JUNE 6, FRIDAY

OLD MAN’S COFFEE

I was very chipper Friday morning after sleeping soundly because it was already noon in Winsen. (It actually takes me about a week to get over jet lag). I drove with Susie to my house at 140 College View Drive, already thinking of it as my old house. Her car’s starter had quit and she was borrowing my old KIA Spectra. Between us we own four ancient vehicles and when one breaks down we can drive another. She drove home and I took my elderly friends to CornerStone restaurant. It was as if I never left the country. Even though it has happened to me many, many, many times, I can’t get over the wonder of being in one place and then suddenly being in another. When I left on my trip I was in Marshall and then suddenly in Winsen. Marshall, selling my house and America, itself, and Donald Trump’s antics abruptly vanished. I felt completely at home in Winsen with Heinrich and Elke. And now, suddenly, I was back and it felt so natural to be here that it was hard to believe that a day earlier I was in Germany. Our old man’s conversation, as usual, went all over the place, old men enjoying each other’s company, as we do every Friday when I am here.

Only when I dropped my friends off and stopped at my old house and loaded up my car with stuff that had to be moved out did the weight of selling my house return.

I fell dead asleep very early.