And there in the sunroom I stood, one afternoon shortly after my father had died and we had moved into a new house and my life was all jumbled up beyond recall, with the light of the dying day filtering in through the tree outside, tears welling up as I honked through a requiem for my father with the instrument I knew best how to play.
By the afternoon I was holding my son in my arms. I left his mother to sleep for a while, drove home and – went for a run. I’m the father of three, and I know there’s no accounting for anything in the feelings of parents. But whatever the reasons, this was the most euphoric I ever was over the arrival of a child. I felt – I don’t know – limitless, transcendent, as if I were floating rather than running.
Court reporting was a strange job, sometimes exciting, sometimes boring and frustrating. I had “theme songs” for both moods. For the more wistful one, there was Carly Simon’s Libby. For times when the life seemed a gradually-unfolding adventure, there was the Bee Gees’ How Deep Is Your Love.
When government acts, people’s lives change, both for the better and the worse. The three layers of government programs (the Santa Fe tracks, 66 itself, and I-40) sometimes simultaneously visible from Route 66, exemplify that.