Back online, finally. Interesting how important it has become. Like partial blindness when you can't see online. But the cable modem guy came today and hooked us up, then we problem solved for a bit and got wireless. And now I sit on my couch in my new living room, trees and peace all around, having eaten too much of the home-baked pumpkin cake the landlady and three of her four kids brought over this morning as a housewarming gift, and I'm content. Damian and Dan are off with our friends up the road. Life is already so very different here than there. It bemuses me. I feel bewitched, like we stepped into a dream.
Must to work. More soon.
So we're here. Damian started school today. We have enough unpacked to cook, albeit in a still-primitive fashion. No internet access yet, and no long distance service on our home phone. Feels positively archaic. We fit our stuff into the crevices of a smaller living space, but it works somehow. Dan's been unpacking like mad. I began catching up on my work, the work I thought I'd do on the road (ha). The deadline approaches fast. We're here, time to shift gears. No more vacation, this is our new life.
Cocoa is still staying with Dan's parents. He draped himself across my chest this weekend, purring and nuzzling my nose, and I wanted to take him with us, but a new environment complete with the chaos of movers? Not great for a cat's nerves. We'll bring him home Saturday, I think. The move isn't complete with no cat on the premises.
So far so good. I like Montclair. I like our charming, peaceful carriage house. I like Damian's teachers. This all feels like a dream, like we're going to wake up and find ourselves back in Los Angeles, but it's a sweetheart of a dream.
More as I can. Also, a new blog site soon, because postcardsfromla.com? Not so much any more.
Thursday night. Ten hours from now the movers come to take our stuff away.
I'm beat, bushed, wrung out, worn out, slammed, fried, and ground to a fine paste.
This is the last night I'll sleep in this room.
Goodnight, all.
Wednesday evening. A day and a half till Moving Day. We live among boxes. We have new subdivisions in our house, box walls within real walls. We are, you might say, boxed in.
Damian and I drove down to LAX this morning, into the bowels of the airport under the Century Freeway overpass, and dropped Cocoa off for his 10:30 am flight. Boy, did that feel strange, walking away, back to the car, leaving him behind in a carrier on a pallet in a cavernous hangar. If it weren't for the two big dogs in similar carriers heading for the same flight, I'd almost feel like we'd left him in a warehouse by mistake.
But no, everyone there in the tiny office space was very nice, very reassuring. (And no, I didn't act freaked out. No more than my cat, at any rate. Well, not a whole lot more.) They knew who I was the moment I walked in, they talked about how cats handle travel, and said it would be just fine.
I'm not generally neurotic, but it was hard, doing this, harder than I expected. After all, the last time I brought a cat somewhere in a carrier and left him there. I never saw him again. And even though I know it's not the same, my child brain self doesn't.
So we left our black cat with the loud purr there and went back to Hollywood, the Land of Boxes. On the way home, I described as accurately as I could conjure what would happen to Cocoa every step of the way. Damian knows most of it already – he'd been telling Cocoa at great length over the past week or so what was going to happen to him today. But he wanted to know anyway, I think so he could picture it all more clearly, with more detail filled in. And periodically through the day today, Damian would ask, "Where is Cocoa now? Is he on the plane yet? What state is the plane flying over?"
A while after the plane landed at Newark (and no, I wasn't worried. Well, maybe a little, but fretting isn't real worry, is it? It's just stretching the muscles in case they're needed later), I got a call from Kymm the Magnificent, a/k/a The Mighty Kymm, the volunteer (well, okay, I drafted her) cat wrangler du jour. Cocoa was on the ground. Cocoa was in her possession. Cocoa was sniffing her fingers through the carrier's wire front. Cocoa was in New Jersey.
It all went smoothly, I'm relieved to say. The only odd moment was when my land line phone decided to call Kymm's cell phone. I have no idea why. I wasn't anywhere nearby. In fact, I was on my cell phone at the time in the other room. I guess my phone got worried, wanted to check in. Thought I wasn't doing my duty by my cat. But it turned out Kymm was about to call me. She'd arrived at Dan's parents' house. The moment they opened his carrier, Cocoa sauntered right out and started checking out his new locale. That cat has sangfroid.
Really, this is a remarkably tumult-free story, not much of an adventure at all except for the fact that I'm sure it's a huge big wallop of a life change for my sleek feline boy. He took an airplane trip by himself. I wouldn't feel comfortable letting Damian do that yet, and he can talk.
So Cocoa is the first one to make the move. He's now an East Coast Cat. And I can move on to worrying about something else.
Sunday night. Four and a half days till Moving Day.
I had a surreal moment this afternoon. I decided to do something with the vegetables in our fridge while I still could, so I threw onions, beans, diced tomatoes, and zucchini into a pan and made a very basic impromptu stew with the few condiments that remain accessible (ie: garlic and vinegar but no spices). As the onions were browning, I taped together a fresh box. As the beans were bubbling, I filled the box with cans and containers. Literally: stir the stew, turn around and put a can of beans into the box, season the stew, wrap paper around a glass pasta jar and fit it into the box, taste the stew, tape the box up, label it (box #136) and add it to the inventory.
After the stew cooled, I put it in a container in the fridge, washed the pan, dried it carefully…. and packed it.
Finally (after how many years?) I now understand the medicinal value of alcohol.
I'm not one for drinking. I don't like the taste of most drinks and even the ones I do like, well, I guess I don't seek the buzz, in fact I often assiduously avoid that assault to the senses. Now that I think about it, it's probably related to my self-diagnosed sensory integration dysfunction. The world is uncertain enough, why destabilize it more? I hate that loss of control, that fuzzy mindedness. Always have.
However. This afternoon Toni called to check in, let me vent. Vent? About what? (And yes, I know moving is considered the number one stressor in modern life. Doesn't apply to me. We're ahead of the game here, you see. We're on top of all of it, packing and setting up utilities and planning a two week trip while Dan works long hours at his summer TV gig and I snatch time to do my freelance writing gig and Damian, well yes, he needs some attention doesn't he? No sweat. Really.)
Of course, once I started talking, I couldn't stop. I needed that outlet, needed her permission to let it all out. And yes, this feeling in my body, these twinges and twangs and tautness, of course that's what it is. Stress striating my muscles, thrumming in my bones. It feels unhealthy, uncomfortable and altogether unpleasant.
I had a glass of sherry tonight. I feel calmer than I have in days.
We now have a New Jersey phone number. I guess that means we live there, huh?
Strange, I know, but somehow these things, the mundane backdrop of daily life: electricity, internet access, magazine subscriptions and most especially the phone define where we live. They place us, more firmly than our physical presence does. How do you get a library card? Show a utility bill, proof of residence. How do you enroll your child in a highly rated public school? Show a utility bill, proof of residence. If I consume heat and light, if I talk on the phone, if I give my number to you and you and you, not to mention all of them, my once and future creditors, well, then I must live in a place. Even though I don't. Not yet. I'm here and my phone number, well, it's all the way over there. Waiting for me.
Less than eleven days left. I'm going to try to post a blog entry every day. Nuts? Probably. We'll see how it goes.
And I've booked all but one of the hotels on the two week trip. Many have broadband internet access. I'll post from the road, a travelogue of this cross country journey.
