Busytown by Jolisa Gracewood

It looked as if the Dalai Lama had hung his washing out, all over the park. Row after row of saffron fabric flapped gently under the cold blue sky. Glimpsed at a distance through the trees, or marching across the horizon, they looked like monks walking in single file. Or not so much walking, as hovering some distance above the ground.

They do that, you know. Monks. Witness this report filed a few years back after a round-the-world balloon attempt foundered in Burma:

"I saw the shining orange object and thought it was a Buddhist monk levitating," Aung Chan, a 70 year-old farmer said after the Breitling Orbiter 2 touched down outside his village yesterday morning.

Thousands of villagers in this deeply Buddhist country, some of whom had never before set eyes on a Westerner, were shocked to see the huge silver balloon, with its orange gondola swinging beneath, descend from the heavens.

On reflection, that story feels apocryphal, but I couldn’t help thinking of the levitating bonzes as we ambled through the park on the opening day of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s The Gates, accompanied by thousands of other bemused pilgrims.

This being New York, everyone had an opinion about the twenty-three miles of vivid orange chutzpah. Brilliant. Stupid. A glorious sight. Expensive shower curtains. An environmental disaster. A complete waste of twenty-one million dollars. A glowing gift to the city.

In the fine tradition of "My two-year-old could do that," it didn’t take long for a mini-version to appear online -- the gleeful work of a Boston-based prankster who was quickly dubbed the Anti-Christo.

[Edited to add: Not to be outdone, someone's two year old did do that: the Duplo Gates break the monochromatic colour scheme but have their own winsome appeal].

I was predisposed to like the Gates: public art makes me smile, and this was public art on an audacious scale. The colour was a bit of a hurdle: orange is my least favourite colour in the entire universe, and these things are really orange. Not the ruddy hue of a real edible orange, or the vermilion of Japanese torii gates, which they resembled in their narrower stretches.

The gates and the drapes both are a chalky neon orange. Traffic cone orange. Emergency plastic fencing orange. Abu Ghraib jumpsuit orange. Hurts-your-teeth orange, although if you catch it in the right light it has a pleasing golden cast, or a mellow hint of apricot.

I suppose the idea was to choose a colour that was not otherwise present in the park, so as to make a blinding contrast with the bare trees, the pale blue sky and lemony grass of late winter.

But the artists may have forgotten how ubiquitous construction is in New York: we approached the park from the northwest corner, and the Gates were at first indistinguishable from the elaborate roadwork in the foreground.

Once inside the park, however, the effect is persuasive. Like a colourfield painting, the orange brought all the other colours into the room. You couldn’t look at it without wondering how different hues would have worked. A royal purple would have been delicious, or a light blue making rivers of movement through the park. One of our party preferred scarlet; another a brilliant gold. Hours after leaving the park, your eyes still sought out every flicker of orange.

It wasn’t just about colour, but movement too: when there was no wind, the curtains hung solemnly like the entrance to a medieval jousting ring (or like a celestial carwash). When the wind came up they began creaking and snapping like canvas at sea.

Some were caught rakishly over their frames, like a skirt accidentally tucked in one’s knickers.

These hapless draperies were put right by official helpers, who roam the park wielding long sticks topped with tennis balls, which they use to unhook the curtains. (Word to the wise: these are the people to ask if you want a souvenir square of fabric).

We paused next to a frozen pond to absorb the scene, and under the greening willows, Busytot did his best to break the ice. He was not in mortal peril, but his father, who was encouraging him to drop rocks onto the hard surface, very nearly was. Talk about thin ice. You drop him in, you fish him out.

Of course they were fine. I suddenly remembered visiting the city when we first knew we might live here. Four winters ago... It was snowing, and we wandered into the Park as if into Narnia. A path led down and across a small valley, and we followed the trail -- only realizing halfway across that we were standing on solidly frozen water. I couldn’t get to the other side fast enough. I didn’t trust the city then.

