Marking the Time

I missed some anniversaries while I was away. When I booked the trip it had been so long in the offing that I just agreed to whatever dates seemed to work without taking too close a look at them. I didn't miss someone's wedding or anything but I did miss a few significant milestones on my calendar.

On September 7th the kittens turned 12. They will always be kittens to me no matter how long they live. This is only partially because they can be super stupid. They were wee things born under my futon in the early morning hours of one of the worst hangovers I have ever experienced. In my mind's eye they will always be super tiny and precious. OK, yeah, they're precious at any size but the widdle biddy kittens are the most preciousest, right? They passed their birthday in the care of Pony Express and are properly spoiled every day of their lives but it's worth noting that they've survived another year and they don't look like they're slowing down any time soon. In the case of Elvis (at right above), who was diagnosed with a heart murmur at the age of 4 and given two more years to live at the very outside, each year is a huge thing and I delight in spreading it around that the vet had her head up her ass when she gave me that news. Happy Birthday Elvis, here's a dose of petty revenge in your honor!

This was the first anniversary of 9/11 that I did not mark in New York City. My grandfather Robbie was a Rotarian. The Rotary Club is a world wide organization so you can travel to a lot of places and never miss a weekly meeting. He told me once (or told someone else while I was standing right there) that he purposely didn't go to meetings on vacation because he didn't want to feel stuck in the tradition. He knew that if he made it a point to make every, single, solitary weekly meeting then he'd pressure himself to find a meeting wherever he was and it would take away from the enjoyment and enrichment he was getting when he traveled which goes against pretty much everything that Rotarians are about. I tried to look at this anniversary like that. While I prefer to be in New York I will honor the day no less wherever I am and the lesson I've always wanted to follow regarding those events is that we need to make more of our lives not less in the wake. So I saw a bunch of art and ate a bunch of food and drank some wine and ate some gelato and missed New York. And it was good.

Technically I was not out of town for this last one but jet lag robbed me of remembering it. As of September 15th (or possibly 16th, records have not been diligently preserved) I have been living in New York for 25 years. Now, there are arguments to be made that since I didn't get an apartment here for two more years or because I went to school and later to work in other cities for big chunks of time that it's not a clean 25 year stint but I know that almost from that first day I was a New Yorker. These days I've refined that to Brooklynite (while retaining my deeply seated New England roots). 25 years is a long ass time.

A great ass one, too.