Less than eleven days left. I'm in an odd mood. When I'm not packing, I'm depressed and irritable. When I'm packing, I'm excited and happy. When I"m not packing, this move seems far off and impossible or at least improbable. Packing makes it real.
Dan feels similarly, I think.
The result:
Yesterday a woman rang the bell. She had a gift for me, of sorts. Not the sort to warm the heart, but I'm glad of it nevertheless. She handed me a small trunk-shaped box, covered in gold brocade, and a round piece of hardened clay. Dante's ashes and his death-print (pawprint taken after death).
I don't think about him as much, don't dwell as heavily on the pain of sudden loss, don't relive the last hours I had with him in the emergency vet hospital's waiting room, don't regret the cursory goodbye I gave when I thought I'd be picking him up the next day, don't look obsessively at the hundreds of photos I took over the past few years. Not so much anymore. He died a month ago today. He was a cat. A sweet, idiosyncratic beast who leaves a greater hole than I think Dan or I expected, but a cat nonetheless. A cat who grumbled and purred his way into our hearts, yes, but with everything going on right now, well, the ragged sadness does heal faster than it might. But holding that box, rubbing my thumb over the indentations Dante's paw left in the clay, grief hit me like an aftershock. Hard to stand there in the midst of a mundane day and feel that sudden spasm of heart hurt. Unsettling.
Damian felt it too. He did what he does now, he curled up in a ball and got very quiet. But soon enough he was prying open the box to look at Dante's ashes (safely enclosed in a clear plastic bag). He found them fascinating, I think. Then he set the box down onto the floor.
Right now there are two sheepskin-lined cat sleeping baskets on the floor in the dining room. Dante used to love them. When he was a kitten, nothing made him happier than a sheepskin lined anything. He'd knead and purr, purr and knead, and settle down happily to sleep. So we got two of them this past winter, one for each cat. Dante loved them, of course. Cocoa? Pretty much ignored them. Until Dante died. Since then, he settles in one to nap at least once a day. A way to remember his buddy? I can only think on some level that has to be true. The difference is striking.
After Dante died, Cocoa didn't grieve in any obvious way. He didn't get morose, didn't go off his food, didn't avoid us – not for more than a day, anyway. He seemed more restless than usual, didn't purr as much, but it was fairly subtle. But he gravitated toward Dante's sleeping baskets, and he took on a few other characteristics too.
Dante liked to stick his paw in his water bowl while he was drinking. I think it started because he liked to drink from moving water, so he'd swish the water around with his paw before drinking, but after a while it became habit; I'd often walk by and see him lapping away with his foot completely submerged in the bowl. Dante's the only cat I've ever seen who did this. Except Cocoa. The week Dante died. He started putting his paw in the bowl. He'd take it out quickly, it wasn't really his thing. But he was trying. Dan says he's read that this is a way of grieving, that sometimes you take on habits or quirks of the person who died. So yes, I think Cocoa has been grieving in his own cat way.
Yesterday, when Damian put the box of ashes down on the dining room floor, Cocoa was curled up in one of the cat baskets. The other lay empty beside him. So Damian put the open box into the empty basket. The two cats side by side again.
But an interesting thing happened. Cocoa got up out of his basket and went to the other one. Lay down in it. Snuggled up next to the box. Then he put his paw over the box. Possessively, companionably. Just as he often did when he and Dante curled up in the cat tree together. He stayed like that for a while. It was really striking, the way he did it. Very deliberate. I doubt the box smells like his friend, either. Fire purifies and purges. Do bones smell like a person? I can't imagine they do. But he knew anyway.
When we got back from our first reconnoiter-the-New-York-area trip in April, I remember driving down Melrose past the boutiques, Fairfax High School, the so-chic lighting and furniture stores with their colorful window displays, their plumage fluffed out and enticing against drab single story block-shaped buildings, and feeling as if I was driving through a stage set. These were all flats propped up by scaffolding, no substance, no reality, just a thin sliver of Los Angeles that I could scatter with a breath to reveal real life behind it. Real life, of course, was New York/New Jersey/home that was and will become.
That feeling faded, of course, as those feelings always do, as the minutes and days go by and you settle back into the mundane and the immediate. After our second trip, I expected to feel the same strange displacement, as if real life was elsewhere, not here. I did and I didn't. I do and I don't.
This time it feels more like I no longer live here, that I'm staying in this odd sort of bed and breakfast, only they're making me do all the housekeeping. (And packing. For some strange reason, this hotel has piles and piles of life detritus to organize and pack.) I'm here but I've already left. And yet sometimes, like last night over dinner with friends in a lovely little French bistro, I feel as if I do live here. As if I've lived here forever, as if I will grow old and die here, wither away into myself like the ninety two year old woman in her studio apartment next door, alone with her blaring Russian language TV.
We're waiting to move now. It's an active waiting, a say goodbye to all that and do a whole lot of work besides sort of waiting period, but fact is, we're neither here nor there. We're somewhere in the middle of the country, in the so-called flyover states that we will soon, and with great relish, be driving through, savoring the miles as we go.
I think it's right that we drive and don't fly. How else can we make this real? This distance between here and there, palm trees and sunset over the ocean versus sugar maples and the green copper Lady of the Harbor holding her torch aloft, welcoming us home.
I don't want to fly, I don't want to slip from one dream into another. I want to feel the miles, experience the shift in terrain from scrubby canyon land to wind-sculpted red rock hills to the buckle and twist of the Rocky Mountain range and on through gradually lusher landscapes, rambling through the countryside as we approach more familiar terrain until finally my inner landscape matches what I see out the window.
Less than three weeks now. Every day Damian asks, "How many days until we leave?" It's a countdown. In seventeen days, Cocoa boards an airplane bound for New Jersey. In nineteen days, the movers come and sweep our life onto a truck. In twenty days, we hug Tiny Coconut and her family goodbye after spending the night at their house (no beds left here!) and head out, take the 210 to the 15 to points east. We begin the adventure.
In just twenty days we begin anew.
Is it possible to mourn and be happy at the same time? Because that's how I feel right now. Packing, cheerful, purging, looking ahead. Life is thrilling.
Coming home, no red streak of fluff escaping past my legs, then plopping down on the warm cement path, waiting for me to gather him up and bring him back inside. A catch in my throat.
Kitty dinner, only one bowl, only one long-bodied creature racing to get his chow and the inevitable memories of the two boys flank to flank, tails high flags, running in tandem. A catch in my heart.
A life stops, other lives go on, the fabric is torn but holds.
I'm still waiting to see him in my dreams. My red fuzzy Dante bear-cat. Will his spirit follow us to New Jersey or will it get lost somewhere on I-70? They say animals have great homing skills. How about animal spirits?
Thank you to everyone who has extended condolences in comments and email. A pet's personality is so hard to know from the outside, it sometimes feels like a ghost that only matters to the people who lived with him. But because of my words, maybe, Dante was somewhat more known. And your words help me heal.
Some old words about Dante:
Dante and Damian in 1999, kit and caboodle.
Dante and Cocoa sitting in a tree.
And a portrait, taken two years ago:
And an ending. For now. Until I have more to say.
He was acting lethargic last night, unlike himself. I brought him to the emergency veterinary hospital. He stayed overnight. He went into arrest this morning, they couldn't resuscitate him.
Our sweet, sweet boy.