I trust it now, though. Over the weekend I went back down, alone. Late on Saturday night I found myself wandering through the southernmost corner of the park, from 59th St up to 72nd. The Gates looked different at night: colder, paler, more austere. Lonelier, despite the occasional dog-walker, tourist family, and the art-loving cops stationed every block or so. The fabric was awfully still, and far off through the trees the gates stood, rank on serried rank, like solemn markers. The park had the feel of futuristic cemetery.

Up opposite the Dakota building, I ventured into Strawberry Fields, which isn’t much to look at in the winter: three converging paths that meet at a small circular mosaic with the legend “IMAGINE.” The mosaic is always adorned with shriveled roses left in tribute, and is often home to a small cabal of Lennon fans, sometimes with guitar in hand, churning out mournful versions of the classics: Woman, Beautiful Boy, and once, unforgettably, Happiness is a Warm Gun.

Here’s the funny thing. There were no Gates in this corner of the park. They marched studiously around it, but not through it. The ordinarily hallowed spot felt abandoned and tatty – a small, forgotten, rubbishy corner of no consequence. I wonder if the whole park will feel that way when the Gates are taken down at the end of this week.

--

For a wide range of other responses, check out this free-for-all blog, with pics and podcasts, convened by Andy Carvin. The New York Times - free registration required - also has extensive coverage, including nifty satellite images of the park with and without the Gates.

Chance would be a fine thing. We have a recidivist in the house. After mastering the art of falling asleep by himself before Christmas, Busytot has suddenly backslid. Last night between eight and ten-thirty, he popped in and out of his room like a demented Jack-in-the-Box thirty times or so. At some point I stopped counting.

I know. It’s a phase, it’s his age, it’s natural to regress in other areas while assimilating the thrill of having fully boarded the toilet train. Ding-ding! Woo-woo!

The poor wee sausage can't be blamed for his immutably bouncy brain chemistry, an amusing asset in the daytime, but a major frustration at night. Once he’s down, he sleeps with a solidity that would put a log to shame. But he has one of those brains that lights up easily while he’s trying to settle down, causing him to spring from the bed with the telltale cry of “Hey, you know what?” and some random factoid about dinosaurs, zebras, or the latest improvements in bunk-bed technology.

He doesn't get it from me. I'm a sleep Olympian, no trouble dropping off and even less luck waking up. Out like a light. Getting Busytot off to sleep is like powering down one of those wall-sized Multivac computers – you patiently turn off all the switches and stand by as the lights blink off one by one, only to see a tiny flicker, hear that tell-tale rising hum, and watch the whole array light up all over again. And there is no chance of a relaxing parental evening on the couch once that happens.

He started out a fairly good sleeper. We didn’t Ferberize him (that’s the method where you let them scream for a given length of time --- by all accounts it works, albeit at the cost of several years off the maternal lifespan and rumoured adverse effects on the infant brain).

But we did apply a modified version, a sort of Montessori-like approach. We built a solid sleepytime routine into the evening, and assumed that he was capable of the hard personal work of learning to fall asleep by himself in bed, and that it would pay off.

And it did, mostly. He gets it, except when he forgets it.

Last night, the culmination of a week or so of escalating sleep resistance, was particularly grim. I decided a crackdown was in order. A velvet crackdown, but a crackdown nonetheless.

As it happened, Busytot's dad was downstairs reading Jane Mayer's article in the latest New Yorker about the outsourcing of torture, while I was upstairs performing it inhouse. I couldn’t figure out, amid the bloodcurdling screams, whether I was the Lynndie England hard-arse, or the brave victim who would not crack even under the harshest treatment.

Happily, it wasn’t me screaming (this time). I had managed to tap some previously unsuspected well of sheer indifference, and was able to respond robot-like to every bolshy break-out attempt and every shriek of “No! You bad Mummy! That what you NOT do!” or piteous moan of “I (sob) just (sob) want (sob) my (gulp) Daddy…”

It was easier for me upstairs than for poor old Daddy downstairs. He couldn’t hear the interludes between the shriekfests, where Busytot paused to quietly plot with himself about what to try next. Those villainous little soliloquies persuaded me that I was on the right track and that I wasn’t permanently damaging his psyche. Probably.

