"We turned into a cafe just opening for the morning's business, and I felt that special feeling of well being--the coming in from the cold, the good odors of coffee and fresh rolls, the greeting of the owner to his first customers, the smile of a good waiter taking the order, the panorama of newspapers hanging from their racks, the gleam of the multihued bottles, the polished copper, the brass and wood of the bar, the gloss of the leather seats, the gleaming black and white tile on the floor; each element adding to the total pleasure of the senses. Sometimes one feels this more intensely than ordinarily, and this was such a day for me. I recalled that our people [the Jews] have a blessing for every wondrous thing. It is said a hundred can be recited each day: on seeing a rainbow, on perfumed herbs or flowers, on fragrant trees and bark, on the wonders of hearing, sight, and smell, on hearing thunder, on candles and their special uses, on the immersion of a convert, on spices, on something new, on bodily functions, on circumcision, on good tidings, even on learning of a death.
"I was thinking, irreverently, Why not a blessing on entering a coffeehouse in the morning?"
In the excerpt above, the narrator of Harold Nebenzal's Berlin Cafe is recalling a morning when all was right with his world and every ordinary detail seemed a beautiful miracle. That's how I felt this morning in Northport.
Election Day dawned still, clear and warm. I arrived at my polling place at 7:30, before sunrise, where those exiting at that time said they'd waited half an hour in line. In Leelanau Township we vote at the firehouse (as we did in Leland when we lived there), and I love seeing friends and neighbors come together on Election Day, both voting and officiating. I love marking my ballot. I love our paper ballots in Leelanau Township! And I pretty much zipped through, not even needing my book to pass the time.
After voting, to celebrate having done my civic duty--or, should I say, exercising my civic right--early in the day and to take advantage of time gained, I took Sarah to our newest (and nearest to the polls) dog-running area. (No, not the cemetery!) The sun was just clearing the treetops, the morning stretching and flexing and shouting with light, and the air was rich with that sweet autumn perfume, the odor of the first stages of leaf decay. Sarah ran so fast her ears streamed straight out behind her head! I discovered the largest colony of ground pines I've ever seen. Like the wooded kettle near our home and a forested ridge we've been visiting recently on a regular basis, this too is another new world for us, full of exciting sights and smells.
Even after civic and outdoor exercise, there was time for me to sit over coffee at Barb's Bakery (where I took my book to the back table, joined after a while by David, who laughed with me at the ears-straight-back image of Sarah on my camera), and after that and stops at the bank and post office there was yet time to walk down to the harbor and watch ducks paddling around the now-empty docks. An extra hour of morning sunlight! There's a blessing, for sure, especially on a day like today, as close to perfect as a day can ever be.
Everyone was out and about, all day long, sunshine, Indian summer temperatures and Election Day combining to keep the Up North populace in motion. It seemed, too, that political rancor, often so bitter during the long campaign, was set aside, if only for a day--anger and fear, argument and striving all suspended in the brightness of hope, satisfaction and gratitude. All hope to prevail, of course, and some will be disappointed, but for today people seemed satisfied with their efforts, decisions and actions. And how can we fail to be grateful for all our opportunities and freedoms?
I hope to be able to add some images to this post in the days ahead. Whatever the outcome, the day will be historic, and it may be interesting to see what November 4, 2008, looked like in Northport, Michigan.
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