Eliza mentioned me in her journal today, mentioned becoming invested in this cross-country move of ours, called us brave. I know what she means. Well, not sure about the brave part, though sometimes, yes, I think it must be brave in the way that you are when you walk into what looks like a wall, knowing it's an optical illusion but the logical part of your brain, the empirical part, says, "No, that's a really a wall and it's gonna hurt like hell when you slam your nose into it," and so you close your eyes and hold your breath and take one step, then another, then another, all the while thinking "I can stop any time, I can decide not to go through with this, I can walk backwards if need be, right? And by the way, where's the nearest hospital? Y'know, just in case." And before you know it, you're at the wall and wow, you're through and then finally you find out what's on the other side. So yes, maybe brave is the right term for this, maybe so.
But when I said I know what she means, I meant the readerly fascination with personal stories, with life as shown on blogs and online journals. The way you become invested in someone's life, reading it like a book when the hero just stumbled into a hornet's nest and then one of the hornets pulled out a knife, and boy what's he gonna do now? And your heart beats faster as you're reading and you stay up way too late because you can't put the book down. But this is not fiction and it has no ending, it's just twists and turns and thoughts and feelings, it's like nothing else. Memoir as it's lived, unfolding in real time. I too am addicted and so I understand that right now my life is like that, this big cross country move creates that sense of wanting to turn the page to see how it turned out for us in our new home, our new life. Hell, I feel it too. I want to know how this story ends. Do we live happily ever after? Do we feel this was the right choice, to go back home to the New York area after seventeen years? Will we land on our feet? What's going to happen? Where will we live, how will we make it work? Can I take one little peek at the epilogue now? I promise not to tell!
When we started talking about this back in February, I figured we wouldn't go unless Dan had an editing job lined up, safety net and justification both. But it became clear after our visit in April that he probably can't get a gig there while he's still here. Because nobody really believes you'll pick yourself up and move from the film capitol of the world to a smaller filmmaking community unless you just go ahead and do it. Prove you mean it. But we both also realized then that we'd be heartbroken if we didn't make the move. Our hearts are there, not here. And if we didn't try it now, we would always wonder if it would have worked, how it would have been. So we have to give it a try. But for a while I was having a hard time with this idea. Cart before horse, result before cause. How does this make sense? People make these huge moves for tangible reasons, no? Solid financial or career considerations, usually. Isn't that the way it goes?
I started thinking about the people I knew who had done such things. And you know what? I mostly thought of people whose lives I've read online. John Scalzi, who sold his house and moved from the DC area to rural Ohio, largely because his wife missed her family. Yeah, that's me, only in this case it's true for both of us. Karen Meisner (now offline), who packed up her little family and moved from Berkeley, California to Madison, Wisconsin, mostly because she felt like Berkeley wasn't the life she wanted, it didn't challenge her enough. I can relate there too – not that LA doesn't challenge me, but it doesn’t excite me, and it most certainly isn't the life we want. Sage and Todd, who have moved more than once; their last move was from the Western US to Toronto, primarily because of the worsening political climate in the US. We thought long and hard about that ourselves, but it turns out that this is not exactly us after all, except for this: we move from a city that doesn't feel in sync with us politically, emotionally or socially to a town that does. But in all three cases – and I didn't have to think hard to come up with these, they are (or were, in Karen's case) people whose words I read weekly if not daily – they moved for personal reasons. They chose to do it, no external force (ie: job offer) pushed them out the door.
I feel much better now, realizing this. Remembering what I've read. We're not alone. People have done this and not only survived but thrived. I know this because they told me. Online. It's not fiction, it's real life stories we read online, and our own lives are sometimes unexpectedly enriched because of it.
A little life lesson: Be flexible. It's pretty much the only way you can handle the rollercoaster without falling off or at least ending up with a bad case of whiplash.
Remember that timetable of our move? History. Alternate history, turns out. Our new timetable:
June 20th. Fly to New York. Leave cats behind. Find place to live. Do other stuff. Sweat (90 and humid? Ugh.)
July 3rd. Come back to LA. Greet cats.
July 5th or 6th or so: visit Legoland (we promised) and Seaworld (why not?).
July 11th or thereabouts. Dan starts work.
(What? Oh. Yeah, well. A job. Here. For the summer. With people he knows and likes. Why not?)
The rest of July. Buy boxes. Pack. Sweat. Say goodbye to people and places here. Turn the air conditioning up. Stop sweating. Throw things out. Donate other things. Buy more boxes. Pack some more.
August 2nd. Escrow ends. Get a honking big check, deposit it. Look at each other and shake our heads in wonder.
August 3rd. Become renters in this very same house. Weird.
The rest of August. See July, only now with 50% more boxes and sweat and stress.
September. This gets a little tricky, but:
Say hi to moving van and movers. Watch nearly all our worldly goods disappear into the innards of a huge, enormous and really freaking long truck. Wave goodbye to nearly all our worldly goods.
Then: Either Damian and I kiss Daddy goodbye (if the job hasn't ended yet) and get on a plane or we all three get on that plane (if the job has in fact ended). Oh, wait, five of us. We bring the cats this time. But we leave the minivan behind, either with Dan or solo. A minivan alone in the big city, up to no good.
Get off plane. Don’t forget cats on plane. Introduce cats to Grandma and Grandpa.
A few days later: Meet honking big, freakishly long truck in New Jersey. Say hi to stuff. Also to movers. Watch stuff reappear from the depths of honking big truck. Give movers water and our undying gratitude. Unpack enough stuff to sleep that night in our new abode. And maybe eat too. Live among boxes for a week.
Damian starts school. One week. Just one. A taste of school, a sampler.
Say bye to cats. Get back on plane. Fly back west. Yes, this is strange to me too. Settle in, then leave? Why not?
Get off plane. Greet Dan if we've left him behind. Say hi to minivan. Drive for many days with many stops along the way. Arrive. Stay put. Hello New Jersey. Hello New Life.
Yes, we could ship the car. And we may well end up doing so. But we don't want to. We want to drive, to see a large swath of country, experience that visceral, tangible move. See the miles. And yes, it means pulling Damian out of school for two weeks. Listen, it's first grade. Do you think he'll remember what he learned for those two weeks of school for the rest of his life or remember a monumental cross country drive filled with life and sights and scenery and history?
Plusses to this new plan: Job. Money. Good. Plus, it looks like I may have a small writing job this summer. Freelance, from home. But far easier to do from home and not from car in the middle of the Utah desert – I mean the Colorado Rockies – I mean, where am I today? Plus, September: cooler drive than August. Also, tourist spots will be less crowded. Also, a month more time to pack. A Good Thing. But mostly, see above. Job. Money. Good.
(SP, I will write about the selling process. Next up.)
People keep asking me if we know when we're moving. Valid question. And since a bunch of my friends read this, I thought I'd post the details here. (Don't worry, this is not a laundry list.)
June 7th, a/k/a today. Hold Open House. Leave house at 11 am. Imagine hordes tramping through. Feel weird.
June 8th & 9th. Field offers. Counter offers. Hold breath. Go into escrow. Exhale. Eat sushi. (Well, why not?)
June 20th. Board plane to New York. Bring cats. Stow them in the overhead compartments. Get chewed out by flight attendant when the fuzzballs pop their heads out to ask for kitty treats before takeoff. Grudgingly agree to check them as luggage.
