I got a whole extra hour last night, and feel like a new woman. (Also a new woman because I think the meds are changing my face in puffy, red, unfamiliar ways, and it’s been days since I felt I looked remotely presentable.)

What did it, the sleep? I was out after the kids went to bed. Met my friend S and we went to visit C, my favorite bartender down the block. He is legendary for his mojitos, and boy did I need one. I settled for the passion fruit juice that’s usually in mine. S had tamarind. It was delightfully subversive to be sitting in a temple of liquor and not drink a drop. C usually likes to share out and join us in a shot of mamajuana. Skipped that last night too, obvi.

But the salient reason for being there – talking with S (no stranger to her own medical woes in the past, and a most wonderful friend who happens to live a few doors down) and also C, who has the bartender’s gift of fading in and out of convos appropriately (never, ever intrusive), was the point for me.

I am in perpetual search of conversation these days. I could just set myself up on a bench with a sign. The people I could talk to in the course of a day. All my fave neighborhood people. People I’ve never spoken to. Crazy people (as long as they don’t smell too badly of pee). Maybe one of these days I’ll do it.

There’s a bench on our corner installed by the city a few years ago, part of a program to get old people places to sit. I don’t know who requested ours, but the day they put it in, I was out on a rainy walk with Young A (age 2), we were at a loose end for what to do. From under the dry cleaners’ awning, keeping dry, we watched the men drill holes in the sidewalk and pop the bench right in, a lovely contemporary design. Young A had to stay until the last man left. They saw his interest and one of them took a rag and wiped it up for him. He took a seat. He climbed up and stood on top. He was the very first person to sit on our beautiful new bench the city brought us.

It is Young A’s bench, forever. Things like this, and a million more, make it hard to ever think of leaving this place.

( I promised J I wouldn’t embarrass him on this blog so the last thing I did last night is censored.)