OF A GOLDEN AGE

In a city of millions of people, I am always surprised by how un-crowded many places are, how entire times of day are so empty as to feel completely private. In a city of millions of people, there is frequently no line at the grocery store; my prescription can be ready in five minutes; I can drive from here to downtown in about ten. I am the first and only car at the red light, with no one waiting to drive through the intersection on the perpendicular street.

In the suburbs this feeling only intensifies, fewer people per square mile and more whole areas made up of stores without any residential. Where the city feels peaceful during the empty times, the suburbs feel a little bit alarming, desolate. Instead of enjoying having everything to yourself, you wonder why no one else is there.

But I love the stolen time, the feeling of accomplishment. Completing tasks in less time with no lines or traffic; freedom to look around and think. As it starts to turn light on these short January days, I watch the streetlights switch off in the blooming near-sunlight.

My workplace now houses an environmentally friendly tankless water cooler. It taps into our main water line, filters the tap water, and dispenses it hot, lukewarm, or cold. It is marvelous (literally) to press a button and have water hot enough to brew tea within a few seconds.

Our ongoing conversation here about ways we can be more conscious is almost a matter of company policy more than moral fortitude, and the natural manner in which we all assume we will move toward a smaller carbon footprint and less waste is one of my favorite things about working here. Of course, in homes and in personal lives the dialogue can play out very differently. The New York Times ran a tragicomic piece on the rise in green issues among reasons to visit a therapist, like one California couple:

Mr. Fleming, who says he became committed to Ms. Cobb “before her high-priestess phase,” describes their conflicts as good-natured — mostly.

Even being a vegetarian has opened my eyes to how sensitive everyone is to feeling like they’re on the receiving end of someone’s judgment. “I don’t care what you eat, I’m just choosing for myself,” I hear myself say constantly. And sometimes I forget how easy it is to be a vegetarian in a huge city, or how understanding my parents or other people from previous generations have been for me. Imagine if this were your life, from the NYT piece:

If Ms. Petso prepares a vegan meal for the family, her parents prepare hot dogs to go alongside. Her parents serve on throwaway Styrofoam plates; she grabs a plate that can be cleaned and reused. Her mother, who says she prefers the way food tastes when it is served on Styrofoam, notes that washing dishes has its own environmental costs.

“She prefers the way food tastes when it is served on Styrofoam”?!

Mindy Kaling, who executive produces, writes for, and Kelly Kapoor in The Office, has a sweet holiday feature in the New York Times. In it, she tells a stranger that she’ll be spending the holidays with a family she doesn’t have, a fictitious husband and children. Instead, she’ll be with her parents and her older brother:

Do I want to be the child in my current family, or the parent/wife/grown-up of some other one? The first seems real and comfortable. The second seemed like a silly bit of mischief, a game of pretend, even though I have a sense it might be just around the corner.

I hope my future family always feels like this. Like I got away with a little lie, but with accomplices. “Oh, this is just the cute boy I married and the crazy kids I have, can you believe it? I can’t.”

Sometimes before work I get my act together early and decamp to Starbucks for a little bit of reading.

One day very recently I sat, reading Sue Grafton, admiring that morning’s musical choices in the shop. Some semifolky classical knockoff came on and I longed for Clair de Lune, one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever written, lovely, at once plaintive and powerful, understated, filled with enormous life. It makes me think of winter, and light glinting off of water, and my grandfather, who always tuned the radio in his Mercury to the classical station. The abused old baby grand piano I made my parents keep when they moved to their new house, because how can you get rid of a piano?

I stood and put on my coat, and what piece came next? Clair de Lune, as I live and breathe. “Hokey smoke,” I said. People turned but I left, and strains of the piece rang in my head as I walked to work. As I turned the corner I looked up and saw a flock of geese passing overhead, standing still in the strong winter wind.

Isn’t a pilgrimage a beautiful concept? These geese make one every year and its significance is on par with any religion: They live because of it. We grouse about the weather, the inconvenience, our dead car batteries or freezing groceries. But what we can fix with extra layers and patience, the geese must fly thousands of miles to find.