The Week After Thanksgiving

November twenty-ninth. The week after Thanksgiving is its own strange weather. Everything feels slightly deflated, the big meal behind you, December not quite arrived yet, the city in that odd holding pattern between holidays where nobody's fully sure what day it is. This year the week had something in it, though. Simone's birthday fell right in the gap.

We found a restaurant neither of us had been to before, one of those narrow places with brick walls and candles in short glasses and a chalkboard menu you have to squint at from across the room. We got a corner table, which felt like a small victory. I ordered the pasta. Simone ordered something involving roasted squash that looked significantly better than the pasta, which I mentioned, which she acknowledged without guilt. We split a bottle of wine slowly enough that it lasted the whole evening.

the quieter moment between the louder ones

The thing about a dinner like that is that you don't realize it's the good kind until you're already an hour into it and neither of you has looked at your phone. We stayed for three hours. A server came by twice to ask if we needed anything else, which I think was a polite signal that we were the last table. We were. We left a good tip and stood outside for another twenty minutes in the cold anyway, finishing the sentence we were in the middle of.

caught in the act. worth it.

I've been thinking about Carol's letter since I published that last post, what she's learning, what persists, and I think a night like this is part of the same thought, somehow. Not the wine or the birthday specifically. Just the fact that some things are worth staying for past when you'd normally leave. The week after Thanksgiving. Better than I expected it to be.