February, 2026
Last month's monthly update, I recorded from a train headed to Middleburg; this month I write closer to home — temporally and otherwise.
I am en route to the office on a very early Friday morning. We are still eight days from being able to return home with a new set of floors and an absent population of termites awaiting us.
Eight days is not so far away, a fact I remind myself a few times every day to make sure the message sticks.
I mentioned that I'm going in early — it is currently six in the morning. We're staying with my parents out in the West End, and my office has a distance to it now that robs itself of much of its novelty if none of its utility. Half of the value I placed in it was its Goldilocks nature of being just far away from home to feel like a true second place without actually imposing any tax on the distance traveled.
I'm going early to avoid some of the traffic which would turn a fifteen minute drive into a forty minute one. Plus (and perhaps more importantly) it means I get larger chunks of time with Lucy, rather than rushing past her as I make her breakfast and dinner.
It's easy to forget too how lucky I am to be able to do this, which is a good metonymy for February writ large: reminders of luck and flexibility in having parents happy to host us for weeks on end, and in having uncles excited to spend languorous long weekends with their niece. Reminders of luck for having a child who wants for nothing and ends every day with a smile on her face; luck for having a wife who can move mountains and carry rivers; luck for time at all to write, to think, and to hit send before going on with my day.
