Looking Back

I'm here now, no longer there. I wonder what it is like for them now in our old house? Do they like it, still, as we did for seventeen years? Do they see things that are not right and say, "damn Charlie," and cuss? The winter's been so incredibly mild, they've hardly experienced winter like weather, yet. Can it be that this will be the winter of no snow? Who says there is no "global warming" with a straight face or grey matter behind it? Each weather system that marches through without the requisite combination of moisture and cold is an opportinity lost, and there are decidedly limited opportunities. We've had several close calls, but we've had rain in buckets instead of a blizzard, and a few doses of arctic cold, always in alternation. The way I see it, we have about seven weeks of winter left.

What else do I miss in the old place? The look of the woods in the back, the sight of snow on Sophie's playhouse and the barns. And the frequent trips to the Post Office, those random conversations there, with Charlie and Laurie and Joe, or outside, in the parking lot, every time I visited. We do not have this here. I miss skating on the lakes, especially on the black ice, long tracks cut into the surface by hour after hour of figure eights. This year, it cannot have even frozen at all. I miss Lake Oscaleta and hiking up to the "Lookout" in Mountain Lakes Camp, and my jogging routes. I miss seeing a handful of friends, my old officemates, lunches with Lou at the Blue Dolphin in Katonah or the old "Hay Day" in Ridgefield, where we would sit next to the New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast while she drew, pretending not to know exactly who she was. I missed the annual workshop party for the first time since 1991. All in all, it is surprising how little else I am missing, after so many years in that place. It is more interesting here, where we are now, where things and people and places are mostly new and I hope this only gets better as time wears on.