The Day Before the Day
Today is a perfect San Diego June day. The sun rose at 5:38am and there was no June Gloom marine layer of mist or fog. The high is projected to be 75 degrees with a humidity level of 50%. By the time the sun sets at 8pm, making today the longest daylight day of the San Diego year, we will be ready for our roadtrip. Technically, the longest day should be Tuesday, June 21st, but I note that tomorrow, Monday and Tuesday start one minute later than today, so I appear to be correct in saying that today is the longest day. Maybe that has something to do with latitude, but I’m not sure I care enough to do further research on it. I just know that today seems to be pretty damn close to perfect.
As I prepare to leave to drive back to the East Coast tomorrow, I don’t need any reminders of why I like it out here on this hilltop so much. Both Kim and I are completely sold and feel that we made the right choice in moving out here three years ago (we actually planned that decision ten years ago, but put it in motion three years ago in 2019 as we started shutting down our New York City lives of forty-five and thirty years respectively). I used to think it was crazy to choose a place to live based on the weather, but I have changed my mind on that. It has less to do with wanting to be warm or even wanting to be outdoors more of the time. It really boils down to state of mind. I have concluded that by far the most important aspect of life that we all can and should try to control is our state of mind. It sets the tone for everything we do and it establishes the degree to which other people want to associate with you. While I think everyone would agree with those two aspects, the controversial one is whether state of mind has a big impact on the outcomes of your life in terms of our degree of success. I believe it does and therefore implicitly deem that overt optimism is a force multiplier. I don’t have to prove that to anybody at this point in life, I just need to keep living it because I know that it has served me well these many years. I often comment that I wish everyone had the extreme level of serotonin or whatever brain chemicals give me that feel-good feeling every morning. I know it would be a less interesting world if that were so, but I feel so blessed that I am lucky enough to possess all those chemicals and whatever organic vortex that manufactures them.
I believe that good weather goes a long way in making us all feel good. I can even justify the odd rainy day as a respite for our over-taxed souls and smile muscles. Having a day to reflect about just how lucky and grateful we are to have our normal weather is a good thing. Anything that gives us recognition of our good fortune and even causes us to so comment adds to our overall feeling of satisfaction. Being thankful is a well-known palliative of happiness. Saying your thankfulness out loud is highly recommended as a way of insuring such recognition. It is no wonder that most religions of the world involve some form of recitation of our prayers of thankfulness. It just makes sense and early man seemed to understand all that intuitively.
So, today is my day of thanks to the wonderful place that we call home. This week we had a visit from our dear friends Gary and Oswaldo as I helped Gary review and think about his first novel and how he could add impact to his story. We also saw our local neighbors with whom we are happy to have created some pleasant bonds of friendship. We are spending this evening with some local family to remind us of why we moved out here in the first place. I spent time in the garden and advancing the ball on a project intended to give my grandchildren and grand nieces and nephews an added source of fun on our property by creating a climbing wall. All of these things give me great happiness, but none of it approaches the pleasure I get out of anticipating both the drive across country and the fact that we are scheduled shortly to see and spend time with our family and friends along the way and at our final destination. They say family and friends are everything and they are not wrong.
I love driving across country. To begin with, I enjoy the drive and look forward to the audiobooks we will listen to and the places we will stop along the way. This time we are heading through Arizona and New Mexico before heading up into Kansas. I chose to plan a night in Dodge City, Kansas. I have no idea if it will invoke my memories of Gunsmoke or if it is just another wide spot in the road across America. Either way, it is another piece of the puzzle of anticipation. Our evening with our friend Kate in Kansas City will be interesting. KC is hot, hot, hot this week and seems to be at the vortex of the early summer climate change heat wave phenomenon. After that, we head up through Wabash, Indiana to give Kim another home town dose with a stop for dinner with Kate’s parents, Suzy and Pete. It is important to touch home base for each of us if for no reason other than to just remind ourselves of our heritage. From Wabash, we head to home base for this trip in Ithaca. I have always loved that my home base is Ithaca and that Homer made sure that I cannot forget its importance in my life path.
We will dismount in Ithaca for a few days and then head down to the Poconos to gather at Cliff and Linda’s lake house with my old Cornell gang. There is something that feels appropriate about reunioning away from Ithaca this year, but I am just glad to get the chance to see all my old pals and remember those of us who are no longer with us (there are four so far by my count).
We then head down to the Delaware coast to celebrate my son Roger’s 40th birthday and see his and his wife Valene’s new home and his attraction business, which by all accounts is booming. Roger and Valene are now outliers in terms of where they live so it is more important than ever to make the effort to go see them. I was thrilled to see that my daughter Carolyn and other son, Thomas joined Roger and Valene down at their new home for a pre-celebration. I love to see my three children making an effort on their own to stay close. It is so easy to let ourselves drift apart and yet so import to stay close.
We will then head back for several weeks in Ithaca, including to celebrate Independence Day and Kim’s birthday. We will have kids, relatives and friends in attendance and it will be a wonderful summer holiday in the most traditional sense of Americana. Directly following the weekend, Kim will head to NYC to spend a few days rehearsing for her Fall cabaret show at Lincoln Center (a very big deal), while I putter around Homeward Bound trying to to take the Homeward off and pack it for dispersal among the various interested family members. Our return trip will start in mid-July and wander back through my old haunt in Madison, Wisconsin and then through the Badlands to get to our friends Bruce and Sandy in Jackson, Wyoming. Then there will be a stop at Bear Lake to see Deb and Melissa before taking a peak for old time’s sake in Park City before hightailing it across the great salt flats to Sonoma to see Frank and Loretta.
Finally, we will drive the PCH down from Sonoma and overnight near Hearst Castle, forever a special spot for us, by staying at the Fireside Inn. From there it is home again, home again, jiggety jig. So, you see, the day before the day is just another day before another day before a continuation of a great and pleasant life we get to live.