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More than twenty years ago, on that journey, I had sighed in pleasant anticipation at the
tablecloth of promise, now I sighed with great satisfaction at the inn's crumpled, linen
tablecloth and served upon it, “toad in the hole!” Another strange British concoction for
Chris to savor. Now and then we touched on some of those unexpected folds and wrinkles
of our lives, the marriage I had struggled for so many years to keep intact, but that had de-
railed anyway, the underwhelming career, and the eyesight that had faltered so that now I
was walking on behalf of the Macular Disease Society. Beverly remembered things about
me that I had forgotten; that I had taught her to dance, that we had predictably and unima-
ginatively, nicknamed my parents' weekend cottage at Wold Newton, “Moldy Newton.”
I reminded her of the time I rode my bike the several miles to her home to take a bath
since the hot water system in our old house had given up the ghost. When we talked about
our children, it was deliciously weird. We had been the children, the eleven year olds in
shapeless gabardines and ridiculous hats, and now our children had all but flown the nest
- we had found that that broth of Physics and romantic poetry, French verbs and netball
had somehow prepared us to be parents. We had not done badly at it on the whole, and our
children were our deepest joy.
Chris and I slept that night in a luxuriously appointed annex of a Bed and Breakfast that
boasted that hiking legend Wainwright and his family had slept there! In the moments be-
fore sleep took over, river otters sported within our hearing, water trickled, a breeze rustled
the trees. I was happy. All was well with the world. Its toils and tribulations were tempor-
arily dulled.
We were in a very good place.
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