Wednesday Evenings in the First Half of 2007

The older I get, the more fearful I become of forgetting things. Not things like where I've left my glasses or my keys--it's decades too late to start being fearful of that kind of absent-mindedness. I actually think I'm better in that regard than I used to be out of necessity and the various coping strategies I've adopted over decades of practice. No, I mean forgetting the things I used to do, the ways I used to feel, what my life was like at given points in time. I recognize that it's a little unusual to be fearful like this. After all, to what end does a person need to remember how she used to spend Wednesday evenings back in the first half of 2007? Well, I will tell you, and you can decide for yourself.

It is not that often that one finds a kindred spirit as an adult. The phenomenon seems to be far more prevalent among the young, for a variety of reasons I will not go into here. But every once in a while, it happens, and it is to be savored. I have been fortunate in the past few years in finding a few, one of whom had a daughter in Lily's first class. When I met this friend, a year and a half ago now, she told me that her husband co-owned a bar, that Lily and I should come to the bar some evening, as she and her daughter did once a week, for an early dinner and some companionship.

My life in the first half of 2007 did not feel very secure. I was newly pregnant and conflicted about becoming a mother of two. My pregnancy was high-risk and stressful; I spent hours and hours at doctors' offices and hospitals. I was trying to figure out my professional plans for the foreseeable future, and we were trying to find, buy and move into a larger apartment. But I had this new friend, whose daughter was beloved by mine, and her husband had a bar. One winter evening, we bundled up warm, and we went.

Over the next few months, Wednesday evenings became something of a habit. Almost always I would return home after a long afternoon of tutoring to find Lily ready and excited to go. She would often pack a small bag with a doll or an animal, or more arbitrary supplies: sunglasses or a favorite rock. We'd walk three long blocks up our street to the big indoor market, where we'd meet our friends, buy dinner to go.

Mostly we bought Italian food: the girls would select a pasta, stuffed zucchini, another vegetable, a meatball or two. We'd buy milk from the dairy store, occasionally cookies, although my friend's husband, the bar-owner/tender usually supplied dessert. For that reason, as well as the pomegranate-based drinks he invented for the girls called Pom Poms and a certain glowing affability, he was the main attraction for the girls once we'd walked across the street with our dinner, settled in at the bar. Which was fine, because then--at least in spurts--my new friend and I could talk.

As someone who always logged hours and hours talking and talking with an uncommonly clever, amusing, and insightful collection of friends, it is one of the things I miss most about my former, pre-child life. Yes, I have dazzling, dizzying and sometimes surreal conversations with Lily, and I call my old friends furtively late at night when walking the dogs or in the rare times I am in a car by myself, but real, adult conversation is something of a luxury these days with all else there is to be done, never completed.

So when Lily--or perhaps an old beloved or another new friend (I have high hopes for more of them once I can get Annika up and running)--asks me in my old age what I used to do on Wednesday evenings in the first half of 2007, I will say this, because now I will be able to make myself remember:

On Wednesday evenings, in the first half of 2007, I walked three long blocks holding hands with a 3-year-old who swung our arms between us as we walked, squeezed my hand at the intersection and smiled up at me with shining eyes. I helped divide the food we'd bought at the Market onto two take-out container lids, cutting meatballs in pieces for the girls with a flimsy plastic knife, eating the rest of the food once they'd finished. I sat at a rickety little table in a perfect little dimly lit bar with a citrus squeezer and songs I'd loved since high school playing in the background, watching as the colored lights glowed as though through a fog in moving circles on the floor, and Lily and her friend--a head taller--jumped on them gleefully, danced in the middle of the floor unselfconsciously, sneaked up onto bar stools and wheedled and flirted pretzels from almost always enchanted actual patrons. And when there were enough actual patrons, I bundled us back up, with some difficulty, as departures are not a 3-year-old's strong suit, and walked back if Lily was up for it, or hailed a cab. And when I went to sleep on those nights, I always thought: Well, that was a really nice evening.

The bar, that bar, is now closed. I have a feeling there will be another one, sooner rather than later, and if there is, and they will have me, I'll take both girls. But it won't be the same, and because it never is, I thought I'd just write it down.

Goodnight.