And then in a massive attack of parental guilt, I spent all day today fretting that all that screaming had worn indelible grooves of misery into his still malleable brain – even while teaching him that “no means no” and mummy means business. These are principles that, if not established early, may never take.

Funny thing is, Busytot’s father didn’t get where he is today by taking no for an answer. We have documentary proof, as he recently got his hands on some old school reports from the faux-English private primary school he was privileged to attend as a nipper (such, such were the joys). I won't name the school but if you've reader Peter Calder's excellent memoir Travels with my Mother, you may recognize it.

The report cards were not pleasant reading. One sadist wrote that the child in question was “reacting better to my teasing these days,” and reading through the rest, you felt a general teacherly frustration with a Child Who Knew Too Much. Nine out of ten report cards bristled with snide commentary on his insubordinate tendencies, which boiled down to a willingness to correct teachers in matters of fact. The tenth, apparently written by a closeted free-thinker, applauded a certain freedom of spirit and enthusiasm for the job, while noting that this was a child who would have no trouble doing whatever it was he decided was his "thing". The wee classroom anarchist is now a professor of astrophysics. Go figure!

School still seems a long way off for Busytot, but we checked out a local example the other day out of sheer curiosity. It is fantastic place, a private independent school that draws a little from all the best educational philosophies. Alert, happy children busied themselves in brightly lit, imaginative classrooms, working together at small tables, or roaming the room in search of inspiration.

Each room had a kid-created charter on the wall; a major commonsense tenet of the unwritten curriculum is the importance of turning out good citizens with civic (and civil) skills galore. It was my sense from talking to the kids that they’d make superb activists, and probably top-notch management consultants as well.

The location is nifty: a big old industrial building on the waterfront, cleverly refurbished, and with a view of the working port of New Haven. To get there, you pass a massive junkyard full of busy excavation equipment and then cross a drawbridge over a river that is home to tugboats. It's a Busytot dream commute.

Such a school is not to all tastes, of course. Another parent on the tour found it “Orwellian,” but we thought it absolutely utopian and dashed home to figure out how to live on bread and butter for the next mumble-mumble years so that Busytot could partake of this marvelous place.

The principle of handing over some of the power to the kids was especially alluring, and that’s pretty much how we have - for the moment at least - addressed the sleep intifada. The new trick is a cross between power to the people (him) and take back the night (us). Busytot now has a tiny, dim reading lamp on his bedside table so that he is free to peruse his favourite books while settling down for the night. And when he is ready, he can switch the light, and himself, off.

Perchance to dream.

Body Shop shaving cream. Body Shop shaving cream. All the way up Rte 91 to Hartford, an hour-long drive in hellishly slushy conditions, I quizzed myself about my partner’s beauty products – actually, his only beauty product. Just in case the green card interview came down to a single telling question, like in that garlic-and-cheese flavoured movie with Gerard Depardieu and Andie MacDowell.

As it turned out, I needn’t have bothered with the toiletry rigmarole. Even the pile of paperwork several inches thick seemed beside the point, as did the photo we added at the last minute of the two of us with Busytot (the only one of us with an American passport, and living proof that our marriage is not only convenient but authentic). The moment the interviewing officer heard the words “string theory,” we were golden.

Who knew we’d land the officer who was a closet physics freak? He inquired about the famous chap off the TV who’d written one of the letters of recommendation, joked about how he met a lot of "multidimensional" people in his line of work, and basically waved us through.

The physicist of the family was the primary applicant, under the category of – and I quote – “Alien with Extraordinary Ability.” I’m merely that alien’s spouse. Of course, I do have some extraordinary abilities of my own, like the power to find missing objects, and the ability to divine what’s going through Busytot’s head when he explains that he used to be my Mummy and by the way, do we eat this stuff, this stuff, this candy stuff hiding in the drawer, and oh when we were squids, where we live?

But the American government doesn’t seem to care where its car keys are, so I sat mum (as it were) and soaked up the Immigration and Naturalization vibes.

The waiting room, packed full by ten o’clock, was decorated in signature federal warehouse style: acoustic-tile ceilings and lino floors, and framed photographs of scenic Washington, D.C., as well as the one of the firemen hoisting a flag at Ground Zero.