June 21st to July 2nd. Look for house or apartment to rent. Squeeze in a few school tours. Take breaks to go down to the Jersey shore with relatives. Pet cats a lot and scratch behind their ears.
July 3rd. Fly back to LA. Cats stay in New York with grandma and grandpa. Bye, cats. Bye, grandma and grandpa.
July 4th. Try to find some fireworks.
July 5th to July 31st. Pack and toss, pack and toss. A household to move, mountains of never-used belongings to discard. Freak out. Take break to go to Legoland and Sea World because we promised we would. Say goodbye to Shamu.
August 1st (date approximate). Climb into minivan. Drive east. Through deserts, over mountains, hello Continental Divide, hello herds of bison, hello huge president heads, hello great brown Mississippi River, hello and what a huge country. Thank the gods of travel several times for an air conditioned car and cell phones.
August 16th (date approximate). Arrive. Hello cats. Hello new life.
The cats are ready for their great adventure.
The TV networks announced their fall lineups this week. Dan's show got cancelled. Which is sad, because it was an extremely likeable show. But honestly? I'm relieved. Can you imagine walking away from a guaranteed job, a reliable gig with people you've become comfortable around, for… well… the great unknown? No sure thing, this move. No guarantees at all. Just contacts, connections, friendship, and a sense of rightness. And so we go. I told Damian that's it's all a huge adventure. I meant the house sale, the move, the drive across country. But really, it extends way beyond that, doesn’t it? New town, new school, new life, new weather pattern, new definition of self and work and everything, almost.
I think now about Toronto, about how serious we felt this past winter, how it felt like a tangible, appealing option. I feel some regret, admittedly. I still think this country's current government is freaky-scary and I worry how far things will go before the hoped-for, longed-for shift back to the middle, back to some semblance of sanity. But this move to New Jersey, which really means New York, which means a return home, even this move, which has so much comfort built into it (an immediate and rich social life! familiar places all around us!), even this feels like diving into a cloud with our eyes closed, the sensation imaginable but unknowable, nothing to grip onto, nothing to do but trust that we'll float and not fall, that the cloud, balloon-like, will buoy us up. And with this transition we're not just moving away from a city that hasn't ever jelled for us but also moving toward a place and people that do.
If we'd gone through with the Canadian immigration paperwork, how would that have felt two months before the big move? Much, much harder than this, I think. Toronto sounds like a very pleasant city and maybe we would have adapted, found a social circle, found work, found a good school for Damian. Maybe. But it would have meant starting over in the most elemental way. Ground level. Build a life. Hard in your forties. Doable but hard. And to choose it just because we want to leave a city and a country? I'm not sure that's enough, at least not for me. I want to go to, not just away from.
I think some people have a sense of adventure built into their DNA, they wake up as infants, and as their eyes learn to focus they learn to crave change and newness, and as a corollary, they seem to know how to build worlds around them wherever they go. My cousin has more friends in LA than I do, I think, and he's only been here half a dozen times. I know I'm capable of making friends; at certain points in my life it's happened easily, though maybe that was because I was in the right place for me, or maybe because I felt comfortable with myself (though perhaps these are two ways of saying the same thing). But I find that I don’t want that big an unknown. I want my adventure life-sized, manageable, imaginable. This is huge enough, to uproot my family like this with no immediate jobs on the horizon, no tangible reason except that it's what we want and maybe need to do for ourselves, our careers and our son. This is huge enough, and it comes complete with a social safety net, friends to support us through our inevitable panic attacks, even family nearby. This is huge enough, and anything that makes it feel saner and more secure is a good thing.
So I'm sorry that Dan's show got cancelled, but in a way, selfishly, I'm not. I wish everyone luck finding jobs on quality shows easily and quickly. And I wish us luck in our metamorphosis into… whatever happens to someone who hitches a ride on a cloud.
I have a new hat. A straw sunhat with a slightly rolled brim. I set it on the printer cart in my office and Dante immediately started stalking it. When he began licking the brim, I removed it to the bookcase. When he wedged himself onto the shelf, I squirted him and chased him off. He can't have it. It's mine.
I like this hat. You can fold it, sit on it, crush it into a suitcase, and it'll unfurl, unfold and look just as good. I got it at the travel bookstore today, along with an updated Rand McNally US Atlas, a huge fold-out road map of the same terrain, a Frommer's and also a Rough Guide to, yes, these United States of America.
We're going on a road trip, yes we are. We're going to drive across the entire country. Stem to sternum, tip to top. Well, okay, not quite top. But it's a long drive with a seven year old, no? So I can exaggerate. I'm entitled. Also giddy. Also bewildered. Is this my beautiful life? How'd this happen?
We have a few scenarios right now, timetables and scheduling issues, and this has never been that kind of personal blog so I'll gloss over that part except to say that in all likelihood, sometime before mid-September and quite possibly as early as a month from now, we'll get into our minivan and set out for a long, very long, oh so long drive. This is not to say we're moving in a month, I don't see how we could possibly be ready that soon, but if we do have the freedom to go then, it's a nice time of year to make the drive (and then fly back to LA to pack). The car has to get there somehow, right?
Whether in June, August, or September, I know certain things about this trip. It will take approximately two weeks. I will take lots of pictures. Damian will complain about being bored in the car. We will listen to a lot of music. When I'm in the passenger seat, I will sometimes take my shoes off and put my feet up on the dash. We will stop a great many times in many towns and at overlooks and trailheads. We will visit Bryce Canyon in Utah. We will drive through the Colorado Rockies and look down. We will see Mount Rushmore and look up. We will drive and walk through the Black Hills and the Badlands in South Dakota. We will visit Chicago and eat well. We will eat a lot of greasy road food and I hope some of will even taste good. We will be very tired at the end of the road. I will wear my new hat.
I thought we'd do a fact-finding mission, that it would be clear cut and logical, that we'd know whether to move to New York or to stay put in Los Angeles. Ha. Instead it's gut-level, emotional, and risky as hell.
Yes, we've decided to move. Or rather, as Dan says, the decision has somehow been made for us. We move as if compelled, as if a powerful magnet emanates from the Tristate area and we're nothing more than a handful of iron filings, a scattering of metallic bits, and so we fly, yanked back home. Someone finally turned on the magnet full force, that's all. Will it work out? Is this the right decision (non-decision), will fate or instinct, or, hell, the pseudo-mystical made-up Force be with us or will we look back and say "What were we THINKING???"
Sometimes decisions can be both wise and foolish, positive and negative, difficult and right, tangled and clear. Like buying our current house. Great investment but not the most peaceful place to live. Now we sell that investment and use the equity to cushion our journey east where we'll hope and work toward happiness. Sell a house, buy a life change.
You live your life, you make your choices. It makes logical sense to seek security, to settle down. For us, that means staying put. But if you're miserable in that relative (because nothing's certain) stability? What then?
What matters to me at this point in my life? What matters to Dan? Not one thing, obviously; you can't single out any specific element, point to it and say, "This. This is it and nothing else is important." But some things do matter more than others. And though working toward future (and present) comfort certainly is on that list, it turns out a sense of community, geographical proximity to people we love, that may matter more. The chance for Dan to become someone new, to renew and redefine his career, that too. Me too, I think – not so much career right now but the chance rethink myself, to re-present myself. In truth, we change gradually over time, growing into ourselves (if we're lucky). But often if we stay in the same environment, that change remains invisible to other people and therefore sometimes to ourselves. They and we still define us by who we've been. But if you shift the locale, the milieu, you can seem to become someone new in a moment. It's like when you lose weight. Someone who sees you every single day may not note the half pound there, the pound and a half there, but to someone who sees you once a month or once a year, the transformation will be startlingly obvious.
