Ah, to have Kathleen at home again. How nice is that.

We ate the stew for dinner. It was good, but the mushrooms had faded away, and the flavor was just perceptibly un peu fané . Of course Kathleen hadn’t eaten it before, and she didn’t miss the mushrooms. She even asked for a hunk of bread — which she used to sop up sauce with the help of a fork. If I knew better, it’s only because I’m older. We both grew up in households where bread never appeared on the table; it was for toast and children’s sandwiches, period. No wonder I taught myself to bake it!

I meant to add fresh peas (fresh frozen peas, that is) to the stew, but I forgot all about them.

We talked for an hour after dinner about Russia, China, and the American weakness for abstraction. By which we meant that most Americans see Russia and China as “former Communist nations.” Whereas they never were anything but Russia and China, really, and, now, that they’ve thrown off their ideological corsets, they’re reverting to type — always a strength. We talked about “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and how the British have been able to break with the Anglophone hoo-ha about infectious homosexuality because they’re no longer ruling the globe in pink.

We talked about 1 Corinthians 7.9, which both of us had always understood thus: It is better to marry than to burn in hell. In fact, according to my Greek New Testament, what Paul actually wrote was this: It is better to marry than to burn with passion. Eric Patton, God love him, remarked that he couldn’t remember when he learned the correct reading. Burlington Bertie from Columbus, he is.

A good day.

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