MAY 2, TUESDAY

RALEIGH & NEW YORK CITY

And suddenly I am off again for a week of travel and the anticipation lifts my spirits. Tomorrow I drive to Raleigh for Caroline’s graduation from the pre-med program at NC State. A card with her on the cover arrived this week with a gold ribbons around her neck for achieving Summa Cum Laude, all A’s. Kathy, her mother, has booked a house in Raleigh that will be full of relatives from Asheville and from Tennessee. Celebrating together will be great fun.

And then on Saturday Susie and I are heading to New York from Raleigh, at no cost, using the Amtrak points I have amassed. It will be an all day trip. We just finished booking a 10×12 hotel room for two days after which we will move in with friends for two days. Susie wants to see an exhibit in New York at the Guggenheim and I am going to take the hour long train ride to Morristown, NJ, where Dr. Kakar, who put in my implants in New Delhi three months ago, will finish the job by attaching the crowns to each implant. He just happened to be coming to New York where he is an adjunct professor at the Rutgers School of Dental Medicine coming for a six day visit at the same time as we were already going to Raleigh. The New York trip will cost less than it would cost to have a dentist do the job here.

We will have Sunday breakfast with cousin Mike and Kathy and see an off off Broadway play at the home of LeeAnn, a Marshall friend of Susie’s whom we met a year ago with her husband in Paris. The whole week will be a great adventure. The anticipation of it, not breaking out of American cultural patterns, but out of Asheville routine, lifts my spirits in the way that I have been writing about for the past week.