But that's not it, not the reason for the move, not to change ourselves or become ourselves, only maybe it is a bit. It's more about happiness and where and how you can find it. Can you chase happiness? Is it like the rainbow's end, always shifting away, or is it indeed tangible and concrete? Right now I think the latter. Maybe not happiness per se, because who can have a life without bumps and bruises? But an overall feeling of rightness instead of wrongness, I do think you can know that, find that.
Is this crazy? We sell our house here this summer, become renters there by fall and take a chance that we'll be able to buy again at some unknown point in the future. Dan invests in a new network of potential employers. I find my way – somehow, some as yet undetermined niche – back into the working world because it is indeed time to become a two income family again and especially if – no, when – we move and Dan's work situations become more tenuous for a short or even long while. My share of work may need to be part time or at least involve a goodly amount of telecommuting because I must still be primary caregiver to a child who still very much needs a parent's care. A child, by the way, who very much wants to make this move "So I can see Hannah and Isaiah all the time and visit my grandparents whenever I want." (Hannah and Isaiah are my college roommate's children, and they live within minutes of our town-to-be. The kids got along, you might say.) He seems completely unfazed by this enormous upheaval.
I should trust and emulate his attitude, I think. Instead I'm alternately thrilled and terrified with a goodly dose of stunned, "It's a dream, right? I'll wake up soon and be disappointed that nothing's different, right?" But no, this doesn’t at all feel like a dream. It feels like a surprising left turn, taking us off the map of the known, and maybe if I squint real hard I can make out the vague outline of what lies ahead, but maybe that's just a mirage. I can't be sure, but the only way to know is to move ahead.
So we will. Back to slush in February and the miraculous spread of green in April, back to mosquito-laden summers and a beautiful, majestic, thrilling city and the towns that surround it, inevitably memorizing the commuter train schedule (Damian called it the computer train at first and then simply said it was boring and far too slow). Also inevitably discovering inconveniences and annoyances and drawbacks to our new life (no fresh Fuyu persimmons at the farmer's market in January (no farmer's market in January)) but also embarking on this astonishing adventure, returning home to an environment that feels so right and is both familiar and new. We've never been parents there, never been fully adult there, I've never lived outside the city, I've never been a writer there or driven a car there (not until this trip, that is). Add in career questions and so many other unknowns and wow. Just wow.
Sometimes maybe it's good and right to shake things up, to toss the elements of your life up in the air like so much confetti and then watch it drift back down to earth in a new, unpredictable pattern.
We're going to find out. And soon.
Wow.
We got back to LA this evening. I'm exhausted. What a full trip, and utterly unlike going for a visit. This was a trip with intent, which adds a layer of stress and excitement.
We discovered the lay of the land, more or less, and it wasn't what we'd hoped but wasn't exactly what we'd feared either. We made a decision, or at least we think we did. I'll post more tomorrow when I'm less tired.
First: Been sick with the flu two whole weeks. Finally feel somewhat better yesterday and today (days 15 and 16, respectively). Going on a plane Friday. Imperative that I feel better by then, if only so the entire planeload of people don't give me dirty looks every time I have a coughing fit.
Second: Been sending Damian to school with Benedryl in his system. Result: no scratching. Instead, he's been one spaced out little dude. So yesterday on the teacher's advice we sent him to school with the Benedryl tablet in an envelope in his backpack instead of in his digestive system. He apparently started itching two hours into class, took the pill, felt better, and didn't space out till it was goodbye time. (It's a 3 1/2 hour class.) Better. Not fantastic, but better. One more day of school, then off to New York and away from whatever allergen is causing this.
Third: Did I mention? Going to New York Friday. We shall see what we shall see. Will try to post from the road. May even succeed.
Fourth: Will I ever stop writing in staccato partial sentences with no "I"? Perhaps. Will find out later.
Until then.
A few days ago, Alice of Finslippy asked her readers for some advice. She and her husband and adorably funny toddler son own an apartment in Park Slope; it's small, with various other discomforts of urban life. They're considering cashing in on their equity and moving to the Jersey suburbs. Her readers have been weighing in with pros and cons and personal stories and I've been devouring the whole thread. That could be me, only with a long layover in Los Angeles.
Yes, it turns out our Toronto vs. New York dilemma was no dilemma at all. For various reasons, the answer has to be New York. If the opportunity materializes, we go. We don't know yet if it will, but we should have a better sense of that soon, thanks to the good offices of some very good people. But if they want us, we want them.
So we've been thinking/dreaming/exploring what life would be like there. We can't move back to the Slope even though we loved it there. The Slope is no longer the same, nor are we. The prettiest parts are now overrun by investment bankers, you can't get a nice brownstone in the North Slope for under two million. And we don't have a stack of gold nuggets stashed away in our sock drawer, not even under the bed, so that's not gonna work. Plus which, the public schools suck, so we'd have to throw in tens of thousands per year on private school and extra services besides. And I remember the smell of garbage on the streets and the richocheting sound of our neighbors' shouts on those crammed-together blocks. You can go home again, maybe, but home has changed. And Los Angeles has changed me. Fact is? I love living in a house. My house. With walls, floors and ceilings that abut nothing but sky and earth.
We live in an urban area here. Smack dab in the middle of city, just not the downtown core. Too urban in some ways. Noisy, obnoxious, in-your-face. On the other hand, we can walk a few blocks to two Thai restaurants, a dimly lit Mexican place, a great pizzeria, or a written-up-in-the-LA-Times American comfort food joint. We can drive a few blocks to a well-stocked Whole Foods market or one of a dozen little Russian delis selling poppyseed sweet breads, beet salad and a noxious but oddly addicting mayonnaise-laden "Russian salad." I grew up in the city, I still live in one. But this city, for all its aggressive city-ness, is not New York, not Chicago, not Boston or San Francisco. It's a car town, and as a result the suburbs have joined forces with the city, and a few blocks from here you'll see peaceful streets with gorgeous old bungalows and friendly neighbors. I've learned to yearn for that. I experience half of it, in my pretty California Craftsman with its (paved but planted) back yard. I experience the other half of suburbia, perhaps, when I get in the car to go just about anywhere. In a sense, I already know suburban life.
And yet. Do I? If we move to New York but choose a New Jersey town on the commuter rail line, what would that be like? I imagine peace, I imagine lush lawns in summer. I imagine knowing our neighbors up and down the block and becoming passionately involved in the life of this particular town's artsy, liberal community. I imagine a pretty downtown with a good independent bookstore (yes, the town we're considering has one) and sprawling parks and a row of restaurants we will enjoy but inevitably find a tad boring after a while. Then again, we have a whole city to choose from here and yet we usually go back to the same handful of places, is that so different? I imagine a twinge of discomfort when I have to get on the highway to find a great fresh fish market. But I drive to Santa Monica now for that, a good half hour or so from here. Again, is it really different?
