First Day of Winter!

Winter’s official launch. I love it’s short days, it’s 5 PM-ish dusks. It puts me in a good mood. Which is good, because there was an eruption of whooping and hollering rather early in the neighborhood this morning — the annual Virginia Highlans/Morningside Holiday 5K run.

This time next year I won’t be sitting in my kitchen, at the breakfast bar, having my tea, watching hundreds of runners stream past the front gate (many sporting Santa hats, of course). I’ll be heralding the first day of Winter from France.

Last night before bed I read Adam Gopnik’s, Paris to the Moon, in which he writes, “Loss, like distance, gives permission for romance.” It’s the chapter in which he and his wife learn they have to vacate their Paris apartment (the owners are returning early), and they contemplate returning to New York sooner than planned or staying in Paris and looking for another apartment. Just before moving to Paris, they began to experience New York with new eyes. Now that leaving Paris was on the table, a similar romance with their current city bloomed.

That’s exactly what I’m starting to notice as the months between our move to France wane. Last year I probably bitched up a storm about the 5K run — didn’t they know that working people might be trying to sleep in! Has it never occurred to them that residents of this neighborhood might have somewhere to be while they humor themselves with their little run?! Why not someone else’s neighborhood?! Last year the itch to move was so insistent. All I wanted was out of here.

Between July (when we decided that to France we were headed) and now, a kind of romance has rekindled. The itch has been soothed. The lens through which I take in our house, our street, our neighborhood, the neighborhoods beyond ours is the color of old bricks — a softer, forgiving red. I haven’t changed my mind about the move, but the parting is far sweeter. And every time I notice something I once ignored or groused about, like this morning’s 5K, I can’t help but feel thank you. Whom or what I’m thanking, I don’t quite know. It’s just a feeling.