Now that the date is set and the movers are booked, the days are going fast. Friends keep asking what's on our last-things list — places to visit, foods to eat, experiences to have — and I don't have any good answers. What I'll miss most is simply being here: knowing that I can open the door, turn left, go down one flight of stairs, turn right, then right again, three steps, two heavy doors, three more steps, and there: the city. Trying to distill that into a farewell tour is impossible.
The ordinary extraordinary New York things will be here when we visit, but the extraordinarily ordinary parts of everyday life here won't belong to us anymore. These next few weeks, that's what I'll be enjoying: knowing the names of the border terriers that circle the block twice a day, buying a single peach from the corner bodega, meeting up with friends, reading on the long train ride into Brooklyn, and walking just to walk, with nowhere really to go and everything to see.
