Anyway, Mr. Mancuso was present, but tactfully stood some distance away with four photographers recording the event for posterity or other reasons.
I recalled what old Monsignor Chiaro had said at graveside, quoting from Timothy: We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. Which was the best news I’d heard since “We pass this way but once.”
And so, I thought, as I walked between Alhambra’s stately poplars that had so impressed Frank Bellarosa, there is an ebb and flow in all human events, there is a building up and a tearing down, there are brief enchanted moments in history and in the short lives of men and women, there is wonder and there is cynicism, there are dreams that can come true, and dreams that can’t.
And there was a time, you know, not so long ago, as recently as my own childhood in fact, when everyone believed in the future and eagerly awaited it or rushed to meet it. But now nearly everyone I know or used to know is trying to slow the speed of the world as the future starts to look more and more like someplace you don’t want to be. But maybe that is not a cultural or national phenomenon, only my own middle age, my present state of mind combined with this dark winter season.
But spring follows as surely as winter ends. Right? And I have my eye on a used Allied fifty-five footer that I can pick up for a song in the winter months if I can get my prestigious law firm to settle up with me. And Carolyn and Edward will crew for me over Easter week on a shakedown cruise, and by summer I’ll be ready to set out again with my children if they want to come, or with anyone else who wants to crew aboard the Paumanok II. I’ll stop in Galveston to see Emily, then if I can shanghai her and Gary or any two or three people who are game enough, we’ll do a circumnavigation of the globe. Hey, why not? You only live once.
I slipped out through the gates of Alhambra and began the walk up Grace Lane toward the gatehouse and Ethel’s Sunday roast.
And maybe, I thought, when I come back to America, I’ll put in at Hilton Head and see if forever is forever.
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