7/9 My parents got a one-hour computer assistance session which is included in their internet plan. Somebody came to help them get their wedding pictures uploaded to the cloud, a concept that is utterly mysterious to them. My son, at the wedding, had explained to them that data is no longer mailed on CDs, to which my parents replied that yes, they already had a suspicion that it was mostly done on cards today. To this my son replied, a little helpless, that today, this is all digital.

Discussed politics and dementia with the kids over dinner. I was unsure about the dementia part, they seemed both deeply troubled and deeply curious about it, asked good questions. And then, as we left the restaurant, my daughter said something that was so much beyond what I would have expected from her that it seemed like reverse dementia.

7/8 Flight back. We arrive in a New York City that is bathed in gushing heat. I must remind myself that for the kids this is nowhere near as natural an arrival as it is for me. As we come home, they get their new, far more powerful laptops, which they desperately needed and which we awarded them since they have been taking good care of the ones they got two years ago. They try out games and break into oohs and aahs over the unbelievable resolution and frame rate. It feels like Christmas in July as J and I watch them.

7/7 An entire car full with people who are my family.

7/6 I will not pretend that I wrote this on July 6.

7/5 I lose track of which day it is. The joy of seeing people I know talk to each other.

7/4 Gothenburg, midnight. Last sentence of the hotel concierge’s litany: “No wifi password.” The floating borders of self-evidence.

7/3 Copenhagen. Want to sleep forever.

7/2 And across the ocean.

7/1 I so hope we will see these pictures and not be able to believe just how young we were.

6/30 Clearly my thinking in extremes at work here. I am now convinced that this election is done and I’d better come to terms with it. Then I watch the speech Biden gave later on Friday, with a teleprompter, and I feel it’s maybe not so bad after all. Clearly, I’m like a leaf blown around and my opinions are not to be trusted.

Went running in the dark after ten. Unusual pains in unusual parts of my body, but oh, the corridors of trees and branches and leaves and the scattered patches of street light, the warmth. I know, from 2019, what it’s like to lose it, and what a paradise it becomes when you wish you were there. I feel like I’m not up to something this big, and yet been shown a glimpse of it, as I make my way, panting, with a hurting foot and hip.