Almost Brand New

In January, I wrote about the building going up next door to ours in our ecclectic little corner of Jardins. I have always had a sort of angry relationship with it. The week we moved into our apartment, they broke ground on it and made my arrival in our new home an agonizing experience for months.

A year ago, when my parents visited for Thanksgiving, it was still very much in progress, and seemed like it was the construction project that would never die, given the snail's pace of the work and the primitive techniques being used.

But as I hinted at in January, once the tide of my own adjustment to life in São Paulo, in my marriage, in my career and in my own skin began to turn, so did my feelings for the building next door. I felt like we were suddenly a weird set of twins who only began to recognize each other as adulthood set in. (And all sorts of even louder construction work began inside my own building and the pounding and grinding and sawing and hollering workmen was more of an afternoon delight at much higher, surround-sound decibels than my old morning jackhammer serenade off the starboard side.)

Well, now it's nearly finished. And I'm delighted at what I see out the guest room window. It's an 18-story luxury condo building. Each floor appears to be one huge unit (the standard for all new buildings in Jardins) with a sweeping terrace at the front, and balconies off the master bedrooms in the back. The main terraces alone are about the size of my entire ex-apartment in Logan Circle, and they are this marvelous sort of indoor/outdoor style that each owner can opt to turn into a glassed-in den or set up like a front porch with ceiling fans. And the penthouse is ... well... it's basically a mansion in the sky.

They've even finished the new sidewalk out front, which until this week has been a crumbled mess that Clancy and I would have to navigate every morning during our first walk of the day. After a year and a half of hardship, it feels luxurious to just be able to walk down the street again! Clancy even peed on a new lamp post in front. They've almost finished the exterior wall to the grounds, and the garage gate has been installed. The lobby windows are being delivered this morning.

It is always like this, isn't it? I mean, for buildings - and for life. It's always such a noisy, messy experience getting the damn structure in place. But when the finishes start being put in, there is such a great thrill about all of it. You just forget everything you went through to get there. And then when the people move in, and the place comes to life, it's so endlessly interesting and absorbing that all you can think about is the future, never the past. Never the path here. Never the sound of the workmen or the hammers.

Now I just have to start plotting my strategies to make friends inside, and get invited to a fantastic party and look across the street at my old classic seven here and aspire to my own brand of São Paulo greatness in the great beyond in front of me.