We weren’t allowed to bring Busytot, according to the official letter which warned that children under fourteen would not be permitted, but there were a handful of kids in the room. He’d have been the only blonde creature in the place, though: sitting in that room full of dark heads, I was more aware than ever of what a global minority white people are (not to mention how ghastly winter-white skin looks under fluorescent light).

We had a half-hour wait for an extra form deemed necessary at the last minute. So I eavesdropped on Russians, scoped out two American dads filing the papers for their adopted Chinese daughter, fell into conversation with a Kenyan brother and sister wearing matching All Blacks jackets (a souvenir from the World Cup in Sydney), and chatted with an old Kurdish lady who had been studying like mad for her citizenship exam. Just another day at the USCIS, America in the making.

The extra wait was a tad annoying, but it was nothing after the three years of delay we had already endured. Back in May 2001, we’d been told it would take about six months. It would have, but history intervened. (If they ever find that bastard Osama, he owes us a couple of thou in extra lawyers’ fees and processing charges.)

The feel of a new regime was all over the place, not just in the portrait of the firemen. A large stars and stripes on one wall trumpeted the new Department of Homeland Security, accompanied by a framed copy of its founding declaration. Its punning motto: Securing America’s Promise. Its principles: Integrity, Respect, and Ingenuity. A sample of the deathless prose, inked in faux-Declaration of Independence italics: “Through our leadership, this organization will become known as an example of world-class Respect, Dignity, and Courtesy.”

Not just common or garden respect, dignity, and courtesy, mind you: world-class!

And guess what? Despite the various dubiousnesses being carried out elsewhere in the name of homeland security, that’s pretty much what we got. Respect, and a green card. Followed by a celebration lunch of bagels and cream cheese and lox – which, I didn’t realize until later, was exactly what I ate the day I first landed in this country, nearly ten years ago.

Everything came full circle this week, in fact: the dissertation, defended back in July, was finally revised, formatted and handed in.

This was no trivial process: it’s not like you press “Print” and sit back and relax. I finished up the revisions in between fighting off a noxious head-cold and showing my Mum and sister a good time (freezing our ears off at the top of the Empire State Building; getting a pedicure from frosty Korean ladies; and laughing ourselves sick at Avenue Q, the first words of which are, fittingly enough, "What do you do with a BA in English?").

Then I hacked my way through the brambles of the final stage of academic hazing. You think writing the thing is hard. Try formatting the bugger. Everything has to be on the right paper, in the right font, with the right margins, the right settings, and the right signatures in the right ink on the right forms, signed under a full moon with a quill recently plucked from the left wing of a passenger pigeon.

Malevolent footnotes and rogue commas taunted me in my dreams. Not to mention the eternal, ultimate horror of what I call cryptoscatalogophobia -- the fear that you inadvertently typed “fuck” in the middle of a tremendously important document that you have just sent off (don’t tell me you’ve never felt it). Anyway, it’s off my desk now, and more importantly, off my shoulders.

And because important things should happen in threes, I completed the trifecta by swinging past the animal shelter and picking up a cat, a well-mannered and friendly ginger tom with a snowy white tummy.

Shelters are such woeful places; I don’t know which is sadder, the animals who paw urgently at the bars as if to say “Yo! I’m innocent! Ask my lawyer!” or the ones who’ve given up and hide in the corner softly singing gospel songs to themselves.

The cat I had in mind from a pre-Christmas reconnaissance trip was, amazingly, still there, and still smooth-talking the punters. “Hey baby, whaddya say we split this joint and curl up in an armchair someplace while you feed me fishy treats? You know you wanna!” He’s not much more than a kitten, but there is a Rat Pack sensibility about him; he has a metaphorical hat on, and a metaphorical jacket slung over his shoulder.

Apparently he had previously belonged to an old gent who couldn’t look after him any more, so it felt entirely fitting to bring him home to the house that had previously belonged to an old gent who couldn’t look after it any more. Old bloke’s cat in an old bloke’s house.

