Bon Anniversaire!

Time is a funny thing. Sometimes, the minutes are slippery minnows that slip, silver and shining, from your fingers. Other times, it is a snail, dragging through a sweet stream of thick molasses. These two components mix, and now I wake up mornings to the notion I've been in this good city for a year now. It is a pleasant thought, knowing the initial "new city" smell has worn off and now I can break out the curlers and cold cream and reveal my true self to my city. Sorry, New York. This is what you signed up for. The long haul.

For a year, I've ridden the subways. For ten months, I've ridden subways successfully. I buy cherries and strawberries off fruit carts on avenues, I go to open-air theatre in Central Park to watch "Twelfth Night," I run through the streets of Manhattan with my reporter's Steno pad, finding the scoop and yelling journalistic things a la His Girl Friday. I go to gala's in ballgowns and perform Vaughn Williams in Carnegie Hall. The knowledge comes with a price. Living in New York City is exhausting, there are few things that I can imagine are more tiring. One, training for an Ironman. Two, training for an Ironman with an 800 pound gorilla on my back.

In many aspects - or all? - I live the life of a New Yorker. Status is given only to those who have been in the city ten or more, but I'd like to think of this as the honeymoon period. The first year is always the most difficult, and I've done my fair share of slumming, going to Garden of Eden for free samples of shortbread and jam because I felt too poor to buy dinner, I still recall quite vividly the icy discomfort of having January slush embedded in my Chucks (important life lesson number 39: WEAR APPROPRIATE FOOTWEAR!)

So, at the apex of my year-long continuance in Manhattan, what do I have to say? That I live for the adventures presented to me, that I love the city that was once only a means to an end? Yes. And I hope these silver minnow moments won't slip away too quickly, nor in a way that discourages reminiscence.