looking youthful in the photo, was fifteen or twenty years older than the students. Where is she?

My bare-bones memories of my elementary school classmates are from the later grades. The school kept the students in each of three classes together through eighth grade. We graduated, in full regalia, caps and gowns, in June 1963. Then we scattered. Most of the class went to the local public high school, I went to a nearby all-boys Catholic school. Some of us kept in touch for a while. New friends replaced the old.

Life moved relentlessly forward. I left Ridgewood, like many of the others. The world convulsed and transformed. As years turned to decades, memories of elementary school receded farther into the past.

I drummed my fingers on the laptop, wondering whether to “google” some of my fellow third-graders. Sandy shook me out of my reverie, it was time to drive over to the nearby YMCA for a luncheon put on by her Active Older Adults group.

The tables were set up in the gym on the basketball court, each with a cheerful poinsettia-and-holly centerpiece. We checked in with the host. She handed us a complimentary raffle ticket. “Happy Holidays,” she smiled.

I looked around in a daze, as if hurtled through a time machine. This was seniors’ world. We fit right in. We moved through the buffet line, another lady ladled stuffing, mashed potatoes, and turkey and gravy on our Styrofoam plates. We found seats and chatted with another couple. They mentioned they had been in a retirement community, but moved out, unhappy with the rising maintenance fees. We nodded.

We turned to watch the Carolinians Senior Jazz Band tune up. The Band was a dozen guys, white-haired or bald, wielding trombones, saxophones, clarinets, some wearing Santa hats. The bandleader waved his wand and they struck up the music, a medley of old favorites, “Frosty the Snowman,” “Jinglebells,” and so on.

The bandleader added a few quips between numbers. Midway through he said, “There’s some people we have to be thankful for. No, not the politicians—the veterans.” We all applauded. The band played through the four service hymns, the veterans in the crowd, most of the men, stood for their hymn. I stood for “Halls of Montezuma” with one or two others. More applause. A lady got up and sang a dreamy “White Christmas.” The audience gently tapped feet.  

I thought again of my third-grade photo. Those smiling faces, after all these years, now would fit in here at the Y with the Active Older Adults. I looked around the room, not a soul under 65. All of us were here for an hour of Christmas cheer, relaxing after years in the workforce, with families, personal achievement, but also health and financial problems, hardship and tragedy. Experienced with life.

All of us once were eight-year-old third graders. Life flashes by, and here we are, a long, long way from 1957. Somewhere around the country, maybe even here in this state or this city, some of those classmates are sitting in another YMCA gym enjoying a holiday lunch and a seniors’ band. But I probably wouldn’t recognize them. And they wouldn’t recognize me.

Yet the photo makes me happy. We were little kids, excited about getting our picture taken. It made us, somehow, immortal in our cheerful, mischievous childhood. In the photo, above the lined-up kids, student art projects hang on the blackboard. That was our world for a moment of our lives. We laughed and played and tried our best to get good grades, while our parents shielded us from the world as long as they could. We tried to keep them happy, to do what was expected. Life was simple and good.

And here with the Active Seniors, it’s still good. We’ve all slogged through the world, not always cheerfully, through good times and hard times we never dreamed of in third grade. But we’re sitting with our coffee and pumpkin pie, enjoying this time with each other. After all, it’s Christmas.

December 4, 2022

One day in mid-September 2018, at the wheel of our van along I-10 somewhere in south Texas, I glanced in the rear-view mirror. I saw someone I didn’t recognize, an old guy wearing sunglasses and a baseball cap, but not much of a face. His cheeks were thin and drawn. He looked hungry.

In 2012 Scott Jurek, the elite trail runner, published Eat and Run, his memoir/cookbook. He described how he shifted in his early running years from a Midwestern farm diet heavy on beef, pork, chicken, and wild game to vegan. One cold Minnesota night, after a day of skiing, he tasted vegan chili cooked by a friend. It was so good, he wrote, that he converted. Then he continued to win races. He featured the “Minnesota Winter Chili” recipe in his book.

I don’t know how many aspiring trail champions became vegan after reading Jurek’s book, but I was one of them. About the same time our daughter Laura gave us a vegan cookbook, Veganomics, for Christmas. That Christmas morning we picked out a recipe for a mango casserole. We found an open grocery store and bought some mangos and the other ingredients. The finished product was delicious.

I started reading up on the benefits of a plant-based diet and looking at recipes. We learned to make kale and chickpea salad, a black bean and corn dish, lentil burgers and lentil “meatloaf.” Sandy stuck with chicken while I cooked tofu, edamame, seitan, and other plant-based protein sources. I ate gardensfull of kale, solo, since no one else in the family would touch it. Then pinto beans, red beans, cauliflower, avocadoes, along with peanuts, walnuts, almonds, cashews. If dinner was plants-only, the more exotic, the more obscure, the better I liked it.   