Suburbia in the Tristate area carries a particular meaning for me, though. The bridge and tunnel crowd, we called them. The ones who come into town as semi-tourists seeking excitement. Am I to become one? I remember being twenty three years old and driving over the Manhattan Bridge with an ex-boyfriend who owned a truck, all my belongings in the back of said vehicle, thinking, "Am I really moving to Brooklyn? Leaving Manhattan behind? How can this be?" I remember that first night wandering out onto Seventh Avenue, bemused at how few stores there were, how quiet it felt, comforted by the presence of a Korean deli. (It's a New York thing, these small storefront shops open 24 hours, stocked with everything you need to survive another day in the city.) I got used to it, grew to love it, grew to prefer it to Manhattan.
Of course, the Slope has changed since then. Had changed already by the time I left, had become filled with shops and upscale restaurants. But I remember that feeling still, bemusement as my point of reference shifted so suddenly and completely. The fact is, the Jersey towns we're considering (there are two but with a strong preference for one in particular) are roughly as far by commuter train from downtown Manhattan as the Slope is on the D train, but the feeling is so very different. Towns rather than part of the city. After a decade and a half in semi-suburban Los Angeles, I suspect this will feel more natural than I think, maybe more natural than moving back to Manhattan or Brooklyn ever could now, but nevertheless it seems so odd to consider. I try it on for size, I consider the ramifications, try to imagine the flavor. I think I like it, but how can I know?
And so I read through the nearly 200 comments responding Alice's blog post, all those discussions of suburb vs. gritty urban living. I find myself amused, because some of those comments are about an entirely different kind of suburb than the kind she and I are considering, these people describe truly sterile bedroom communities that would drive me around the bend in short order while the towns I'm thinking of sound like real places unto themselves. But other times I find myself pondering. What would (will?) this life be like? It's one I haven't tried yet. It's one I can't know yet. It entices and overwhelms both at the same time.
I feel like I'm living split lives. There's our life in the present, here and now. Dan's working on a respected and respectable TV series. Damian attends a traditional public kindergarten a couple of miles away; I don't love it but I don’t hate it. I'm in between writing projects and feeling disoriented as a result while not yet knowing what people will think of the book I've written. We live in a pretty house on an ugly block in a desirable neighborhood; we're largely done prettifying the place to theoretically sell. We don't have enough money coming in to put away for the future, or even a rainy day, and that scares me. I have a few good friends here but more elsewhere. Life is not great, not terrible. Life just is.
That’s here. That's now. Everything else is theoretical. But there's an awful lot of theory going on inside my head right now. Will we move? Where will we move? Will it work out if we do? What will life be like if we do? Will Dan's show get picked up for the fall? If not, what will he/we do? Do I need to get a non-writing job? If so, what? Will this new charter school work out for Damian? Will we stay in LA long enough to find out?
The thing about living on the edge of change is that it doesn’t seem much like change at all.
I remember an apartment in Park Slope. I remember a brick wall in the living room, a barren kitchenette, a marble fireplace in the bedroom. I remember a sense of home that seemed like forever but in fact only lasted a year and change. We lived in New York together, and that was fact. We thought about moving to LA. The thought was so strange, so foreign. Would we? Could we? Should we?
We decided: if Dan got accepted to the graduate directing program he was applying for, if the editor I worked for landed the PBS drama gig he was up for, if either of these things fell into place, we would go. Both happened. Fate giving us a westward nudge? We made our plans, packed our belongings in myriad boxes, I flew across country to start my job and find an apartment while Dan finished packing and drove our stuff through Pennsylvania and Kentucky, Kansas and Missouri, Colorado and Nevada. My books and pots and pans have seen the Grand Canyon. I haven't, merely glimpses through thick airplane window glass. Dan arrived, accompanied by brother and sister-in-law. We settled in. We explored the stucco and canyons of El Ciudad de Nuestra Senora La Reina de Los Angeles. We tried to carve a home here. Succeeded, after a fashion. Failed too, in another sense.
Now I find myself thinking back to that time in suspended animation. Would we, should we, could we? Questions dangling unanswered for months. It didn't matter then. We lived in Brooklyn and loved it there. We had a life and lived it there. The future was a question mark but I think we took that for granted. We were in our twenties, anything was possible and everything was unknown.
Somewhere along the way you're supposed to know more, though, aren't you? Somewhere along the way you're supposed to be able to make five year plans, ten year plans, map out your future, know your life. And maybe even though we haven't consciously done that, we have in fact done it too well. Maybe we've been existing for the past several years in suspended animation, treading the same path again and again, a path leading nowhere but right back to where we began, following our own muddy footprints. Maybe this state of not knowing is the real knowledge. Maybe we need this time, this new iteration of Will we? Can we? Should we? Midlife crisis, wakeup call, something. Sometimes you need to shake yourself awake.
A friend who knows what she's talking about told me there's a dearth of editors in New York right now. That if Dan could get into the independent feature world, he could work. And work. And work.
And just like that, I realized. It's not so much that I want to move to Toronto. It's that I want to leave Los Angeles. Yes, I still have deep qualms about this country, about a nation that could elect a man and a belief system for a second term who should never have been let near the Oval Office even once, about a nation that seems on the verge of banning all the things I believe in and mandating all the things I loathe. But oh. Man. I love New York. I miss it. I miss, not only the lush green of New England and upstate New York, not only the turn of the century grace of the architecture and the vigor of people constantly moving, constantly interacting, constantly and consistently alive, but I also miss the affect, the attitude, the character of those people. I'm attracted to the idea of Toronto but I worry too. Will I be looking for a similar style and be disappointed when I inevitably don't find it?
So we'll take a trip this spring. First New York and then Toronto. With luck and planning, Dan will have meetings both places, we'll explore the possibilities, testing for viability. Right now I lean heavily toward my native land. Right now I swallow tears at the thought. Can you go home again? I don�t know. I truly and really don't know. But the thought entices. Oh, how it entices.
In more concrete terms:
Toronto plusses: Cheaper real estate. A better social safety net. A sane government and population.
Toronto minuses: Less support services for Damian should he continue to need that or perhaps need it once again down the road (middle school comes to mind, that social quagmire). No built-in community; we'd feel isolated at first and maybe for a long time thereafter.
Toronto unknowns: The character of the people. The quality of the work options for Dan. The nature of the school system: traditional or progressive?
New York/New Jersey plusses: A work niche for Dan that feels exactly right (in my opinion, anyway). A built-in network of family and friends in the greater metropolitan area, as well as relatives and available country/beach retreats all along the Eastern Seaboard. A school system in the town we'd consider that sounds fan-fucking-tastic (experiential learning, anyone?). And New Jersey is known for its great special needs support. Plus, see above. Feels like home.
New York/New Jersey minuses: Still in the USA.
New York/New Jersey unknowns: Would we find a community we fit into in that town we like? Would Dan be able to sustain a career for the long haul there? Will this country fall (further) into totalitarianism?
I believe, here and now, as I write this, that we will move. That we will leave this city of sunshine and palm trees. I believe that either option will suit us better than here. I believe that we will make a huge change in our lives, and relatively soon. I believe we'll know the right one to make. (I suspect it'll be New York.)
I guess it's inevitable, but I still don't really understand it.