Huckle, as he is now known, gathered immediately that he had landed on all four paws. No hiding under the couch for days on end: he took a leisurely stroll around the place, located the fridge, noted the freshly purchased litterbox, appraised the big bed, and gave me a big wink.

He and Busytot have settled into a conventional sibling relationship, one minute giggles and playful romping, the next, howls of outrage that a certain ginger paw lies provocatively across the path of a certain favourite train, followed by a bellow of “Huckle! What are you doing rubbing your face on my Mummy! That is VERY naughty!” Busytot has much to learn about the ways of cats, but he’s getting there.

It is lovely to have an animal in the house, though. I mean, another animal. Last night, with the temperature well below zero, there were four bodies squeezed into the big bed. Only one of us was actually purring, but if we all could have, we all would have.

I was chatting to Santa the other day about who’s getting what for Christmas. Just checking that I hadn’t doubled up on anything. Actually, this year, we're giving a sort of bulk present, in the shape of an honorary water-buffalo, or perhaps a llama or some chickens. We’re all so stocked up with goodies that it feels only right to share the semi-aquatic bovine love with a family somewhere else who needs livestock.

You might want to duck as it flies overhead, though.

But there are still a few special presents to take care of, and Santa said I could do the honours. All right, who’s first?

Aha! Come over here, New Zealand, and sit on my lap. Oof. Gosh, you have grown, haven’t you?

And have you been a good country this year? You have? Granting basically equal family status to everyone via the Civil Unions Bill, nice start. Cutting out loathsome smoking in bars, good on ya. Letting that unfortunate Mr Zaoui out of prison in time for Christmas, although a bit late for Eid Al-Fitr… Anyway.

I’ve got you something rather nice, something I’ll be sending by airmail : my friend Alice TePunga Somerville. After earning her PhD over here at Cornell University, Alice will be teaching Maori literature at Victoria University, starting in the New Year.

Now, Arihia would kick me if she knew I was writing this. Kaore te kumara e korero mo tona ake reka -- it is not for the kumara to speak of its own sweetness, after all. So I thought I’d give you a few tasting notes. She’s a stellar person, a scholar and mentor without match, and you’re a very lucky little Aotearoa indeed to have her back on the job. Crack open a cold Tui for her, she’s earned it.

I’m also sending you a couple of cuzzies, Gaz and Caro, who’ve been doing the OE thing. They came to stay with us on the final leg, and I'm so very glad they did. I hadn’t seen Gareth for quite a while, and my wee cousin has turned into a handsome young man of consequence -- with a partner to match. You’ll be glad to have them back, too.

Them, and everyone who’s arriving home this season with big gifts and good ideas. Think of it as a little present from the expat fairy. Off you go, New Zealand. You keep being a good country, and make your Mum proud.

---

Who’s next? Oooh, Mr Hubbard. You have been a naughty boy. A lump of coal for you, despite your invention of the awesome feijoa breakfast cereal</a.>.

Yes, I’m talking about your “think of the children” stunt.

Let’s be clear. I have no objections to thinking of the children. I think about the children all week, in all sorts of ways.

I think about Busytot, who wants to grow his hair long, and who knows an awful lot of colour words for a boy, who’s statistically likely to grow up straight but you never know. I think about his big six-year-old girlfriend, who is his personal guide to all things girly and pink; her mum literally wrote the book on pregnancy for lesbians, and is one of the coolest parents I know. I think about the sisters we hung out with over the summer, whose mums were "best women" at our wedding. They're the picture of a regular happy family.

Then I think about the children who aren’t so lucky. The ones who are endangered by alcohol, neglect, over-investment, sarcasm, sexism, the trans-generational effects of a culture of abuse – a whole list of things that doesn’t include having two parents of the same gender. I think about all the children growing up in unhappy homes despite having a Mum and a Dad. I think about all the kids in foster care who’d give anything for one good parent, let alone two. I think about some of my students, children of divorce, whose sadness is still abundantly visible years later; and others who wish their parents would just get it over with.

And I think about kids growing up in families and communities that don’t honour their whole selves, kids who learn early on to hide who they are, because the message is that they aren’t really human beings if they love someone who is too like them.

