New York
My son pulled back the curtains and took in the full splendour of the twilit canyons. Lights were coming on all across Manhattan. ‘Wow,’ said Daniel. It was a slow, unabashed expression of awe. I thought of those lines from The Great Gatsby where F. Scott Fitzgerald imagines the colonist approaching the New World for the first time and coming ‘face to face at last with something commensurate to his own capacity for wonder’. Like father like son. My first collision with New York occurred more than quarter of a century ago. Back then, America was just five years clear of the disaster in Vietnam, Jimmy Carter was fumbling in the White House and the Big Apple was in the grip of street crime. Much like now it was a nervous and unsettled time. I was 19 years old and about to embark on a month-long trip across America with my girlfriend. The girl went long ago, but the love affair with America will continue until death. I have taken care, as one does with any relationship that really matters, never to confuse the oscillations of behaviour with a fundamental appreciation of what is great and good in the object of my affection. The America I love is the one my son saw and which makes him giddy with excitement at the prospect of a return visit.
Wasting an hour before dinner, we skipped through the televangelist channels. First up was an elderly reverend with a curiously youthful and tanned face. Like a Botoxed walnut, I thought. He was urging repentance in a tone of gloriously curdling unctuousness. My boy was whimpering with mirth. Here is the conversation that followed. Me: Don’t laugh.
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