After a vacation, friends ask, “How was it?” and you answer, “Fine” or “Great” or bedeck the moment with an anecdote because that’s all you’ve time for. An immensity of impressions sits mute before absence of interest and scarcity of time. We cram our lives too full to savor. We carry home mementoes which we mean to distil into a shareable account, and they stare at us until, what the hell, we chuck them, who has time – life goes on. Consumers and discarders of so much, how much do we digest?

I write to save time. But how much can we save more than a snippet? And what use a snippet amidst our mess of stuff? When T.S. Eliot writes “Human kind cannot bear very much reality,” we take “bear” to mean “endure” but it can also mean carry, haul, transport. Of Jane’s and my week away with my daughter and her three kids at the Stratford Festival in Stratford, Ontario, I bear away so little I can hardly bear it. What a waste to leave so much zest uncontained! Maybe I should live less and write more – only that seems wrong too.

This is the second consecutive summer this group has spent a week in that most amiable and predictable of towns (population: 33 thousand) exploring the Festival’s theatrical offerings and one another. The Festival produces, on average, a dozen shows each season, a mix of Shakespeare, classics, musicals, and new works, for young and old, egghead and newbie, played in repertory in four theaters of different size, configuration, and vibe. The professionalism of each production is as good as it gets. How the managers of this enterprise manage to attract enough audience and patrons to this remote village amidst fields of maize, soybeans, and winter wheat, to afford all these actors, directors, musicians, dancers, technicians, carpenters, costumes, and sets is more than I can say, but they’ve been doing it for 73 years, bless them, with no signs of slowing. Five summers I’ve spent a week here – as a baffled ex-husband, with blessed Jane, and now with our grandkids and their mom – and for this theater glutton, no feast could be more robust.

The shows vary in interest, naturally. After dozens takes on Romeo and Juliet over the decades, some are sure to miss the mark. Silly musicals aren’t my cup of tea, though it’s pleasant sharing the pleasure of the well-pleased. This year I figured Waiting for Godot wasn’t fit fare for anyone, maybe even me, though we’d give Death of a Salesman a try. (Remarkably our grandkids enjoy shows they can barely decode.)

As much as the shows, the place satisfies, with its comfortable homes, careful gardens, tended yards, its river with geese and paddleboats and swans, its unfailing cordiality and modesty, so unlike our shoving, shouting, suspicious American norm. Any generalization calumniates, but I’m convinced Canadians are nicer than Americans, less bullying and proud. We feared sour looks from our northern neighbors because of our present obnoxious regime – imagine characterizing Canada as America’s fifty-first state! Instead, if the subject arose – which it didn’t often – we were offered the sympathy due to an ailing friend.

Fellowship embraces you in Stratford. The fellowship of family, together round the clock; of the Festival, which involves everyone more or less (“Did you see we just passed Othello on his bike?”); of believers in the English language and redemptive power of art; of this earth, to which we’ve all a right; and of Shakespeare’s radiant generosity:

There’s place and means for every man alive.