I woke up this Memorial Day morning in Pennsylvania, nursing a slight bloat from having spent the previous day eating things that I don’t normally eat (cake, hot dog buns, my aunt’s beloved 7-layer taco dip) and drinking things that I don’t normally drink (3 bottles of Yuengling with periodic slugs of Pinot Gris). Such is the unfettered festivity of family picnics: cavorting among my kinsmen, my tribe members, evokes an almost primitive craving for hot dogs and potato salad.
It is almost 7:30am and Mr. P intently continues to sleep, so I slip out of bed and lace up my sneakers for a quick fitness walk before our long drive back to Boston. The morning is insistently sunny with mounting mugginess. The bike path that runs behind my mother’s home already sports a fair amount of bicycle traffic; groups of mostly men in colorful jerseys speed past me in varying degrees of velocity, some ringing their bells, many calling out the customary alert: “ON YOUR LEFT!”
I walk with a spirited gait under a tree canopy that is delightfully infested with birds. Dozens of robust trills, squally chants, and flirty phrasings blend together into a melodious cacophony of birdsong, lead by the lusty lark with its beguiling refrain and complex riffing. The lark is singing, “Ladies, ladies! Calling all lady birds! Mate with me and you won’t regret it!”
So intent I am at parsing the voices of this avian symphony that I am genuinely startled when “ON YOUR LEFT!” is bellowed directly in my ear, nearly causing me to jump, of course, to the left. Two cyclists blow past me at a relatively sluggish pace. One is wearing a garish American flag jersey with “USA” emblazoned across his shoulder blades, a tube of fat bulging above his cycling shorts and rippling the red and white stripes of his jersey like a plume of slushie. He is an unknowingly comical but astute manifestation of our national character, the paradoxical slothful slob and willing warrior. We pay penance for our pleasure. Sometimes, we don’t pay enough.
