In Between

academy of sciences, by Diana Kimball.

For a month, I lived in two places: a small new apartment with only everything I was sure I wanted, and a cavernous old apartment with everything else. The overlap in leases meant that I could take my time, and I uneasily did. As soon as my bed was assembled in the new apartment, it became home. But part of my peripheral attention lingered where I used to be, wondering about papers and piles and what I’d find when I finally went back.

I went back more than once, taking things in waves. But on Tuesday this week, Pat and I returned at the same time and had dinner by the one window, eating salad and chili with compostable spoons and glancing at a fading jade plant that neither of us had taken yet. We emptied the echoing rooms out and I carried away: a knapsack full of soap, a thin pillow, a mop with a curved handle, the jade plant carefully.

Rustling thoughts have started to calm, now that they’re ricocheting across less space. I’m so grateful to live here, and to have lived in this city for almost a year.

In between, my mind has been on the most basic things. How to fall asleep, how to reconcile self-discipline and gentleness, how to practice. How to build habits and acknowledge secret expectations. How to manage money and make food.

Every day I learn more things I never knew I never knew, every day feels new.