I remember the presidential chair vilified, pilloried. I see the grim cartoons lampooning me. A child offsets those.
Tuesday evening
This morning I visited one of the hospitals, a tent hospital by the river. Rain was everywhere. The wounded felt it, that was easy to see. I went among them, shaking hands, enquiring; this was not my first visit; I knew some of the men by name.
“Abraham,” I heard a man whisper to his cot mate.
Can a name influence a life?
Abraham—“father of a multitude.”
Through the centuries, thousands of infants have been christened Abraham. What has it meant? And what kind of father am I? In the deep of the night, or during a cabinet meeting, or while playing with my sons, I ask. Which of the wounded, which of the dead, was my responsibility?
Now and then the candle beside my bed does not want to go out.