Sensations, experiences and smells pour through my fingers onto the
keyboard. Just back from a month in the U.S. – New York, Washington, D.C.,
Iowa, Wisconsin, California – I don’t know where to begin.
To get a handle on it all, I write
down some glimmers of my journey, a sneak preview of what’s to come:
New York:
Precious time with my son and his
girlfriend
Pablo Neruda’s face on the Barnes
and Noble coffee shop mural
An American kestrel alighting on
rooftop terrace
Nocturnal stroll along the Chelsea High
Line
En route from NY to Washington:
Warm welcome from girlfriend’s
family
Touching five states: New York, New
Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland
Independence Hall tower in the
distance
Washington,
D.C.:
Award at the Peace Corps Connect
Conference for my memoir “Marrying Santiago”
Recalling fifty-year-old adventures
with long lost Peace Corps friends
With my son, his first view of the
iconic Capitol, the tall, slim Washington monument mirrored in the Reflecting
Pool, the solemn Lincoln Monument.
Inca Trail exhibit at Native
American Museum – Incan concept of reciprocity (ayni)
Iowa:
“Mammoth muffin” at Perkin’s roadside
restaurant
Welcomed by eighty-nine-year-old
Betty into her farmhouse
Corn fields, silos, green and yellow
John Deere machinery, barns, barn quilts and white farmhouses displaying
American flags
Local lingo: acreage, blacktop (paved
road), and crick (creek); jokes about Minnesotans
Plot of wild prairie grasses, once
site of covered wagons and grazing buffalo
Resplendent musical events at Luther
College, friend Ann’s, alma mater
The plaintive call of the train
passing through town. Whoo-whooooo.
Wisconsin:
My first sight since childhood of
the wide Mississippi River
Green, wooded rolling hills
Our hostess Edie’s account of taking tea with Svetlana Alliluyeva, Stalin’s
daughter, who spent her last years in Richland Center, Wisconsin
Unique design of the A. D. German warehouse
designed by Frank Lloyd Wright
California:
The pleasure of familiar sights and
scents of my hometown
Reunion with former classmates at San Anselmo Coffee Roastery
Magnificent breakfasts prepared by
my Airbnb hostess, Joanna
Point Reyes Station’s Bovine Bakery –
refuge from the rain
Quiet moments at parents’ graveside
at Tamalpais Cemetery
Poetry reading by two-time poet
laureate Billy Collins
Blue Angels Squadron acrobatics over
San Francisco Bay with friend Paula
And so much more that I must
assimilate and let percolate….
