On the Wednesday after Thanksgiving, Chris walked into my office and asked if I wanted to go to New York — on Saturday, as in three days later. He had both work in the city that had come together suddenly and a wife who loves to pack a suitcase, and after some minor acts of God and some major time on Google, we had clear schedules, airline tickets, and hotel reservations. Unlike other trips, this one reflected absolutely no planning: We had no play tickets, no dinner plans, no maps of our days. We flew in to JFK with zero expectations, willing to let the trip unfold, and in the weeks since our return, I can tell you this with some assurance: I have never had a better time.

To be sure, there were wrinkles. There was the SEC Championship on Saturday afternoon, and I was in the city with Half-Time Chris. I suggested a Manhattan bar that catered to Georgia fans. He insisted on the Met. I conceded that he had a point. I toyed with the idea of bringing ear phones with me and roaming the halls with one eye on the paintings and sculpture, one ear tuned to the game. But knowing my game-watching habits, I had a very real fear of being thrown out of the museum, unable to convince the docents that I started jumping up and down and barking loudly because I was just that excited to see Van Gogh’s Sunflowers again. I was grateful for the texts and updates from my son, my brother, my friends, and as I read them discreetly, I wondered if I were the only visitor to the Metropolitan Museum of Art who wished that it had a sports bar. In a bit of serendipity, we passed these ancient figures after the Dawgs won, and I surmised that SEC football had endured for thousands of years:

The second biggest wrinkle was toward the end of our trip, when we decided to see the Whitney Museum. We filled our trip with art, and the Whitney was to be the last hurrah. Leading up to the Whitney, there were three visits to the Met. There was a visit to the Met Breuer, which had showing of the works of Edvard Munch. You will be relieved to know that he did not paint The Scream and simply hang up his spurs. There was an estate in Norway, a succession of young housekeepers and muses, and this enormous and very colorful painting from later in his life that was absolutely beautiful:

We went to the Guggenheim, the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed building that looks like the mothership landed at Central Park:

And there we saw an exhibit called Chinese Art Since 1989. It was thought-provoking, which is a kind and grown-up way of saying “very depressing,” and the non-Chinese Art Since 1989 sculptures and paintings, while lovely, could not shake those provoked thoughts. (Even the snack bar failed — and I was hungry, so that is saying quite a lot indeed.)

We even went to the Neue Gallerie, a small museum of early 20th century German and Austrian art located in a staggeringly beautiful older home. The Neue’s unspoken motto clearly is There will be order; there are rules! (And it all reminded me of a Swedish friend’s observation: One German is fine. Two Germans are organizing. Three Germans are marching.) We tried to walk in, but a uniformed doorman shooed us outside and made us wait for three minutes, until he let us in. No photos were allowed. There was not a lot on display. But there were three enormous and startlingly beautiful Gustav Klimt paintings, hung to such great effect that I actually gasped when I rounded a corner and saw them there. It was almost too much, but in a wonderful way.

The Whitney was to be the final museum visit, and we had reserved Tuesday for that purpose. I had become a real fan of the subway after my last visit to New York, when I asked a concierge in his 20s if I should take a cab someplace. He told me that that’s exactly what his mother would do, but that the subway was easy enough. His mother! I sniffed. That off-hand comment, and the fact that I was old enough to be his mother, were all it took for me to befriend the Metro card and embark on a series of subterranean rides. And so it was that day, as Chris and I hurtled downtown to the Whitney.

I think of New York as jam-packed with pre-existing development and no where else to go, but I am wrong. We stayed in the Hell’s Kitchen area, and that area on down was crazy with cranes and construction. So we got out of the subway at our stop, walked through some heavy detours and worksites, passed a place that advertised authentic Southern food (a claim I seriously doubted), and trudged on in the cold drizzle. At some point I remarked to Chris, “You know that when we get there, there will be a sign up saying “THE WHITNEY IS CLOSED ON TUESDAY.” We both laughed until five minutes later, when we came to the small white sign in tasteful Helvetica font that announced THE WHITNEY IS CLOSED ON TUESDAY.

We walked instead on the High Line, a green space hammered out from elevated train tracks, and looked at public art. Even a blue crane looked like sculpture:

And despite being a last-minute substitute, the High Line turned out to be one of my favorite things.

We flew home the next day, Chris next to the window and I in the middle seat next to a woman whose poor idea of personal space was offset by her terrible flatulence. As a consolation, Chris started tuning the TV in front of me; he had found a rebroadcast of the SEC championship, and I gleefully watched the last seven minutes. (My watching — complete with squealing, clapping, and a heady amount of uncontained mirth — confirmed that I would have been thrown out of the Met had I brought earbuds.)

And then we were home.

One of the things that I had really noticed in looking at all that art was how painters did not start off as what we think of as themselves. Monet painted in the lines, Picasso painted realistic figures, Van Gogh grew into color. I loved the progression, how the years made them bolder and freer and far more expressive. The secret was to have the discipline and the courage to  keep painting and see what develops. So I have:

It was perhaps the desire to keep painting that explains Christmas this year. It might be the success of the unplanned trip. And it may even have been having friends over for dinner the Saturday night after our return. It was December, for heaven’s sake, but I had no tree up, no decorations, nothing .As our friends were set to arrive, I laid hands on what I could find in a 10 minute period: the Christmas china and glasses from a high shelf, a $5 garage sale nativity scene that had been stored in the laundry room, some scraps of yarn in the studio, a poinsettia from Target. The next morning on my yoga mat, I thought about unloading the decorations from the attic and spending hours transforming the house into Christmas Explosion, and the thought filled me with dread. I could be painting instead. So I got a tabletop tree from the grocery store and another poinsettia, and I dug up a paper chain that my daughter made a few years ago. My house is clean and warm, and you are about to see the extent of my Christmas decorations:

It has even bled into gift-giving. Chris and I gave each other the trip to New York, but what to give the children? There are few things they need, and we are grateful to have the wherewithal to keep them comfortable throughout the entire year. Rather than giving gifts for the sake of giving gifts, we are going to have a big fine meal, a small exchange, and the promise of travel. I will write each child a letter. Of all the beauty I have seen, they are by far the most beautiful, and I will tell them that. I will write of the pleasures of growing into one’s self, of seeing the world, of realizing that not everything needs to be overblown or over-planned to succeed. Live your lives, I will write to my children, and when you think of home, think of the comfort and warmth of the small moments, of the people who love you dearly and who with gentle hands release you into the world.

ALC