I've been sick since Monday. A strange kind of sick, the kind where you lie in bed and think, "Oh, this isn't so bad, I can get up and make dinner," and then you get up and realize, no, it really is that bad and lie down again. So I only got up when I had to. Dinner was microwave-thawed chicken soup Monday, roast chicken Tuesday (recipe: throw chicken and veggies in roasting pan, close oven, go back to bed), and leftover chicken the rest of the week. On Monday or maybe Tuesday (time blurs when you're feeling icky) I went to pick Damian up, got into a tiff with the speech therapist (important lesson: don't talk to people when you're sick, you might tell them things in a less than diplomatic manner). Came home and went back to bed. Pretty much the story of my week.
That's not the inevitable part, though I suppose it is. Sick happens. Shivers and sweats and snotty noses. Our bodies are vulnerable. Our bodies tell us sometimes: lie down, turn off your brain, tune out your life. And we obey. Or we don't and we pump ourselves full of over the counter take-the-yuck-away medications and muddle through as best we can. I chose the former this week, knowing full well what a luxury it was. But by Thursday – and this is the inevitable part – when I stood outside the kindergarten yard waiting for Damian and trying not to stand too close to anyone and certainly not to sneeze on them, a fellow mom told me I should go to the doctor. The next day she told Dan, "She should really go see a doctor." She herself had been sick the week before and only gotten better after she'd gotten medicine. I should do the same. Clearly.
I don't understand this thinking. Or, rather, I do. We expect answers to all our questions these days, quick solutions for all our problems. Pills for all our woes. We're an immediate gratification, an "if it's broken or if you even suspect that it might be broken, throw it away and buy a new one" culture. Get a cold? Take an antibiotic. So what if it's not bacterial, clearly nothing deadly, so what if a week really isn't that long to let a virus run its course? It's too long, you should be up and running, getting ahead in the treadmill of life (and yes, that’s an intentionally broken metaphor). You can't wait for your body's natural defenses to kick in. Let the doctor mend you. Let the body mechanic do his magic. Because everybody knows you can't trust nature to take care of itself.
I didn't go to the doctor. Guess what? I feel better today. Not run-the-Boston-Marathon better, not even get-back-on-the-Nordic-Track better, but better enough to sit at my desk and pay bills, better enough to collect laundry for a wash, better enough to participate in dishwashing. Better. No medicine. Just the body doing its job to fight a mundane virus.
My father didn't call on my birthday. I don't feel unloved; more people called this year than I think ever have. I feel surrounded and buoyed up by them all. I feel part of a community even though I'm not always the best at maintaining those ties myself. I feel good.
My father didn't call on my birthday. I shouldn't be surprised. I'm not surprised. And yet I am.
My father didn't call on my birthday. I feel a little sad. A door closed after all. A goodbye said silently.
We'd been estranged since December 2002, a year and a half, when he called this past May. On Mother's Day because I am, after all, a mother. He said he was reaching out, said he wanted to be in touch, said he missed me and that he'd call every two or three weeks and I didn't have to do a thing. I was warm to him, I said sure. I didn't bring up anything from the past. No reason. If he followed through and did call regularly (or at all), we'd have time to heal wounds. But that wasn't likely, was it? So why bother in a single phone conversation meant to soothe his own feelings of guilt and loneliness?
I called him on his birthday this year, November 11th. My family – my real family – was surprised. Why do that? He hadn't called again, not since that single phone conversation. True, but I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, assume he meant what he said or at least meant the surface sweetness of it, the assumption of a relationship even where one no longer exists. So I called him. He sounded surprised, as if he'd never made that reaching-out call in May. But pleased nevertheless. We talked. Friendly. Easy. I told him of things brewing in our lives. He said to please let him know if any happen. I realize now that he meant, "Because we won't be in touch, so otherwise I'd never know."
My father didn't call on my birthday. I'm almost relieved. I don't have any obligation to see him this summer while we're in New York. I don’t have to deal with him. I'm done.
Sometimes it takes many years to let go of a habit that's bad for you. Cigarette smoking is supposed to be the hardest. I think that's wrong. I think love is. The emotional bond may wither away entirely but it takes a long time for the habit to die.
It's become an honest-to-god ritual. Three years running now, we've hosted a small gathering of online journallers and personal bloggers (as well as partners, spouses and kids thereof, plus a friend who is none of the above but counts as family nevertheless).
Some are people I consider good friends, some are people I only see once a year, but it's a good group and a good tradition. Scones with clotted cream, bagels and whitefish salad, fruit and pastry. (Pastry this year was a sourcream coffeecake supplied by Zingerman's via Diane & Darin – and wow.) Food, I think, is an important ingredient of a good gathering. It helps if people feel like you care enough to take care of them. But I have a hunch with this group, all you really have to provide is a bunch of chairs and a warm house. Then conversation fills the room and the year is well begun. A good tradition. Think it'll migrate well to Toronto?
I can't do a Best Of roundup here; I haven't seen enough, read enough, or heard enough. Though I did love Paladin of Souls, the first half of Time Traveler's Wife and the first half of Love, Actually (saw it this year so it counts) and enjoyed Spiderman 2 and, um, a few other books and movies too, and am thoroughly addicted to Lost and Desperate Housewives and still sad that Sex and the City is no more. But I'm not going to give you my analysis of the year in pop culture and certainly not in politics (except: feh), so what's left? Me. My year.
Do you my reader care about the year's highlights as seen through one person's eyes, one person's life experience? This question, of course, comes down to a much more basic one: why read a personal blog? How universal is a person's life? The answer, I think, is that emotions are and specifics often aren't but that a tale well told can be especially satisfying if it's a true story. But a simple rundown of fact? Not so much, I think. The story there is between the lines, behind the facts.
A year is an odd construct anyway. Out with the old, in with the new, change the date marker and toot the horns. Just another second later, just a minute more, just an hour into the future and it's a new year. So what, right? But yes, we do define ourselves by the years we travel through. That was the year that was. 1973 was a mighty strange year for the child who was me. My parents split up, I was molested, my life changed. Oh, and Secretariat won the Triple Crown. 1991 was delicious but difficult for the young adult me, 1994 was dreadful. The whys are complicated and personal. (But this is a personal site, yes? Yes. But.) 2001 was pivotal, dark and terrible but also weighed down with great hope (Damian's autism diagnosis carried within it a prescription for growth, for example, and other events gave me a kick in the pants to switch from screenwriting to stories and novels).
So we do use years to define segments of time in our lives even though those swaths of months never exactly dovetail with the calendar. It nevertheless remains a useful frame. And so I'll use it today, the last day of 2004. I feel like it's a year the world has gone to shit or maybe just affirmed its general shittiness. But on the micro level, in my own life? Yes, good. Or rather, full of promise:
Damian is thriving in a regular kindergarten with the personnel there skeptical of his need for an aide (details on that soon). The fact that we FOUND a regular kindergarten that suits him and even nurtures him still amazes me. A school he likes. I mean, right there, those few sentences, they encompass and end months of sleepless nights and compulsive eating and general angst. Would he, would we, would it be okay? And it was and is and I hope will become ever more so.
Damian found drumming this autumn or maybe drumming found him; his teacher showed up on our doorstep and it's all good. And what a delight. And he learns and improves and also maybe learns how to handle discipline and how something that feels hard become easy after a while and then you move on to the next hard thing.
