Waffles and Everyday Miracles

Deluxe Town Diner, Watertown, Massachusetts

My wife and I went to a diner in Cambridge for breakfast yesterday, the first day after the capture of the second bomber. It seemed to me that all of us there were existing in state of grace -- the good will and sense of mutuality so normal as to be banal or imperceptible, yet, upon reflection, so miraculously cooperative that I wondered whether if any of us stopped believing in the wonder of our peaceful coexistence that the spell might be broken. The waitress's smile was beatific, and the waffles were pretty damn good.