Sunday in Brooklyn

A week ago Vince and I were driving through rain in the Karoo, passing giant trucks whose wheels created clouds of white mist, stopping at Matjiesfontein for coffee, where we looked at the little place and realized that if nothing was what one wanted to do, Matjiesfontein was the place to do it. We drove with a box of Prince Albert figs on the backseat, picked up fynbos honey in DuToitskloof, and carried on as traffic thickened close to Cape Town. I have fallen in love all over again with my country, because Vince and Marijke were there, and I found things in it through them that I had not found before. So Sunday in Brooklyn is bittersweet. It's cold and grey, and Johnny Cash is singing that Nothing short of dying is half as lonesome as the sound of the sleeping city sidewalk and Sunday morning coming down.

The cat washing his feet and my still life of tulips, woven South African basket, and pretty blue box from the Husbands are the anchor that New York has on me right now.

I know that it is Sunday in South Africa too, and that my mom is sad. The corgies are missing their adventurous hikes. Vince and I have said we could return in a heartbeat: breakfast on the flowered patio, with coffee in two big cups, croissants and rolls with my mom's apricot jam, the blue mountain, and flowers on it undiscovered...A life on two continents causes a rift and uncertainty in the heart that with time is eased or numbed, but the days of transition are restless if not downright dark.