For bitter cold winter trail races in Virginia’s Massanutten Mountains, Sandy would cook gallons of Jurek’s chili to serve at the finish. The runners lined up for seconds and thirds. For years afterward they called her the “Chili Lady.”

Veganism evolves, though, not just as a diet preference, but as a mindset, a philosophy. Avoiding animal-based foods, sauces, soups, and seasonings becomes a full-time job. Dining at restaurants or as a dinner guest becomes a tiresome routine of “No, thanks.” Even friends get impatient. I soldiered on, vegan. A few folks asked me about my weight.

In May 2018 I entered the Cruel Jewel 100-miler in Georgia, but dropped 20 miles short of the finish. In June I finished the CIA-OSS 50-mile night run in Virginia with a good time. Then I felt sick. The family doctor did some basic tests, then launched me on my summer of urology—interviews, x-rays, tests, more tests.   

In August we started on our long-planned cross-country road trip. Early on the day we left town I visited a local medical imaging clinic for the MRI the urologist had ordered.

The plan was to see the country along U.S. 50 and historic Rte. 66, America’s great back roads. While we cruised across West Virginia and Ohio the urologist looked at the MRI image. Two days later, he called. He wanted a biopsy. We flew home, I had two.  I was heading for an operation with a funny name, nephrectomy, removal of the left kidney. We flew back out West to pick up the van and headed home, interstates only. That’s when I looked in the mirror.

The kidney procedure was scheduled. Then, more cancer.

The Scott Jurek case for the vegan diet works for him and lots of others. The fundamentals are simple: avoid meat and meat products. Eat nuts, grains, legumes, seeds, and vegetables in the ingenious, near-infinite variety they can be prepared. Dozens, maybe hundreds of vegan cookbooks, magazines, journals, and websites educate and inform the novice and veteran. They eat pizza and lasagna, chili, pancakes, and dessert prepared with vegan recipes.

The devoted vegan knows about food, its sources and ingredients. Meat and meat-derived products are the ubiquitous products of giant corporate conglomerates. And your local church’s summer picnic or civic club’s chili night probably isn’t offering vegan options. Most non-meat burgers, hot dogs, turkey, chicken, even while shaped and colored like the real thing, taste like sawdust or worse.  

The vegan, no matter how experienced living in the world of meat, is still thinking about and planning, almost constantly, the next meal, and explaining, almost constantly, the vegan way. He toes the line between lobbying for a healthy diet and acting like a food snob.

Determined vegans produce stories. Years ago I worked with two vegans. One showed up at the office on a cold winter day in a fake fur coat. The other accused her of surrendering to the fashion sense of the animal-killing world. At a long-distance trail run, one runner, a vegan, declined to eat the food offered along the course. She dropped out midway; her support bag, filled with her homemade vegan meals and snacks, weighed more than 60 pounds.

I kept losing weight and shifted to a less-scrupulous vegetarian diet. But the sicker you are, the more calories you need. After five years of no meat, at a restaurant I ordered chicken, then stared at it. I took a bite. It tasted like chicken. At the end of that meal I felt satisfied, no longer looking forward to the next snack.

Following two surgeries, chemo, and radiation, friends and neighbors brought us food, mostly meat-based, heavy, nutritious. For a while I ate two bowls of a friend’s homemade chicken soup for breakfast. A neighbor offered a Korean beef dish. Others delivered thick meat lasagna, casseroles, fish dishes. I ate hamburgers and cheeseburgers. I regained some weight. Then we landed in South Carolina: more surgery, more radiation.

At some point someone asked to borrow the Veganomics cookbook, I handed it over. I moved away from the chickpeas and kale, which is cheap and is sold in big bunches, more than one person can consume while it’s fresh. It’s probably cheap because most people don’t like it.

We’re back to a near-normal American diet. Sandy still makes the winter chili, which still is delicious. I sometimes mention her “Chili Lady” days. And lately, as I read yet another article about the obesity epidemic, now afflicting kids and teenagers along with the middle-aged, I recall my vegan years. I felt pretty good in those days, if skinnier. I still say: eat your vegetables.

November 28, 2022

I studied the list of ingredients for my second pie ever. The first was apple, made with the crust “from scratch” two weeks ago. I thought I had followed the recipe to the letter. I pressed the crust into the plate. I dumped the filling, the sliced apples slathered with sugar and cinnamon, on top of the crust. Then something went wrong.

