Years ago, in New York

Sometimes I think about New York.  When I look at our old pictures from when we lived there, my heart aches.  I miss it there-- Rockefeller State Park, Rockwood Hall, the Hudson River.  I have to stop myself from thinking about it too much, otherwise I think I might cry.  You know how when you visit a place, and sometimes you just get this feeling... like it's a place where you belong, that it has some mysterious hold on your soul?  I think that's why my heart aches when I look at these pictures.  It was such a fleeting time, those years.  I didn't always appreciate them as much as I should have. I didn't realize how much that park and river, those trees and old roads and old stone walls would get into me.  Sometimes, I wonder if life will be like that, like after a person passes away and looks back on life, all those places and people, the ones you see and pass everyday, the ones that seem rather insignificant and ugly (I'm thinking of the 7-11 and Walmart, the couple of houses that aren't kept up so well that I drive by on my way home, the strange lady that works at the consignment shop), if they won't later seem so dear and sweet and why oh why didn't I appreciate them, well, now?