It was around this time of the year when we closed on the condo in Boston, many years ago (1995), and something about the late afternoon light of November still brings me back to the first few nights I spent there. Furnished with nothing but a cot and a radio alarm clock to keep me company, it was a stark start. There weren’t any chairs, so I had to eat standing up at the kitchen counter (if I ate at home at all). The overhead lighting only covered the living room, kitchen and bathroom – the bedroom was dark at night. It sounds too minimalist to have ever been much of a comfort, yet it remains one of my favorite memories.

I’ve said this before, and it holds true: it is the silence and quiet I miss most. There is a different quiet now. All of the furniture and window treatments and accessories add their own noise – and comfort – to the place. Back in the beginning, there was nothing to distract. Not even a bed on which to sleep. And for all the ado made of my supposed affinity for luxury, it was perfectly fine. In fact, it was exactly what I needed. When I think back on the most calm and settled moments of my life, that period easily ranks among them. Even with school and the insanity of an almost-full-time retail job (in the busiest shopping time of the year), I would walk into the emptiness of that condo and feel perfectly content – and hopeful.

It remains a haven, a retreat, a safe place – and after years of furnishing, it now holds treasures of reassurance, corners and hidden shelves of special memories, of people and parties so faded that only a brief snippet of laughter can be recalled, or the way a bouquet of flowers shone in the morning light. When the dusk falls, I’ll make my way into the bedroom, leaving the lights off for a moment, as they were so long ago, and watch as the sun goes down. It is my favorite place of contemplation.

While in Boston this past weekend, I brought my brother to the Public Garden and showed him the spot where Andy and I got married. The Garden has different charms in the Fall – the colorfully changed leaves of the trees, the sun slanting deeper in the sky, and this special guest – the black squirrel. I had not seen any black squirrels in the Garden before now. They had been prolific in Washington, DC, where Andy and I watched them with the rapt interest of the novelty they were to us.

Hopefully this guy (or gal) will be here when Andy makes it back into town.

This Sunday concludes one of the busier weeks of my year, from a few days in New York seeing Madonna and Suzie, and checking out The Out hotel, to an evening at ‘Wicked‘, followed by the Beaujolais Nouveau Wine Festival, and capped by a weekend in Boston, seeing friends and family, old and new. As I sit here in the living room, it feels in many ways like the day after a party – satiated and exhaustedly happy, if slightly regretful that it’s over as fast as it started. The good part is that the holidays – and many more meetings with friends and family – is just beginning. There is enough wickedness in the world to warrant an open-embracing of all things warm and comfortable. No matter how pretty the messenger bag or how sweetly-scented the Tom Ford Private Blend cocktail, the only thing I ever wanted for Christmas was more time with those I love. (Okay, aside from the items on the Christmas list that I’ll post soon enough.)