A...challenging...weekend. A bad cold confines me mostly to my house, missing the bright Saturday and Sunday. Too little sleep at night, too much in the day. And the --admittedly minor, but vexing --ills of my body reduce the borders of my soul, making sadness and irritation the most natural guests.
A friend is dying of cancer a hundred miles away. My father's health continues to decline, placing more burdens on my mother and siblings. My ex's partner achieves Black Belt status in his chosen martial art. Another friend returns to see me from out of town. The neighbor's cat wanders in for the attention and space he has claimed for the last dozen years or so. Emails and phone calls come. A man of whom I am enormously, though perhaps imprudently, fond sometimes delights me to the point of uneasy wonder, sometimes confuses me to the point of fear. I watch movies and documentaries on war, on loss, on friendship, on ludicrousness. I think about my future, sometimes with hope, sometimes with anxiety.
And I just finished watching the wonderfully moving series finale of John Adams, based on David McCullough's groundbreaking biography. And there I am in awe. Abigail Adams once wrote to her husband that “Posterity who are to reap the blessings will scarcely be able to conceive the hardships and sufferings of their ancestors.” True, Abigail, true.
1 comment:
You know, Mr. V and I watched this whole series. I have to say that I came away from it with, to put it mildly, a very poor opinion of John Adams. I think he cried at least 5 times in each episode, in between fits and general douchebagginess. I can't imagine that was the intent of the series' directors and producers.
It was HBO, and very well done, which made it worth watching. And I guess the acting was good, too. I did think the role of his wife seemed to have a Hollywood emphasis to the tune of "great men are actually helpless children without their women." Maybe he was. I don't know. It just seemed...typical.
Post a Comment