Last night after we had cleared away the dinner plates, James and I sat quietly. Words about the day’s events; all bad in our troubled world were set aside.
I drew the curtains to block out the distant lights and mask as much of the New York city noise as I could; the sound of sirens in the streets and the disruptions to our peaceful lives as such blocking would allow.
One candle was set and soft music loaded to soothe us.
He held my hand without speaking and with eyes closed we drifted back to a time long ago.
How I wished for those days.
That night in London in 1819 at the Royal Hotel Pall Mall St James’s, I had slept so soundly and woken to a time in our
history where violence and hatred seemed to not yet have been invented. A time
before gun violence, before days when we feared to walk in our streets. Gather
with others safely without concern for mass shootings. A time before hate was
fed to us in every word from our politicians.
On that day I had woken from a wondrous sleep nestled
in a four-poster bed to the near silence of a street 200 years ago, where the only
muffled sounds were the soothing wheels of the horse drawn carriages on the
cobbled street.
I had watched as they peacefully went by while James read the Times newspaper. There had been no violence reported on that day!
James went off to work this morning and I pulled the
covers back over my head to once more sleep in the search for that silent
darkness.
