belated photos from new york city & philly

to live more and relive less

My mind has a sound track for every city I've lived in.

They play in my head whenever I close my eyes and daydream about my years in Philadelphia, New York and Tokyo.

For New York, it's an obscure song called "Fallen For You" by Sheila Nicholls.

...Thought about you all the time,
Walking round, the Guggenheim.
Like a rhyme, in my mind...

It would take me to a side street near Lincoln Center off Amsterdam Avenue where I took flamenco lessons at a ballet studio. How I used to walk and walk from there to Central Park until dusk, my Spanish dancing shoes poking from my purse. Those first and last few days with Aric when we'd walk along Riverside Park on cold April afternoons. Walks on lunch breaks in mid September one year, when rows and rows of store windows on the opulent Fifth Avenue displayed nothing but black ribbons and American flags.

So when Aric and I decided to return to New York to relive our first days as a couple for our one year anniversary, the one thing I looked forward was... walking.

We walked alright. Miles. In my heels. So much so that I developed plantar fasciitis, a painful swelling of the flat band of tissue that connects your heel bone to your toes. Yes. I'm a hopeless romantic who didn't think to pack comfortable walking shoes to the very city I planned to walk from East Village to Soho and up Avenue of the Stars to Midtown. So I'm in gold ballerina slippers for the next few weeks, much to the delight of my girlfriends and the chagrin of my husband who likes it when I wear heels.

In all seriousness, it was a beautiful, tender vacation. One thing I realized, though, standing in front of a once French-Italian restaurant on Montague Street in Brooklyn Heights that had since turned into a Sushi joint was -- moments are meant to be lived, not relived. I will never forget the way Aric looked at me that night when we sat over a candle light dinner at the quaint restaurant in April of 2002. And that's enough. To relive it would have cheapened the experience. So we turned around and headed toward Little Italy, where we sought out a new restaurant to celebrate our anniversary dinner. We indulged ourselves in gnocchi Bolognese, linguine with clams, veal Marsala and lemon wine shrimp, while pinot grigio mingled with the scent of cigars.

Mostly, the vacation was about being extravagantly loved by friends. Rochelle and Dave who put us up, fed us and to our delight, bristled at the injustice we had recently experienced in the past few months. Jason and Alvin who opened up their home to us. Kim and Chun who insisted on paying for our anniversary dinner. And Amy, who showed up on College Green at Penn (where we took a day trip) with champagne and champagne glasses in hand to celebrate our first year of marriage.

For Aric, the vacation served as a kind of closure. For me, it was a lesson on living in the moment.