From Years to Hours

Originally written January 1, 2006

Lying in wait for Moshe has been easier said than done. I’ve spent the past few nights in the Applewood district, waiting for him to show up. I’ve wandered the very empty side streets for hours and bought more tea in one night than that diner probably serves in a week. Because I didn’t want the manager there to start questioning my sanity, I printed up Lost Cat fliers and asked him to keep an eye out.

More interesting is my New Year’s news.

It’s my favorite holiday, possibly because it’s the only one that’s remained constant over the course of my lifetime. Naturally, we celebrated it at a different time of year in China from in the Christian world, and the festivities have ranged from a simple acknowledgement and a prayer for healthy crops in the year to come to an all-out champagne bash in a hotel overlooking Times Square, but no matter how I’ve observed it, it becomes more and more special each year.

This year was fairly simple but nonetheless all I could ask for. It was largely a department celebration, the sushi-oke crowd to be precise. Drinking and mingling at a nearby wine bar. Low-key and content to be. Jeanine was there, of course, which made it one of the only occasional New Year’s Eves on which I’ve gotten a kiss at midnight and one of the very few that have led to more. Maybe someday I’ll share the details, but right now it would just feel exhibitionist and gratuitous.

I think I look forward to New Year’s for the same reason I enjoy my birthday (which, by the way, is in August, as far as I’ve been able to tell… we didn’t really keep close track of those things when I was a child, but every astrologer I’ve been to has told me early August). That is, it’s only partly cliché to say that time moves faster as you age. I can write down my little daily joys, sorrows, and excitements, but for me a yearly check-in feels more real. Focusing too closely on what happened today—what I wore, what I ate, who I spoke to—doesn’t always feel like a good indication of what’s important in the long run; perhaps paradoxically, that’s why I continue to do it: I don’t want to lose sight of how life is supposed to feel. My perception of what’s important may not be the best one. That, after all, is what has made historical studies what they now are.

However, I should also say that another reason time is supposed to feel faster with age has to do with one’s nearness or perceived nearness to death, and for me that perception has plateaued. Early on, my conceptualization of time still included death among its eventualities. Ordinary students of the Grey Orchid don’t live forever; they merely extend their lives, typically by a century or so. Only the Gifted attain amortality, and the experience of possessing the Gift took some getting used to, to say the least.

Trudy hasn’t been able to get to Moshe’s parents. She’s even been going to the services at their synagogue trying to run into them, but they haven’t appeared. Of course, she can only go in the evening, so if they go to the morning services, we’re out of luck there. However, she began dropping by their house, but it seems they’re on vacation or something, since they haven’t been answering the door. One night, she had nothing better to do and hung out on their porch, waiting for them to return. They never did.

The events of this day to be continued...