The Canadas

1999 Winter A Home Tour Esprit Turns One Lisa’s Birthday Spring Easter Mark Wraps Up School Year Summer Chillicothe, Ohio John Anderson Concert Animal Lover Cincinnati, Ohio Cumberland Gap and Lexington, Kentucky Great Smoky Mountains Fall Atlanta, Georgia Cowpens, South Carolina Washington, D.C. Esprit’s Second Christmas New Year’s Eve Updated August 10, 2002 © Canadas 2002

Millennium Numbers are just numbers. When you come right down to it, the number 2000—whether it refers to a year or the number of calories in some fast-food restaurant’s latest super-size concoction—is simply 1999 + 1. There was something special about numbers this year, though. Part of it was psychological: that familiar “19,” which we had seen on our checks, our newspapers, our letters, everywhere, was going away, and a spooky “20,” which heretofore had belonged to the worlds of science fiction and financial planners, was coming to replace it. The other part of the special quality of numbers this year was technological: our computers had grown rather comfortable with that “19,” too—so comfortable, in fact, that we were warned they might just shut down when it went away. It was a strange and slightly scary time to be alive. Still, like everything big in our world—elections, financial booms and busts, even wars and natural disasters—this fin-de-millenaire experience was on the minds of most of us only a small portion of the time, perhaps a few minutes a day. The rest of the time we were busy living our lives. Indeed, the lives of the Canadas were busy enough this year. As I continued teaching English at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, Lisa launched a catering business called The Good Life out of our home in Laurinburg. We also celebrated Essie’s first birthday and second Christmas, welcomed grandparents for Easter, and took trips to Indiana and Atlanta. All the while, of course, we were enjoying watching Essie grow up.