OK to Be American (Again)

Monday p.m. P.S.: Later in the evening we were hungry and stopped at an Italian cafe whose name is hiding in the recesses of my overstimulated brain. (I want to say Grand Tocino, but no, that's the restaurant where Johnny proposes to Lorettea in Moonstruck, and this ain't Brooklyn.) So we had bowls of hot homemade vegetable soup and shared a little pizza margarita, and we chatted about the day. At the next table, very close to us, was a young man eating pasta that he described as fetuccini with a thyme cream sauce and declared, 'lovely.' And then he asked us where we were from, and we said Pennsylvania, and he said he'd gone to high school for a year in Idaho (he made us guess), and then for a year of college in Mississippi (and I'm thinking, poor kid, was he remanded to those states as part of some juvenile justice exchange program? But that wasn't the case.) So of course he's wild about America.

So it seems that Gordon is from Galloway, Scotland, but hanging out in Dublin awhile as he sorts out what his future might be. He's been living in a hostel for 15 euros a day. (I'm thinking, am I too old for hostel living? Probably so. Sigh.) Then he asked, quite tentatively, what we thought of the recent US election. I made a little sign of applause. Jo said, 'She was so happy, she cried when they called it.' He seemed genuinely pleased to learn this.

Gordon shared his story: that on election night, he was so excited that Obama might win that he checked out of the hostel and into a hotel costing him 70 euros he really couldn't afford, just so he could watch all the cable news shows and follow the results. He was thrilled to watch Obama win. And he says most people in Europe are eagerly anticipating the end of the Bush administration and the start of the Obama one. I said Ialways feel as though I need to apologize for how badly Bush has done the job. And Gordon, gracious lad that he was, assured me that no one in Europe holds me accountable for Bush's madness. I felt exonerated. We can move bravely into the future with hope in our hearts. Gordon will be watching our progress closely.