miles

So many miles in the past week (and in general). And that's not a hotel room door, though I am in a hotel room at this moment: #125, no image required. I dropped Darling Daughter back at college after her spring break last night. That's her door, #310, which takes me right back, mentally, to my own first-year college dorm room, #403. Why-oh-why do I retain (let alone share) such needless information?? No idea. It'd be nice to delete certain cerebral files, like old dorm room numbers, in the interest of making room for new files — wouldn't it?? If only we could choose which files to delete rather than forgetting things like names and/or passwords and/or pin numbers at the precise moments we need them most.

But that's beside the point, if there is a point ...

It's more relevant to point out what I saw during a walk through Touro Park (in Newport, the presumed topic here) the other day, a nice day. It never fails that I spy a handful of things worth remembering ... I think ... unless these are representative of the aforementioned needless images in need of nothing but deletion. There's the tower, of course — gifted to the city by Judah Touro in the 1850s but in existence long before that. I've pondered the tower and its mystery (click if you're curious) many times in the past, on past walks, but no matter how many times I've passed it, there's some new angle or glimpse — of Reverend Channing, most frequently, but also of Commodore Perry (one of two, the other Commodore Perry standing tall in Washington Square, an image I somehow managed to retain from last fall) and assorted other characters. They had their days, even heydays (haydays??) — all past.

And, on this day, being a few days ago, I met a sweet puppy named Kirby who smiled in much the same way as our sweet (late) dog P. Their expressions were so similar you could have knocked me over with a feather — but that's past, too. At the moment, i.e. now, I really need to hop in the car, get back on the highway, and drive the last few hundred miles from this far-flung college town toward home ...

And in the event I wasn't clear — not so unusual — the two Commodore Perrys are two different Commodore Perrys: the one in Touro Park is Matthew; the one in Washington Square is Oliver Hazard. They were brothers. And I can't tell you how pleased I am to have remembered their names ...