Dammit, I want all of those kids to have a happy life. And I want them all to grow up knowing that they can, if they want, have a “happiest day of their life” with someone they love.

Of course we should think of the children, Mr Hubbard. We should think of all the children. But I happen to think we should meet them first. Not conjure them up out of bogus statistics.

What’s that? A guarded apology? Good start. But wait, you want to check the statistics again just to be sure? With respect, sir, I suggest you check yourself.

---

Who’s next? Oh, Busytot! You are a happy chappy, aren’t you? All full of big fancy smartypants talk. The other day, for example, you said, quite out of the blue: “Ooh, I like your outfit. Who’s your tailor?”

I was flattered and impressed. Turned out it was a quote from your sacred Muppets video -- the one with a young Mark Hamill flouncing around in his intergalactic Luke Skywalker safari suit. (This is the same video that inspired you to suggest “I know, I’ll be Paul Simon, and your bra-strap can be the guitar. Twannnnnng! Loves me like a rock!”)

Lately you’ve developed what counts, for you, as a fussy palate. The boy who eats everything was heard to say “I don’t like the octopus. It’s too… octopussy.” Cue James Bond theme tune.

You’ve also gotten rather bossy. I overheard you manipulating your father like a Ouija board as he sat there with pencil and paper:

Daddy, can you draw a train for me?

Start with the smokestack and the dinger. And the puffer. (It needs a dinger so it can go DING DING! And a puffer to go PFF PFFF.)

And also wheels and a face. That's what my trains have!

Also a driver, please. Can you draw me a driver?

Can you draw a caboose?

Ooh and a coal pretender. That will be good.

Thank you! That's good.

Ooh but I need a pusher blade on the front too. A cow catcher. It pushes cows out of the way. Draw a pusher blade.

Now take it to the bideo store and show it to the man so you can get a train bideo for me. Yes, that's what train bideo I want. Take it to the bideo shop cos they have bideos there, and I want the Thomas bideo, cos it has all sorts of trains in it.

True, you were sick and lying on the couch with a hand to your fevered brow, but by the time you’d finished your dictation you were bolt upright and quite healthy-looking. Laughter is the best medicine, but that tank engine comes close.

You’re quite the trainspotter these days. Every day you set up a complicated track, assemble the various engines and appoint any handy grown-ups as drivers. You direct operations with a firm hand and an even firmer voice (secretly, we call you the Fat Controlfreak).

And you’ve certainly gotten the Christmas spirit. We assembled the tree – a handsome seven-footer, hunted and gathered by Daddy and Aunty Lizzie on her weekend visit from London – and you put the Santa up on the “very high top.” Every day you ask “What day is it today? Is it Christmas yet? Can we open the presents?” and tomorrow, we’ll say yes.

--

And now for Ken the Fireman. I’ve joked about fantasy firefighters before, but you, sir, were the real deal. Busytot sailed through his first visit to the dentist because we’d promised him a visit to your fire station next door. Teeth polished and new toothbrush in hand, we headed off to inspect the engines (he got it into his head that he would like to hug a fireman as well, but I wasn’t promising anything).

You saw us coming and invited us inside, where you gave one delighted three-year-old the royal treatment. You sat him up in the driver’s seat of the biggest engine and switched the lights on. You showed him your boots and fireproof gear and oxygen tanks. You explained the impressive dials on the side of the engine, and Busytot told you how brave he was at the dentist.

You answered our big question (“Why why why why New Haven fire engines are white? Why they are?”). And then, for the coup de grâce, you ran up two flights of stairs in order to slide down the fireman’s pole – setting off a gratifying fit of giggles by screeching to a halt halfway down.

The best gift of all was that not once did you take your eyes off the little boy in front of you to wink or roll your eyes or crack a joke with the parent. You listened to everything he managed to squeak out in his awed little voice. You treated him like a person in his own right. And at the end, you gave him the hug he almost didn’t dare ask for.

As we walked off, Busytot seemed a foot taller. “I have a big friend,” he chirped. “He’s a FIREMAN!”

May your own holidays bring you such unassailable joy.

