Bright

We are driving home from a day trip to Lake George. Amber is behind the wheel of my car because I had driven us there, though I always remember too late that I am skinny, so any seat not plushly cushioned starts hurting.

The sun has set behind the mountains, but its light remains a suffused glow highlighting the clouds.

"Sober" by Pink comes on my road trip mix. I listen to the chorus once, when she sings of the party being over and not knowing how she can feel this good sober, and tell Amber this song struck me at our wedding. "I realized I had just had the happiest day of my life, and I didn't see how I could have another as good."

The conversation might imply I say something about subsequent happy days, but that would be weaseling. I've had good days -- I wouldn't want to enumerate many or account for when -- but nothing matches my wedding day. It is not as though I have been chasing that dragon, only aware the confluence of joys would never impact me this way again.

Today in Lake George hadn't, but I could not expect otherwise. This was a day trip to a tourist trap I know well, and I am grateful Amber suggested this. So often, they are so limited by work and studying that they cannot think to do anything that might resemble human fun.

They initially suggested making this an overnight trip, but we could not trust the weather not to storm. It turned out to be a day that would not have required hesitation, but you can't know that in advance. It was a gamble, and we played it too safe.

When we arrived, Amber said we could have just gone to Woodstock, which would have provided a better shopping experience. I narrowed my eyes. That was an excellent point, but I'd just driven two hours and paid twenty dollars to park.

The sum of the day may equal its parts. We walked the strip of shops, most owned by the same few people selling identical kitschy or contrivedly offensive merchandise, much of the latter supporting our indicted former president.

I was distressed that the perennial cozy country store reeking of cedar had been gutted to become a Hawaiian ice shop. Lake George cycles through fads. For years, a disproportionate amount of shops were devoted to pop sockets or fidget spinners. Now, it is this, which I would better have forgiven had it spared this shop. There are five other ice shops. I don't see how a sixth increases ice profit, but this may be why the shops differ yearly, and none are particularly memorable.

We went on a boat tour, though we opted for a different one than my family takes. This was nearly three hours and only $12 more per person. From an actuarial standpoint, how could we refuse?

This was a mistake. Dehydration hit us soon. Lake George ironically hates water. Most places of this type would have water fountains or bottle refills. Lake George has vending machines on many corners, and Amber is constitutionally opposed to disposable plastic.

I conserve my water by only making one jackass quip about the tour's content every minute. Amber is so delirious in the sunlight that she finds these comments hilarious.

We come to the point we often do: what we would do with the level of ostentatious wealth displayed by those who built literal castles on the shore of this lake. We agree it would not be that. Amber suggested they might buy a massive parcel, put a cabin in the middle, and refuse to let anyone develop the rest.

I concurred in principle. What would I do with a castle but defend it against the Norman invasion? On the captain's tenth iteration of this or that being the summer home of an Industrial Age scion who summers there every summer, we came to contemplate what it would be like to have the familial or personal means to do this. (Amber first decried using "summer" as a verb but then joined in imagining.) We both thought more about how we could provide a respite than direct personal enjoyment, which is why we would not excel at being wealthy.

"You should have married rich," I told Amber. "You deserved that and not some civil service author."

"What about you?"

"Eh, probably couldn't have married rich. Leonard's family would summer in France, but it is unlikely that relationship was headed toward marriage, what with them being a college student then and a lesbian."

A plane slid to a stop on the lake a hundred feet from our ship, then flew off again. It seemed like it put on a show for us to display rather than entertain.

Looking at the forested mountains, the movement of the trees seemed out of sync, which I assured Amber meant this was a poorly rendered simulation. This could have been the dehydration talking.

Amber became distracted here as they saw a boat towing another boat. "A towboat! It makes sense that would exist, but isn't that why they invented paddles?" They will later insist the towboat was the best part of the trip and made up for taking a boat ride so long that we lost our mooring on time and reality.

We tried to go to a museum at the town hall after, ruling that it was too early for dinner. The docent was so eager to get people to play some scavenger hunt inside that everyone fled the air-conditioned respite. Had she left us alone, Amber and I would have played the game, signed the guestbook, and explored. She didn't comprehend this, even to the extent of forcing one of the scavenger hunt sheets into Amber's hand and shouting to their back how fun it would be to learn history. We like history. We are not fond of pushy strangers.

It is not that nostalgia is inherently toxic, simply often and mostly. Lake George has triggered this in me, as I have decades of exposure to it. It is never just that day, that experience, but a long strand going back to the 1980s.

Today tripped none of this. It was too short a tenure and didn't wear down my resolve sufficiently via sleep deprivation. The shock of realization at my wedding was that I would have to fend off the nostalgia of a nearly perfect weekend. I would never again be surrounded by so many who loved me for so pure a reason.

The unrepeatability of my wedding did an excellent job of arresting nostalgia in a way Lake George cannot, even though I must admit that my wedding lacked a towboat.

last watched: True Blood
reading: The Vintner's Luck