Memories that pop up in social feeds can be cruel, but as often they’re so beautiful. Once in a while, images surface as reminders Chef David and I somehow found time to do things together, a lot of things, in the chapter that was life in Vermont. But leisure time seems so elusive somehow in this chapter. We’ve been in our new house for a skosh over a year now, and in only a few days will have been in North Carolina for two; tropical storms depose nor’easters here, snow tires are a thing of the past, the lamented cicada chorus is now restored, we have more fresh shellfish and seafood than we know what to do with, and long, long summers at last have replaced eternal winters, the condition that makes me happiest.  

Our work lives have changed too, for better and for worse. We’re gainfully employed, each of us in industries that reward our gifts and talents. For me, who yearns to live and work in community with people, full-time remote work life is no longer an option but a mandate. It is a trade-off: all the quiet in the word I need to focus on my work for none of the three-dimensional camaraderie with coworkers.

For David, a new work life has been good in an ongoing culinary journey surrounded by coworkers with youthful energy and boundless creativity. In turn, he brings them decades of priceless experience in commercial kitchens—there is nothing he has not seen, no problem he cannot troubleshoot, and his colleagues love him all the more for it.

Still, we are not spring chickens. David’s work is physically demanding and mentally wearying. So is mine, but the physical demands hew more to the undesirable consequences of sitting (or standing) in one place for long hours at a stretch. And where we once took full weekends together for granted, now we have one full day and one half day together on the weekends, a consequence of this new work-life paradigm. It will not always be thus, but is simply the verse in the chapter we’re writing now.

The reality of this work life also means home projects take longer than they ought to. That framed artwork up there, one of my favorites, is proof positive. It’s still clothed in its little protective cardboard corners from the move, like dozens of others, waiting, waiting, waiting for the right moment two tired people at last find to hold it against the wall with pencil in the teeth, one of them, while the other says, a little higher, more to the right.

Time stands still for nobody, though. Another birthday’s in the books for each of us, and another August almost. This time I gave David a brand-new bicycle (and not even a replacement for an old one, since he has never owned one during our life together), admittedly a bit of a flashy gift but we’d been talking about it for weeks. It was selfish on my part, I suppose, motivated as I was to press my husband to go on long weekend rides with me that ‘til now I’ve done alone. I spend enough time alone in my life, thanks, and so resolved to make this happen. So far, my plan appears to be working, as in only a short time we’ve been on two longish rides together (I am exercising patience while his rear end gets used to the saddle), and he has fully immersed himself in shopping for ‘peripherals’ (dare I say, there is a bell on his handle bars).

My first bicycle came to me as a young child, a fire-engine red marvel with a banana seat and raised ‘ape hanger’ handle bars with streamers, a style all the rage in our Memphis neighborhood in the late 1960s. We had only recently moved from Knoxville, but there were several kids on the block about my age and one of them had a bicycle that fit most of us just fine, so we all took turns on the sidewalk. And when the training wheels came off, I had to learn to ride without them too. Because dad had only just assumed his new job right out of college the year before, we didn’t have many extra resources, so he went to the local Schwinn dealer and bought a used frame and new parts for only a few dollars. He could not build that bicycle fast enough for me, but because the body was rusty, my patience was tested again during long hours while the sticky red spray paint dried. That bike was everything, and I loved it. Other, better bicycles came later on, but that one was special. Right now I’m riding a Specialized Sirrus I bought about 15 years ago after a knee injury sidelined my running habit for a bit, and I love it, too; it needs a bell.

I can so easily get lost in memories and lately am obsessed with memoirs, reading them and writing my own. I have just finished Frances Mayes’ Under Magnolia, a story of the American South if ever there was one, and am thoroughly smitten. (If this name or title rings a bell, it is possibly owing to another Mayes memoir, Under the Tuscan Sun, which you probably know as a movie.) A full generation separates us, but I am struck by the parallels in our lives.

Meanwhile I keep on searching for the extra hour in the day or hours in the weekend David and I seem to need. We’re coming for you, hammer, nail, and artwork. As a friend of mine once liked to quip on repeat, it will all be worked with beauty in the end. One can hope.