Staring at concrete from a wintry sidewalk

Same building, different day
Montreal, QC
February 2019
This photo originally shared on Instagram

I've looked at this building many times in recent months. I've written previously about what goes on inside, the lives that are saved, the diseases that are researched, the hope that is both held onto, and returned.

And yet I keep returning to it. Why?

I'm guessing it's because we're here so often, and time being as constrained as it is when we're on the ground here, I don't have an excess of it to explore the neighborhood any more than this. As much as I'd love to explore the city where I was born, we're here for another, darker purpose. The tourist-in-my-old-hometown thing will have to wait.

But it's not all darkness. Revisiting the same places over and over, though, forces you to use other parts of your brain. You've got to tease out new ways of looking at the same old things. And that, in itself, is a blessing of sorts.

Because unlike so many people within this building - including my father-in-law - who literally can't walk downstairs and smell the fresh air, I can make that happen whenever I wish. I can hang out here on the sidewalk for as long as I can withstand the cold until the right composition pops into my head. I can still do so many things, while he, and they, can't.

So if having this easily-overlooked gift means I've got to find new ways to see the same buildings, to tell stories I may have told before, I'll take it.

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