I think it is this precise moment that this white, Chinese-looking pavilion that outcrops over the lake was built for: soft sun, breeze, a fading day, parents that have flown from all the way the other side of the world, catching up on things that you haven’t caught up on in eight months, like even existing in the same place and time, being across from one another, and pointing out sights that your vision adheres to, things this time that none of you have ever seen before, a questionable staircase up that mountain, an off-limits bridge bathed in scaffolding, an excavator dredging soil at the edge of the lake, two youths noodling on the bench by the banister, Mom dropping her water bottle three stories down to the mud by the geese, little kids, adults, still-dwindling sunlight, much like things you have seen before but not them, a new space and time to live in together, narrower, maybe, than what as been there in the past, briefer, but richer, too, more keenly felt, it’s not high-school anymore, when you grow up you realize, etc., etc.
