Every Monday and Wednesday I mean to leave home at 7:30 but instead end up leaving closer to 7:34. Every day as I leave the door of my apartment I see across the street the bus I’m supposed to take. There are two that go in my direction and, due either to the unforeseen forces that control the public transportation system, or probably rather to bad planning, the second bus tends to follow almost directly behind the first. So, this morning as all others, I walked to the crosswalk and just missed the light. As I waited for it to turn green the second bus appeared, following on the heels of the first. It drove through the light, paused momentarily at the empty bus stop, and drove away as my light turned green. This vision I have of my bus pulling away as the two of us are hopelessly separated by traffic is my daily tablespoon of regret.
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I’m back in Hungary again after really more than a month away; I’m surprised to be enjoying myself much more than I thought I would be. The dread I faced at the prospect of return in fact dissipated in JFK airport Saturday evening as the woman at the ticket counter told me I couldn’t leave that evening because my reservation was, in fact, for the following day. Suffice to say, I felt like an ass.

But more than that, being denied from returning made me realize how much I did want to get back. My plans are only partially formed but I feel like I do have plans here, or at least a reason to get up in the morning, which is much more than I could have said in December. I feel now as I did when I was younger and I came back to my bedroom in Tokyo at the end of the summer after two months away. I dreaded my return to school and the end of my continuous leisure, but opening up my bedroom door (perturbing the thin film of dust that had accumulated in my absence) and seeing once more my things in their place reminded me of everything I liked about being home.
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Because I didn’t find out that I wasn’t coming back to Budapest on Sunday until late Saturday evening, I didn’t have the chance to ask my boss to tell my students not to be in class on Monday. As I feared, they were there and I was not. Today the two out of five students who bothered to come were thirty and forty minutes late, respectively. I mentioned to the first that I was surprised that anyone had showed up and she said, “Well, we were all here Monday.” Twisted logic, but perhaps justified? I was really sorry, if that’s any compensation.