Monday, Labour Day

I'm american. The -u- in "Labour" in the title of this post is british english. That's the version we use in Canada, the country we currently inhabit. My wife's maternal family has been in this country for at least four generations of italian, german, dutch and french lineages, while her father was an american from Indiana and Ohio. Her american family is spread from LA to Arizona to Chicago and Indiana and Ohio. She comes from a big world. 

With the exception of my siblings, and a few cousins, I could visit my entire extended family by car within the span of one day. I would probably start in Maine to see my Aunt Janet and Uncle Colin and their kids, then head south on 95 and stop in West Newburyport, Massachusetts, until my aunt sells her house. I'd arrive at my parents in Seekonk for lunch before making the rounds in and around Providence to see all but three members of my father's family. By the time I make my last stop in Rhode Island in East Greenwich it's an hour to Guilford, Connecticut, where I can see my mother's two brothers before heading over to Coventry to see one of her sisters (the other one is working on selling that house in MA). Or maybe I'd switch that, since Coventry is closer to Rhode Island... that would allow me time then to stop in New Haven to see my cousins there before going northwest four hours to White Lake, New York, where the night would end where it ends best - at my Uncle Al's. 

I figure the visits would all have to be less than ten minutes long. The biggest stretch of time and traffic would be the drive from New Haven to White Lake, which would likely take place around five pm and could involve some combination of the Merritt Parkway, either the Tappen Zee or the Newburgh bridge, and the New York State Thruway. Then when I get to Al's I am confronted with the largest variety of liquor I have ever encountered outside of a Manhattan bar, and exhausted and hungry and over-caffeinated I crack open the coldest can of bud light on earth, find a rocks glass and go to town. There is likely pizza if Roman isn't in the middle of rolling some out. 

And before passing out I imagine a crescent moon-shaped stretch of American road from the coast of Maine to the hills of Sullivan County, and why God put my family there and me here with my twinkling stars in Stoney Creek I do not know. But Lilli was born, funny enough, in Saudi Arabia, and there are genies there, whom they call "djin", and I would probably call "angel," and who I expect may enjoy playing games. And maybe a night will come when a cluster of stars lay to the northwest of a crescent moon, and one of the stars will blink, and I will smile in grateful delight at such a genial gesture, that the Creation should offer me one ounce of connection to the Love which surpasses all the love I could ever imagine.