The apple pie was for “Pie Night,” a couple of weeks ago, a happy gathering of friends here in Greer who have been holding competitive Pie Nights for several years. The hosts award prizes for the best savory and sweet pies. More than a dozen exotic recipes were laid out on the dinner table. My humble apple pie didn’t win anything. At the end of the evening it was missing exactly two slices, including the one I ate. Actually all I got was filling—the crust was burned, cemented to the plate.

For my Pie Night attempt I found halfway through that I didn’t have enough crust for both the base and the top of the pie which, when out of the oven is supposed to show golden brown and delicious-looking. I took a breath, excavated the apple filling and dumped it in a bowl, then peeled the crust out of the plate. It came off as a sticky mess. I pressed it again between the two sheets of parchment paper, applied the rolling pin, and ground the dough paper-thin.

I relined the pie plate with the dough, barely covering the base. About one-third of the stuff remained. Instead of stretching it across the top I sliced it in thin strips and lay them in a criss-cross pattern over the filling. I shoved it in the oven. It became my first homemade pie, baked with original ingredients, with way less white sugar and other additives than the mass-produced Pillsbury stuff. I looked at the clock: three hours for all this. I was exhausted, with mountains of pans, dishes, and utensils to clean.

Now it was Thanksgiving, the holiday that taunts us with irony. It showed up amidst unspeakable tragedy. Last Thanksgiving Ukraine was at peace, or at least not at war. Today, lacerating violence is epidemic. Inevitably—we have no choice—we confront the essence of the human condition: heartache and pain, then hope and redemption. Families still gather to cook and talk. Courage comes to the troubled, angry ones, they show up and make peace.  Memories return. The eternal lesson of the Season offers spiritual sustenance, faith, and love.

Pie-making seemed both trivial and cosmic, preposterous and sublime. Thanksgiving, along with its solemnity, is the holiday of pies. Sandy and our daughter Marie were teaming for dinner that afternoon. The grandsons wouldn’t touch the Thanksgiving meal. Chicken nuggets or mac-and-cheese, maybe. I thought: another go at pie? Why not? Why not something they’d eat?

I took my ambition down a couple of notches to grocery store crust and filling. No original ingredients, no pride of authorship. The recipe called for preprepared crust in a tinfoil plate and chocolate pie filling from a box. Basically heat and serve. I thought I’d get one pie, but I mistakenly mixed in an extra helping of filling. So I could produce a second one.

All this amounted to was baking the crust for 12 or 15 minutes, mixing the chocolate powder with milk, then combining both ingredients. I forgot when I put the crust in the oven and pulled it out too soon. I combined the chocolate filling with the still-raw crust, but corrected the mistake with the second.

I placed the properly cooked pie in the refrigerator and took a do-over on the second. I scooped the filling out and stuck the crust back in the oven. When it looked done or almost done I pulled it out, once again added the filling, and with a deep breath stuck it in the fridge.  Finished, but still close to two hours.

We spent Thanksgiving morning with friends and their children. We all jogged or walked a few blocks then led the meal with a prayer. We shared Southern food, eggs, bacon, sausage, grits, biscuits. We talked about the common things that create closeness and hope—careers, children, parents, health challenges, recipes, holiday plans. The coffee was hot, rich, and tangy.

Later, before dinner I etched a funny face with whipped cream on my pie. The kids turned down the baked acorn squash and other good things but gobbled their helpings of pie. Afterward we all walked the nearby streets, waving to neighbors putting up their Christmas lights.  Late in the evening the two of us crept away, leaving the dregs of the pie.

Our first Thanksgiving came back to us as a bittersweet memory, now priceless. Three months past our wedding, we could not claim to know what we were doing. Late that drizzly, cold morning we stuck the turkey in the oven before it was fully defrosted. My in-laws waited impatiently. We kept checking, playing for time, but the bird would not cook through. Eventually the guests ate a vegetarian Thanksgiving dinner and drifted away. We thought we heard some muted grumbling.

The turkey was done about 10 PM. The two of us, in pajamas, ate our first Thanksgiving dinner. I don’t recall any pies.

Following years flew by in a blur, Thanksgiving was always at home, just the two of us. We still suspect those first guests who didn’t get turkey found excuses not to join us. Our family grew, girl, boy, girl, girl, but from time to time we dragged neighbors and strangers over. Eventually we got the turkey right, and—I think—even had pie. I recall we talked for hours with people we barely knew or didn’t know at all—young and middle-aged couples, an elderly guy we saw at church, people with no plans, no family to join. Together, we gave thanks.

