7/12 To the Falls in the morning, although we didn’t manage to leave early enough to buck the crowds, and I didn’t find the proper parking lot at first so I made everybody walk in the intensifying heat far further than intended, and made it much more difficult for J than I had planned, way above what she’s normally capable of.

I do not have any new thought about the falls this time, they are more of a backdrop to our family story which we are trying to piece together and get hold of. As that, they work for us. We manage to walk along all the viewing spots on the American side and that will be it for the day; we hope to make it back tomorrow morning, this time really before the crowds, so we can get our few seconds in the torrents of Bridal Veil Fall. J is correct: We should care about the museums only if there’s anything in them we cannot find in Wikipedia.

It is my first anniversary of becoming a US citizen. It becomes ever more bizarre to have done it at precisely this time.

We go to the hotel pool. My son wants a swimming lesson. The intensity with which he asks, almost begs for it, is matched by the fact that I do indeed know a thing or two about swimming, the things I learned when I was his age and couldn’t be dragged out of the water. Yes, I can give instructions, yes, I can say what part of his attempts went good or bad. How odd that I can do this for swimming and almost nothing else. Swimming, such a small part of a life. Yet the few things my father taught me with even a trace of this intensity left impressions that have lasted through the decades.