Here in one of the blue states, I’m still wondering: who voted for Bush? Not many people in New Haven, which voted around 85% for Kerry. Not even my neighbours, blue-collar mortgage-paying Catholic Polish grandparents who were, as it turns out, deeply offended by the Republican talk of “moral values”: “Morals are for the family to take care of,” they protested, “not the government!”

And not, as far as I could tell, most of my students. They were all madly keen to vote, since most of them are in their first semester of university and had just hit voting age. A few of them couldn't vote -- some because, like me, they’re not Americans; others because their voting papers hadn’t arrived in the mail in time.

The day before the election, I polled them in a highly unscientific fashion about what issues they were voting on. (Don't worry, the sanctity of the classroom was not violated: they answered anonymously, to preserve their privacy, and the exercise had an explicit pedagogical purpose).

Sixteen Ivy Leaguers isn’t, of course, a representative sample of anything other than itself – you’d think. But these intelligent, fascinating young people are from all over the country and from all over the socioeconomic and cultural map. So it was an intriguing exercise.

Despite their varied backgrounds, most appeared to be voting for Kerry. Why? In equal measures because he was the anti-Bush and because he seemed like a competent and intelligent fellow. On their list of issues, international respect was a major theme; they didn’t want America to look stupid or mean, so they wanted a President who seemed to be neither.

Many were concerned about abortion and marriage: they were in favour of access to both (it’s a demographic thing: younger people have no trouble identifying a need for safe abortion, and can't see what the fuss is about gay marriage, because, duh, what kind of dinosaur thinks gay people are lower-class citizens?).

Fiscal responsibility, the looming deficit, and the increasing numbers of people without health insurance were important too. Oddly enough, terrorism didn’t make it onto the list at all. We also had a hard time remembering the signature issues from the last election, but managed to come up with “lockbox” and “fuzzy math” (how far we’ve come). It all led to a lively and impassioned discussion.

The day after the election, by contrast, no-one felt like talking. They were catatonically silent. It didn’t help that Kerry was giving his concession speech while we were meant to be discussing how to construct a winning argument.

I did my best to persuade them that it's not the end of the world, even if it seems that way: they will get to vote for president again in four years, by which time they’ll be twenty-two, and fresh out of college. A lifetime away, to their eyes, but it’ll roll around soon enough. In the meantime, we get on with things, as my wise old Dad counseled me the day after the election.

It’s taken me a while to get there, but sweeping up a yard full of leaves the other day, I came over all Ecclesiastes about it. To everything there is, undeniably, a season. There's a season for struggling to identify everything that's popping up; a season for getting the weeds under control; a season for planting a bean pyramid for Busytot to hide in and gorge himself on fresh green beans.

And now it's late fall, turning to winter: a season for tidying the yard, deadheading the perennials, and hunkering down to await the spring. And, now that the skeleton of the garden is visible, a season for taking the longer view.

I was raking and bagging the fallen leaves, when my other neighbour, Sophie, came out to do some yard work of her own. She and her sister are both in their eighties and both as thin and tough as twigs of witchhazel. They were born in the big white house where every evening they watch the Holy Rosary on television at a volume that can be heard from the street.

Her sister, who is poorly, doesn’t get out at all these days, but Sophie was painstakingly raking great shoals of dead leaves into tidy piles (I’ve offered to help, but it’s a point of pride for her to do it herself). She creaked her way over to the fence for a chat -- which took her a good minute or two -- and shook her fist at the three giant oaks in the next yard over, which were shedding leaves as fast as we could rake them.

“I shoulda pulled those things out when they were seedlings! Why didn’t I just do it?” she said, and pointed out that there were two or three spindly baby oaks, barely a foot high, lurking under my hedge. “If you don’t get to those now, one day they’ll be eighty feet tall. And you'll be raking up the leaves! I won’t be around to see it," she added, ominously (and somewhat redundantly), "but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

I don't think she was telling me to slip some Round-up in the Republican drinking fountain -- that's altogether too Ukrainian an approach (she's Polish, not Russian). But it did make me wonder about what we might be planting, now, that will grow up both to shade us and shed leaves on us. Suddenly the next four years seemed like four minutes; not a second to lose.