One Last Look

A season ends today, a part of our life linked to a physical space, our time here at the Solarium Apartment of the Sinclaire Mansion.

We'd rented the place sight unseen, based on some photos on a web page. The trip up was filled with doubts, and not just because the creaky old Cardinal seemed always on the verge of breaking down, and did in fact strand us in Spartanburg on the way here. I had no idea if this whole working remotely thing would work, if the pandemic would end or be declared over after a Trump reelection. Would I be back in the office in a month? Peg had signed a contract--she was here regardless, for a long while. What if I had to return and leave her in Corning?

That was rolling around in my head as we pulled up the first day. Back then we drove around in Peg's rental cars, which she'd swap out whenever they got dirty.

But soon days turned into weeks, with no sign of things returning to normal. I watched the season start to change from my favorite spot in the house, the Solarium that looks out across the rooftops and hills to the north.

We began to learn that the landlord wasn't particularly assiduous about fixing things around the apartment. Peg bought a giant custom banner not only to memorialize the commencement of our new chapter, but to cover all the holes in the entryway wall left by the last tenant.

We developed a routine of taking long walks around the neighborhood after work each day, our only recreation with the gym closed. That went on until the late fall snows and ice made the exercise a safety hazard.

Behind us is the Caddy, probably our favorite of her armada of rentals.

It was here that we welcomed Dean and Slane into the family, making my days working in the Solarium a little less lonely.

At some point we started worrying about their mental health confined here in this little space, leading to the ill-fated experiment with cat leashes as a way of letting them play in the yard.

We had the prettiest Christmas tree ever, in the prettiest setting one could imagine, a room illuminated with insipid December sunlight and a stark winter landscape as its backdrop.

Save a few weeks after the New Year spent on the farm, we experienced our first New York winter here. Our morning ritual then was to turn on the coffee maker and the electric fireplace, pull back the coffee table for a little Yoga with Adrienne on Amazon Prime, start the car from inside the Solarium so it would be warm when Peg got there, and eat an egg and piece of toast standing at the kitchen worktable. It didn't change for months.

After a time, the days started growing warmer. Walks returned. We enjoyed brisk spring evenings on the broad first floor porch, admiring the view over a drink.

I billed well over a thousand hours of time sitting in the same chair in the same spot, watching my hills change color as this place came back to life.

Apartment living means neighbors sharing a wall or two, and we got to know Anjanette across the hall, with her two little girls who loved taking care of Dean and Slane, and then Jo Jo, while we were away on one adventure or another. We figured the neighbor below us, a weird little hermit whose huge Amazon boxes of nutritional supplements on the porch were a constant trip hazard, was perhaps some sort of serial killer. Then he left Peg a nice note along with a package he'd mistakenly picked up then left at our door. Maybe he's just a little shy, or weird, or both.

We laughed watching Colbert in the evenings on the couch next to where I am sitting right now. We sang along with John Prine in that strange little 1990s kitchen as I played sous chef while Peg channeled her inner Bourdain. We sat side-by-side in the Solarium's rocking chair, sipping coffee on a Saturday morning and planning our next adventure. We awoke in a bedroom with plaster walls and crown moldings, the grand remains of a grander time, and talked and planned and dreamed as newlyweds do. It still sort of feels that way after all this time.

Then we followed those dreams exactly one block down the street, where we will almost certainly spend the night tonight on the start of the Tara adventure.

But this morning my vision is filled with the shadows of a part of our life together that ends today. We will be back-and-forth over the weekend, moving our few belongings down the hill a pickup truck load at a time, but I've moved enough in my life to know it won't feel the same, the spell will be broken, the lovely old lady that is the Sinclaire Mansion will bid farewell to another set of faces and stories and await the next.

In the meantime, I am just grateful for one last look at my hills outside the broad, beautiful windows of the Solarium.

Goodbye old friend. Thanks for our time together.