The weather is turning cold, the paranoia and anticipation of Christmas has exploded on the internet, the malls, everywhere. We’ll do our best in this new city, the second Christmas in this house. We know where to place the tree. I now have a ladder to climb for hanging lights. The simplicity and trauma of the holidays rushes in, two years now since the last surgery, more treatment ahead. I have a hospital appointment in nine days. But we got through Thanksgiving and pie time. Time for Christmas, and other miracles.  

November 21, 2022

The Swamp Rabbit Trail, really an asphalt bike and walking path, runs northeast about 20 miles from downtown Greenville to somewhere around the little town of Traveler’s Rest. The city built it on an old railroad bed as a tourist attraction. It follows the trickling Reedy River much of the way, past scrub woods, construction sites, and weather-beaten brick structures, the old textile mills now turned into upscale apartments and offices.

The Swamp Rabbit Café sits along the trail maybe three miles from downtown. The slogan, “Eat Local, Ride Bikes” is painted in bold letters above the doors and windows. The café advertises “sustainably sourced” drinks, sandwiches, and pastries “made from scratch.” It’s also a grocery store that offers “artisan” vegetables, beverages and snacks, beer and wine at prices we don’t want to pay.

On a gray, chilly afternoon we drove over and parked at the café. Looking about, I wondered if I were really in Greenwich Village or Haight-Ashbury instead of the Old South. We wandered through the store mainly to warm up. It was late, the place was nearly empty.  

We had just observed our two-year anniversary in this town. The idea was to get out of the house and walk a bit, so we set out on the trail, heading south toward downtown. We stayed to the right to allow the cyclists in their multicolored riding outfits to pass. They whizzed by on their ten-speeds and fat-tired mountain bikes. The trail is nearly level—flat—for its entire length. I wondered: how about trying a mountain trail, a bit of a challenge?

We talked as we hiked, but also paused and were silent. We moved away from busy streets. The trail isn’t particularly scenic, you wouldn’t call it beautiful. The river, more of a creek, was on our right, the woods to the left. As we padded along the silence helped ease the tension I felt watching election returns. People everywhere believe preposterous, contemptible lies. Some believe Lee should not have surrendered to Grant in April 1865.

I recalled driving out to the mountains near the North Carolina state line. You pass a no-name gas station that also sells freshly cooked barbeque. The place is done over in Confederate flags. A mile farther up the road is a shack next to a yard littered with busted appliances, tools, and car parts. Often a guy in a straw hat pushes a rake around. A skinny cow grazes in a pen. And I knew it before seeing it—one of those big blue and white banners draped over the fence.

We saw them on fences in Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia. Lies are everywhere.

Second president John Adams gave us the gold standard on measuring lies against truth. When the eight British soldiers who fired on civilians in the Boston Massacre of March 1770 were charged with murder, Adams agreed to defend them when no other attorney would take the case.  He won acquittal for their captain and six of the eight because no evidence was produced against them. Adams then spoke his famous line, “Facts are stubborn things, and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” We know Adams borrowed the quote from the Scottish novelist Tobias Smollett. But there it is.

We kept walking, riders and runners kept passing us. The riders tended to be older folks, grayhaired, decked out like twenty-somethings.

The runners were fast young guys and girls in teeshirts and shorts, showing off their sleek, graceful athleticism, within minutes they were dots. I smiled, recalling when I’d run for miles without a second thought. I felt happy watching them snatching these moments to leave their desks and computers to stretch their legs, test their strength, seize the joy of the road.

Watching them disappear up the trail bucked me up, prompting the thought that we all can create goodness for ourselves and others when we summon a reserve of faith and perseverance to confront the hard things that come to our lives. The columnist Michael Gerson, who died last week of cancer at 58, in a talk in 2019 said, “even when strength fails there is perseverance. And when perseverance fails, there is hope. And even when hope fails, there is love. And love never fails.” Gerson, a true Christian, stood his ground against the hard-right so-called “evangelicals.”

The long run, the sickness, the physical or moral pain, offer us a challenge, to steel ourselves to overcome, to find joy.

The runners, as they raced by without noticing us, moving their lives ever forward, reminded me of these things. They demolished my dark thoughts of this political moment.        

I moved with more of a spring to my step. We were starting to feel the chill. At a little over a mile we turned back as the afternoon light faded. We crossed a couple of bridges that spanned the Reedy, here and there the water churned in feeble rapids as it flowed toward the city. Lights strung around the café popped on as we approached. We stepped inside, I bought a small cider, eight ounces, for $2.75. “You could buy a half-gallon for $4.00,” Sandy said.

The place had largely emptied out. The evening clouds were moving in, warning of coming rain and cold. The two-year mark is behind us, the holidays are ahead. Our kids are coming for a few days. We headed home, wondering about the latest election updates—no, not really. What’s left to say. The lies are still out there, but so is truth, and hope.