What happens here, stays here, they insist, but I want to share just a little of the latest weekend jaunt to Nevada's southern city touted primarily for its neon Strip. On the only other visit to Las Vegas, I'd been escorted to the Strip by friends, residents of the city, and had surprisingly liked what I thought I'd abhor. The casinos not merely glittering gambling dens I'd assumed them to be, but components of structures housing fine boutiques, great restaurants, shops featuring wares from the best worldwide designers, art galleries where I viewed Picassos, Monets, Van Goghs. But there'd be no time for the Strip this time. I was arriving on Saturday to attend on Sunday the surprise 70th birthday party of a dear friend who'd been very close to death from pneumonia over the past month. My flight out of Vegas was scheduled for Monday.
"If you want to double your money when in the casinos," the flight attendant counseled as our plane taxied to the gate on arrival, "I've got the soundest piece of advice: take a dollar from your pocket and fold it in half. Then put it back in your pocket." Such patter is endemic for this city sprung from las vegas, the meadows, and you see it justified as you walk through the airport furnished with countless rows of slot machines manned by travelers who look anything but weary, avidly feeding coins and dollar bills into the whirring, flashing instruments of wishful thinking. I know that my forty-eight hours in town will not be in similar meadows.
Mutual friends of the morrow's Birthday Girl have kindly received me as guest in their home. I see for the first time their beautiful neighborhood of Summerlin, observe family properties expertly maintained, amid streets and thoroughfares handsomely landscaped, southwestern flora in sandy beds ablaze with brilliant sun suddenly countered by the unexpected vista of a shaded avenue under towering royal palms. This dignified eden, in the same town as the flamboyant street of neon I'd only known previously. I had a lot to learn about Vegas.
My host and hostess attend Saturday afternoon Catholic Mass and invite me to accompany them. To one more glimpse of still another Las Vegas. A huge, handsomely-designed modern church, crowded with communicants young and old. Before and after the liturgy, introduced to parishioners, I hear reports of family and friends, am shown the photo of a young man's two-year-old son, learn who is recovering from what illness, when someone's granddaughter is expected to visit. On leaving the church, I stop for a few words with the celebrant, who'd referred to his love for Rome during the homily. We exchange nostalgic longing to see again the Eternal City. I've not heard a single reference to Las Vegas' storied lures, the celebrity-studded shows, the spectacular extravaganzas, certainly not the gambling, of the Strip. Later at a restaurant, our conversation is centered mostly on the help, receptionist, manager and waiters known to my friends who are sincerely interested in the present lives and future ambitions of these young people.
Sunday. The surprise Birthday Party is held at a noted Italian restaurant, usually closed on the day of rest, reserved exclusively for this occasion. It is already crowded when we arrive, though Birthday Girl has yet to arrive with her husband. They and the couple with whom I'm staying are friends with whom I shared memorable times on a tour of Portugal and Spain four years ago. The restaurant hums with expectancy, all of us awaiting word of when Birthday Girl has left her house, how soon she'll appear to face a large assembly eager to express its love and happiness at her survival from serious physical assault. I meet -- all! -- her nine adult children, those who live in Vegas and those who've come from afar, and see in each of them the rich harvest of good parenting. Among family friends in attendance are fellow thespians from a local theatrical group to which Birthday Girl and spouse belong. Colorful, amusing, wonderful people with fine tall tales to tell me. I watch an elder (isn't he actually, like myself, an octogenarian?) dancing so energetically, wildly really, that I wonder if we'll have to call an ambulance. Not to worry. He was a boxer, gymnast, great athlete, I'm told, who continues to pride himself on his prowess.
Birthday Girl arrives to great cheering and a thunderous fanfare from the hired musicians. We wonder whether or not hubby had been able to keep the party a surprise, but if she'd guessed, does not display it. And she absolutely hadn't expected me to be there, our embrace is long. Wine flows, the dinner is superb -- the finest Italian cuisine lite -- and I much enjoy table companions, a lawyer and her educator husband, who've traveled far and share stories of adventures in places I haven't visited. Nearly everyone crowding the large two rooms is gregarious, and much circulating spawns many joyful encounters. I consciously consider that the occasion is in no way provincial, has nothing to do with the icon which is Las Vegas, could be happening anywhere in the world where loving families and dear friends gather. There on the dancefloor, Birthday Girl is dancing with her head on the shoulder of her husband of more than fifty years, their nine children -- and a few of their spouses, and just a smattering of the many grandchildren -- taking photos. When I speak with a son or a daughter, there's much laughter, this is a day for it, but a few times I detect a misty eye.
Back at Summerlin, host, hostess and I spend a few quiet Sunday evening hours sitting in their living room, reviewing the rock-solid bonding of family and the loyalty of friends we'd seen among everyone at the party. Television, though muted, was on across the room. Images thoroughly divorced from what we'd known this day. I wouldn't let them -- not those glimpses of world turmoil, political smut, human frailty -- intrude on what the three of us had experienced and were savoring. Call it Sin City if that pleases you, but I now know a Las Vegas, a wondrous meadow where none but good shepherds roam.
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