Men In Vermillion Robes

Take the little one to school.  Return back home before 9:00AM. Gather up your suit.  It’s there in the closet.  Hopefully there are no God-awful stains on it.  These checkered blue and green shirts are always perma-pressed.  The tie I bought in that quaint Hong Kong history museum, up on Bonham Road, with the patten or old carvings.  I can hang the shirts and the suit in the car.  Everything else fits well-enough into my backpack. 

 

I shouldn’t have but of course, I check emails before I go.  I’ve reserved a car for 10:00AM.  It doesn’t really matter if I pick it up at 11:00AM. There’s an event I’m supposed to arrive at by 6:30PM or so but there really isn’t anything to rush for.  This note is easy to dispose of.  This too should be settled now.  A client wants a service that clients generally pay for.  He doesn’t agree.  And now we have a misunderstanding that I cannot settle quickly.  I invoke the word “funeral” and tell him I’ll dial him from the road. 

Once I came upon a roadside ceremony in Kumasi, Ghana when this topic comes up.  I must have had a change of busses or bush taxis and for some reason I came upon a field of men in vermillion robes in preparation of some sort of ceremony.  I asked one gent what was going on and he told me it was a “FUNerAh.”  “I see.  And what is the significance of the FUNerAh?”  “This is the FUNerAh for a very great man.”  “Yes.  I see. . .“  We went back and forth like this for a few minutes before I discerned the obvious; that this was a funeral service.

I had one call in the parking lot with someone who was in the U.K. about a misunderstanding in Taiwan.  Then I settled the misunderstanding easily enough that had been so frustrating in a textual capacity.  Played phone tag with someone in Boston and finally spoke.  Then I had a good call with someone in Atlanta and followed up with a call to Philadelphia.  Plenty of U.S. calls to do, when you live here in the U.S.  By the time I called my dad, whom I was to meet that evening at the dinner reception, I was passing a Welcome to Maryland sign and considering the portly face of Governor Hogan, in my mind’s eye.  

 

 

Thursday, 05/20/21