It hit home that being president is a profound hardship. A privilege, yes, but what you get in exchange for the power and perks is a kind of imprisonment. You can only have privacy at home, in your family space. In public, you have no down time — no ability to move about spontaneously. And if you win the election, you make that tradeoff for your wife and children as well.

Waiting for our plane in Bangor Airport a few days later, we heard a sudden burst of applause. Dozens and dozens of soldiers were filing down a walkway into the terminal to the cheers and greetings of townspeople. It seems that the Troop Greeters of Bangor take it upon themselves to greet all the transports bringing soldiers home through their town. Since 2003 they have met 4,900 flights and welcomed home some one million troops.

“Thank you for your service,” we heard them say over and over again to the young men and women heading home. “Thank you for your service.”

It seemed the perfect coda to a weekend in which the public and private, the global and local, the extraordinary and the ordinary, merged in a small New England town.

Copyright © 2010 Randi Kreiss. Randi can be reached at randik3@aol.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 304.