The sunlight starts slanting as its fiery source dips southwest. The warm welcoming light momentarily pierces through the small spaces among my avocado plants and reminds me that despite the mountains and mountains of snow around the little city, there's sunshine that both melts the snow and gives hope of something different.
A man in those funny fur hats with flaps over the ears helps a woman put on her jacket in the middle of the street, where walking was much easier if not more dangerous than the narrow, some still unploughed, walk ways on the sidewalk.
Another couple, a man and a woman, each with a dog leashed to the right hand, walk past me, enjoying that same slanted sunshine. The dogs both look at me, undoubtedly analyzing my presence as I am doing to them. Both black, young dogs. I know nothing about dogs to say what they are. I just know that dogs bite and bark.
A man, a neighbor, shovels a path in the snow so we can all cross the street without hopping and slipping over the icy mountain that divides us from the safety of the sidewalk. He isn't paid by anyone. He's in his mid forties. An elderly man approaches him; I can't hear what they are saying, but they are smiling. Life continues to be good.
There is a melting coating of ice around one of my gutter tubes coming down three-stories from the roof to the ground. I hit it so any loose ice would fall now instead of onto a tenant's head. I worry a lot, I guess.
My car is still there, in the private parking lot of the law offices. I am glad there isn't even an angry note warning me to "move it or lose it." But I won't push my luck and leave it there for tomorrow. Where I will park tonight after the milonga run to New York, I don't know. Let's see what sort of fate my car and I will have. But life continues.
I am noticing little things around my house. I am noticing how much snow there is in this city. I realize, I don't really live here anymore. It's a big deal for me to see snow nearly as tall as me, and in many places in downtown, taller. It's as if I were a tourist from Miami.
But this morning I felt a little reconnected with the house. I had a guest over, and I was able to use the house to prepare a great breakfast for her, and in the kitchen that I had designed and whose renovation I had paid for, we talked about disconnection from romance and connecting with family.
Even before she came, yesterday I cleaned up the house, mopped the floor of that same kitchen, dry mopped the rest of the house, put things away, water plants that I cared about more than I'd like to admit.
But I know I have started saying goodbye to my house. I haven't really taken care of it as much as it deserved. It's like leaving for college and saying goodbye to your parents when you suddenly realize there is more you could be doing to strengthen the connection but now, it's a little too late. Still, cleaning the house, putting things in order, simplifying the microcosm of my living space, helped.
Beyond the house, this city I am becoming a stranger to, isn't totally disconnected from me. We went to a restaurant last night after the tango bootcamp. Being in a restaurant in this city with people whose company I enjoyed made me feel a bit more connected. After I move from this city, I will of course come back a few times, and I think I will have good feelings for it, not one of longing and regret, of course, but one of sweet memories.
The friend I made breakfast for told me there are lots of cockroaches in the apartment where she's now staying. I forgot how much New York is infested with all sorts of critters. I have not been to a subway station without seeing at least one rat. I also remember having to deal with critters at my parents' house. For all this time I blamed them, thinking they were just immigrants who were too used to living with critters to really do something about them. But now I realize it's a problem in many households in New York, in a big crowded city, whether you're an immigrant or not. In any case, it was a strange foreboding for my desire to return to New York. I only hope I won't get bedbugs, like my ex-best friend got when she moved in to her new co-op.
Now I am in my living room. Another couple walks by. A young woman with short hair, walking alone. Followed by a middle-age woman with a velvet black hat with some feathery pin on it. There's a lot of people walking in front of my house. I wonder what I will see outside my window in my new home in New York.
Hopefully, I won't lose the opportunity to see the ray of sun coming through my windows.
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