Why, there’s President Franklin Roosevelt sitting by the fire, deep in discussion with George Marshall, for whom my Oxford scholarship was named. Standing next to them is Eleanor Roosevelt, accompanied by the entire Upper West Side of Manhattan, including her understated statue at the southern end of Riverside Park. Honoré de Balzac and Margaret Atwood (attended by a bevy of adoring handmaidens) are offering writing advice to Gustave Flaubert, who can’t be bothered, focused as he is on pacing and speaking his own words aloud. Then there’s Hippocrates and Thornton Wilder and, standing next to him, President John F. Kennedy.
I notice that President Johnson—who even in this crowd is hard to miss—is now speaking warmly with Bobby Kennedy. It seems that, after all, people of good will can and do leave their old differences at the door when they come to a party like this, although the practice is unfortunately not universal. I see tears on the face of Frederick Douglass. It may be that some of the people he sees at the party—such as Napoleon Bonaparte, Tojo Hideki, Attila, and Hernán Cortés in a little huddle over there—remind him of all the misery that has been launched on humankind by monomaniacal adventurers.
The women in my immediate family are dressed in the finest haute couture, the men in white tie and tails. The entire generation above me and the generations above them are here: my mother, Sarah, and my beloved grandmother Pauline; my fathers, Albert and Carl—Carl with his big hands. My in-laws, Helma and Marty. How did they get here? They don’t care; all they know is that they are dancing, and they do not have to work tomorrow. In fact, they do not have to work ever again. They are truly serene at last, able to rest in peace.
My children and their children Sacha, Lorelei, Eli, and Helena, standing near Sue, are watching all this. They do not quite recognize their ancestors twirling around them, but they do know that they are their ancestors. Having decked myself out in an Elvis outfit (including an outrageous Presleyan hairpiece), I am exhausted from having just done a turn on the dance floor with Kathryn. Her dogs Kady, Penny, and Hope, eyes agape, look on in amazement. My dear sisters Brenda and Ruth; their spouses, Jim Schmand and Richard Chaifetz; and my brother Joel and his wife, Marilyn, are here of course, along with their children—Josh and Whitney, Carly and Danny; Peshie, Rebekah, and Evan, Carl and Melissa; Cary and Stacy, Scott and Audrey, now with their own children as well. But, in fact, all the people and things mentioned in this book are here, and almost all from my life who are not mentioned have shown up as well.
The final cost for the party has not yet been determined. Fortunately, the party planner, my friend Art Linkletter, agrees with my principle: the more guests the merrier. I hope that Art will be fair, but as is usual in billing (and in life, too, for that matter), one never really knows until afterward.
I sense it is that time in the course of a party when I, as the host, ought to give a little speech, and perhaps propose a toast. I decide on both.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please allow me to say a few words,” I begin. “The few words that I feel need saying to you all to honor your presence at this party are about…the future. In life, the future is scary for some, exhilarating for others. What can we, or rather, what can I, make of it?
“Permit me first to speak about biological heritage—our genes. Genes spread by force or by persuasion (all too often force). What a mishmash it all is! Virtually unpredictable at the moment of conception, like a deck of cards being shuffled.
“The genetic mix is followed by a cultural mix. After all, someone raises us, right?
“I wonder, my honored friends and things, does our genetic cocktail and its cultural garnish, its heritage, somehow lie behind our own loudly trumpeted exceptionalism in the United States?
“While we are undeniably different, are we truly exceptional…yet? And perhaps a more basic question: Will the genes and cultures from the West and East—in a grand pincer movement of all sorts of peoples—meld to produce a new, distinctive, and homogeneous people sometime in the future? Might we develop a profoundly exceptional new way forward on the path of the progress of humanity? We hope so. And as I often say, with aspiration, hope has to be the first step.
“I have a great responsibility standing here before you. What can I say to you all that informs you, affirms you, makes you feel like laughing and crying both, something unique in which you all share, in spite of the dizzying size of the invitation list?
“Hard to think of things. All the words of the world, at least the ones I know, are sitting on my tongue like pins, waiting to be unleashed. One wants to inform, please, delight, and surprise one’s listeners, particularly if they have traveled forward or struggled against the arrow of time to arrive at this singular point.”
(By the way, dear reader, did I mention to you that this ballroom is in something like a houseboat? Outside, there is water—a river or lake, perhaps an ocean—dappled with sunlight. It is evidently spring, or early summer. As I glance at my notes, I see that the writing is becoming
