I’m skipping a few backlogs here that I will catch up on in the next couple of days, because I am right now in a cab home from my news job making sure that people can see election results, and I am anxious. I know that these moments have meaning and movement and surprises, but I do not need the surprises any more than the rest of you do. I am frankly a bit tired of surprises. Mostly what keeps me tethered is the day to day of life with my family and being in touch with friends and standing around in playgrounds and the certainty that is my neighborhood, which has moved in slow and plodding and mostly nourishing ways over the twenty-two years that I have lived there. The changes that last, I think, change slowly. The stuff that matters takes time. It grows, like a child, and the only thing you can do is pay attention to it and nudge it gradually in the right direction. The surprises, when they are sad, do not matter. The person matters, and the person takes time.
Wherever we land, remember that your country is the people you love, who love you, who won’t stop bouncing on the bed and asking about Nevada.
Carry that country.
dad