I am especially aware of my American-ness today -- because today we have finally acquired our car and this gives me more joy than it is seemly to admit.

True, it is a tiny Fiat500 and I feel that there should be circus music playing in the background whenever we drive it. But it is wheels. And as much as I would like to gently turn up my nose at American car culture, the truth is that I love it.

My favorite place to drive is the Texas panhandle, leaving Amarillo and angling up through all that emptiness towards New Mexico and the Sangre de Cristos towards home. And my favorite time to drive is night when the highway is empty and the little radio stations fade out until another one takes its place so that you never know what you are going to get and you can hit a hundred miles an hour on the straightaways easy and the stars revolve across the sky and up ahead you see the faint glow of an all-night last-chance gas station when you are running on fumes just thinking that you weren't going to make it. I love the way the headlights hit the roadside signs and they light up like jewels. I love gas station candy bars. I love hanging my hand out the window to feel the wind pressing against it. I love driving when someone I love is asleep riding shotgun beside me. It is desolate out there with only the dashboard lights and the ache in your bones from sitting so long to keep you awake. But it is also beautiful.

And so, of all the ways in which I am so very much aware of my own American-ness these days, it is my fervent and abiding love of cars that is the most telling.

We are, in spite of our American-ness, becoming accepted more as regulars at the pub. It is called, officially, the Society for Mutual Aid and when we sauntered down there last night for a glass of wine at 6:30, the staff were still sitting on the terrace finishing their lunch. They shared their cake with us. It was very delicious cake. But what was even more lovely was the sign that we are, at least in the opinion of the waitstaff, OK.