Obama is headed to be President! I think and hope. I crave a leader with vision and a sane Beltway. Exactly three years ago today Thor and I were visiting Washington D.C., having a brush with a great Founder and a diamond-cut breakfast — of a sort.
On June 4, 2005, my husband announced we should get up before dawn and be at the Jefferson Monument by first light, to breathe in the dewy beauty and the great man’s inspiration.
I agreed. (You can tell we’re both morning people. If you’re not, please don’t hate us.)
Unfortunately we got lost, and found ourselves wandering around on foot in an area off the normal street-grid, with no signs to regain our bearings. Humid heat, low blood sugar and frustration threatened a melt-down. We stopped, or collapsed, for breakfast at the only food-offering establishment our feet could find, which turned out randomly to be the five-star hotel Mandarin Oriental.
It was the most dazzling breakfast of my life, with a sun-drenched view of the Potomac and glowing joggers, Thor’s delicious tea in a silken bag, my perfect over-medium eggs sitting next to roasted potato pieces so lovely they can only be termed diamond-cut. My senses became heightened, my spirit elevated.
Our total breakfast bill? Fifty dollars. Crazy? Maybe.
My concept of the diamond-cut life, the chiseling down of consumption to only the amount needed to yield happiness, does not exactly incorporate breakfasts of oatmeal and potatoes that cost fifty dollars. I see the event now more as an art experience that we once had, a tale of the distant past. The wild cost was balanced out by the free Capitol museums that we avidly explored — entertainment better than any television.
The Jefferson Memorial when we did visit it the next morning at daybreak awed us, grateful for democracy, tears in our eyes.
And yet, and yet . . . . since this is above all an honest blog . . . . I have never been more riveted in the moment, more present to a breakfast than that of the diamond-cut potatoes.
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