I have no idea where my response came from. He gave me a quizzical look as I told him, “Take me to your leader.”

At that moment the population of Canada became 39,215,878, plus two. I leaned over and kissed Laura. Not a romantic kiss, not even close—a thank-you kiss. The sense of relief I felt was enormous. I was filled with relief, with joy, until I looked over my shoulder and saw my country across the river.

I stopped the car in the breakdown lane. We just sat there for several minutes. I was completely disoriented. It was as if I was being wheeled out of Walter Reed again, but this time there was no Howie standing there with a big smile and open arms ready to help me remake myself.

Until that instant I had been mission-focused. I hadn’t permitted my emotions to color my judgment. But suddenly the sadness I felt was as close to overwhelming as anything I had ever experienced. It hit me with the intensity of a collapsing building. It was completely disorienting. I covered my mouth with my palm, biting the inside of my cheeks. I wasn’t leaving a place. Instead I was accepting the painful reality that the day of America exceptionalism was done. Everything good that happened in my life, everything, I owed to my country. I am who I am because I was born in America. I was shaped by its greatest values. Maybe the reality of America was never anyone’s idea of a utopia. Hunger and homelessness were always with us; there were too many places where poverty was a way of life and education was a dream; distrust, racism, and hate divided us; no one would claim we had ever reached that place envisioned by our founders. We were more like Oz or Shangri-la; our best days were always over the next horizon, beyond the cotton clouds. But until Trump took office, we had never stopped striving to get there, never stopped pursuing those goals of true human decency and equality.

During Trump’s final year in office protesters had hidden inside the Statue of Liberty when its museum had closed in the evening, then somehow made their way up to the torch, where they sabotaged the wiring. They had made a symbol of the symbol—turning off the torch of liberty. The Parks Department claimed it was an internal wiring problem and the story never received wide circulation. But that’s what happened. The Democrats had promised to relight the torch. It was to be the symbol of the country once again becoming a beacon for people in need. Never happened. Instead it has remained dark and empty. That was the way I felt inside.

“We got to go, Rollie,” Laura said.

“Yeah.”

The Canadians had developed a protocol for dealing with Americans claiming political asylum. We were escorted to the small office of the regional director of immigration, Ontario, still close enough to the border to see the innocently twinkling lights across the Niagara River in Buffalo. With assistance Laura had rolled Mighty Chair off the truck. As easily as opening a convertible couch, Cher had snapped Chair back into position. When it was done, Cher sighed loudly, then told me, “That feels better.”