What a difference four years makes … or an hour

I’ve only ever seen the new production of “My Fair Lady,” meaning I only know the version — and its different ending — that I first saw at Lincoln Center in New York and recently saw again at The Bushnell in Hartford.

Seeing it a second time — meaning I obviously knew the ending — I wonder how it could have ever ended any other way.

Yes, I know … it was different in the 1950s.

The first time Suzi and I saw the show, four years ago this May, it was the capper to a glorious day in New York, the type that feels like it’s as good as it gets.

By contrast, we drove through a snow squall to get to Hartford, and it was the type of blustery, gusty day where you walked bent over and as fast as you could to protect yourself and get out of the chill.

But the difference was bigger than the weather or that Hartford is definitely not New York City. (No shame in that — I like both Hartford and West Hartford, where Suzi’s parents live. They’re just not, you know, the “greatest city in the world.”)

When we got home from New York four years ago, the post-vac was hard. It always is for me, but New York has a way of filling my soul that makes me hate leaving even more.

That world we came back to, however … we knew what that looked like, and we knew what it was going to look like.

Things change, but in the four years between seeing Lauren Ambrose and Shereen Ahmed (an ensemble member at Lincoln Center … did not know that) playing Eliza Doolittle, that world has changed in ways we wouldn’t have even contemplated back then — a pandemic, obviously, but other ways we were comfortable in our lives were completely upended.

“My Fair Lady,” however, is still a great show. If the tour comes anywhere near where you live in the United States, go see it.

I find the twice-yearly talk about Daylight Saving Time to be rather tedious, and the idea of lopping off an hour forever just seems odd. Where will that hour go?

For me, it’s kind of a wash. I don’t like how Monday comes an hour sooner during the spring, but the weekend lasts an hour longer in the fall.

I don’t care all that much whether it’s light out when I get up in the morning, and while it’s depressing for sunset to be shortly after 4 p.m. at the start of winter …

… it’s nice to get home from work a little after 5 and still know there’s another hour or so of daylight left, especially on a warm day.

It means I can take a quick walk around the neighborhood to catch my breath and clear my head on the day after the week’s first big push and the day before the second.

In a few months, the sun will be out even longer. It’ll be nice.

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