Mitzvah

So much has happened this past week, and so much of it was good.

For starters, I helped host the quaint wee spaghetti dinner for the town, the purpose of which was to inform the masses about the new zoning bylaw changes they might or might not vote in at town meeting later this month. Much to my surprise, tons of people showed up! Lots and lots! Like, over 200! Holy civic-mindedness! And they didn't even seem to mind that they were being fed penne, not spaghetti, at a spaghetti dinner!

Someone at the dinner introduced me to his somewhat frail, 90-year-old mother, who I immediately recognized as my old kindergarten teacher. And she recognized me right back, in great detail. She asked after my two older brothers -- who never had her as a teacher -- by name. Then she grabbed my arm and drew my head near to hers, and told me, sotto voce, that I come from "a very good line of people" and to be sure to live up to that. She then grabbed her son's arm, and told him, "this girl's mother is a tremendously fantastic woman."

Wow. I don't know what I or my mother did to earn Mrs. Kennedy's favor, but I have to say that it kind of totally made my night.

The next day, Matt informed me that he had tickets to the Yankees game for that night. Really excellent tickets. So we drove to New York City, watched the game from our incredibly awesome seats behind home plate, and then drove back home. It's about four and a half hours each way. I felt like a rock star, and the Yankees won. God but I love Yankee Stadium.

I'll admit that I had misgivings about going to NYC on the last day of the RNC, the day Bush was to speak, during a week of escalating protests. I'm a little squeamish, because I'm superstitious, and the last time we went to Yankee Stadium was September 11, 2001. It was, of course, yet another strikingly gorgeous, bright-blue-sky, beautiful-day-for-baseball September day. I wore my old Paul O'Neill t-shirt that I had bought that day, now extremely faded. I'm happy to report that nothing tragic happened, and I feel somewhat redeemed. Or at least a little less like an ominous harbinger, less like a crow of doom.

And honestly, how great is it to drive five hours to see a ball game on a whim, then drive back home that night? Pretty freaking awesome, that's how great.

Then, last night, after a long, calm conversation with a lovely gal Matt works with who is, not surprisingly, a Red Sox fan, during which we discussed the simple and exquisite beauty of the game of baseball, and the enjoyment to be derived from watching some of its finest practitioners (we named several players on both teams, and no, I won't tell you who I admire on the Red Sox team), we ordered our third shot of tequila, looked each other in the eyes, and gravely toasted to the Yankees and the Red Sox. And also Duran Duran.

Well, we had had a lot of tequila. You know how it is.