I finally finished my novel. Yes, oh yes, yes indeedy. And I even still like it. Honestly, I had no idea it would feel so good to write The End. Not an ounce of post-partum blues here. I just look at that pile of pages (549, to be exact) and I smile. The world is full of promise.
Then there's the promise of Toronto. Hope for the future. The election hit us like a steamroller grinding everything we care about into the muck, but maybe for us personally, it contained an answer instead of a wrenching question. We don't like LA, we didn't know how to escape. This may be our solution. A pleasant city, a livable city, an affordable city, a place we might find suitable. A potential new home. Escaping this purgatory of eternal sunshine, what a concept. Will it happen? Damned if I know. That's what promise is about, though. You don't know. Can't know. You just have to try and see.
Our house improves around us and because of us. We do it to raise the sale value, we're far more motivated as a result, but man is it nice to have a dishwasher. Man is it great to have pretty kitchen floors. Man is it a relief to sit in my tiny office with its walls striped salmon and cream rather than institutional green, and oh man was it wonderful to have central air this summer. We work for the promise of the future but in doing so we improve our lives in the present.
And that's the essence of my 2004. Few answers but some nice progress. And on we march.
Happy 2005, everyone!
I have long felt that the way my birthday unfolds is a portent for the year to come. This is not necessarily a healthy superstition; if I see a bad movie that day or have a poor meal or a fight with my spouse, it takes on more and deeper meaning. I've tried hard to talk myself out of this mindset. It is, after all, just a day like any other day only I'm officially one year older at 1:33 p.m. But the part of my brain that made me hold my breath when passing cemeteries when I was a kid persists in this one and so I try always to craft a good day.
It has been a very good one, starting this year on the afternoon of the 28th and continuing as I write these words. The specifics don't matter but include good food, good movies and good conversation with good friends, both in the flesh and on the phone. I have therefore decided that the outlook for this coming year is not only good, but extremely and unusually social.
Works for me.
I tend to think that when I travel a long distance or someone comes a long way to see me (ie: my mom coming 4000 miles from Nova Scotia), every minute has to count. Has to be full to brimming with delicious conversation and meaningful events. But tonight before dinner, I was doing some busy work, Dan was curled up on the couch nestled in a comforter being sick and also reading my newborn novel, and my mother and Damian were sitting at the dining table playing on their recorders. My mom was practicing, Damian was noodling. Not a huge, intense moment chock full of meaning, but a small one. Companionable.
And in a way this is just as important, this peaceable coexisting, people together in the same house, circling around and among each other. It doesn't always have to be verbal or even larger than life to be memorable. Sometimes daily life itself is enough. Someone comes into your house, fits into your world, fits your world into her psyche, and when she leaves, you feel the gap where she was. That, really, is why we travel so far. Not just for the conversation, which we can have by phone, but so we can fuel up on moment-by-moment proximity. Cooking, playing, listening, reading, being.
I've been waiting – no, hoping – for this for a long time. A year and a half, to be exact. We acquired Cocoa in June '03. Dante hissed at him and stalked away, shocked at this little black fuzzy thing that followed him from room to room and stole all his favorite cat toys.
Then Cocoa wanted to play. Dante hissed some more, smacked him, and ran off, growling. Then Cocoa wanted to play some more. And more. Cocoa is a very persistent fellow. After a while, Dante realized that this was actually fun, this smacking-the-kitten game. After a while, he even started instigating the fun. I knew Cocoa had won Dante over one day when I first saw Dante streak across the living room and on into the kitchen, chased by the black furball and then a few minutes later witnessed them heading back across the room, ninety miles an hour, only this time Dante was chasing Cocoa.
So Cocoa and Dante were play mates. Which was wonderful. I know cats who coexist and never get that close to pleasurable interaction. But Cocoa wanted more. And have I mentioned? Cocoa is persistent. Irresistible force wearing down immovable object. Cocoa wanted more than a boxing partner, he wanted a buddy.
First step: grooming. If he walked up to Dante and licked his fur, Dante would bolt. So he did it more casually; they'd be having a boxing match, thwap, bop, smack, and Cocoa'd have Dante pinned for a moment. What did he do? Go in for the kill? Not exactly. He'd lick Dante's fur, vigorously grooming him. And poor pinned-down irritable Dante would lie there, passive to his antagonist's ministrations. Once I saw Dante bat at Cocoa after Cocoa stopped, cat language for "Hey! Keep going!"
Next step: being groomed. And after a while, Dante did. He'd casually, as if by accident, happen to have his tongue out and happen to want to brush it against something that happened to be black fur and hey, if it cleans a fellow cat, well, why not?
Things have lasted at this plateau for several months now. They play, they groom, they drink from the same bowl at the same time. The one final boundary: they sleep near each other but never closer than that. I once had a pair of Siamese cats, sisters. They used to sleep on top of each other, piled like clean laundry in a basket, flopped over each other. So sweet. Cat love. I've wanted this for our two guys. I think Cocoa does too.
This week he succeeded.
They slept like this all afternoon. At one point, Cocoa put his arm around Dante: "You're my buddy, guy." I was ridiculously pleased. I took far too many photos and walked around grinning. Why do I care? I don't know exactly, but I do.
I think it's partly that I've come to realize since we got a second cat that cats are by nature tribal creatures. They're not the loners everyone thinks they are. They really do thrive on each other's company and form a different kind of relationship with other cats than they do with humans. Stands to reason, right? But I never considered it before. I had a single cat mindset for many years and never knew what my kitty was missing. Now I do and I want all of it for them. I want them to have each other, a community of two. I want them to roughhouse, grouch, get jealous (you petted him, now pet me!), race each other for the food bowl, learn from each other, talk to each other in yowls and chirrups, and yes, curl up and bask in the warmth and comfort of another feline body. We tend to think of cats as companions for us. I mean, isn't that the definition of pet? But they're also animals with their own complex set of needs and instincts. They like human companionship (ours do, anyway) but everyone, even cats, need someone their own size to hang out with. Like minded souls. Tribe.
In the midst of so much that feels so off balance in the world, it's easy to lose sight of the immediate, the here and now, the goodnesses in life.
So on this day after the Grand and Great Turkey Day feast Tiny Coconut described perfectly, I want to give thanks, recognize and remember.
(Warning, much sappiness ahead. No apologies for said sap. Sometimes it's good to be goopy. This here is righteous sap.)
I am thankful that I have a good marriage. That's no small thing. It is, in fact, something of a miracle to me. My parents didn't. Most of my friends' parents, likewise. I thought this didn't exist or if it did, it was something other people did. But Dan is my best friend, my partner, my lover. It works. Not perfect (what is?) but pretty damned good.
I am thankful that I have a beautiful child with big brown eyes and a captivating giggle. Sure, sometimes I get pissed at his tantrums and general stubborn irritable six-year-old boyness, but after three and a half years of infertility, I can't ever take his existence for granted. (Excuse me while I go hug my boy.)
I am thankful, oh very thankful, that as soon as we admitted Damian had a problem, we stumbled into the answer in the form of a book (The Child with Special Needs) and a nurturing developmental therapeutic preschool as well as a gifted set of therapists. I am even more thankful that all this has been successful. I'm thankful for Damian at age six, who and how he is right now.
I am thankful that we own our house and that we bought while prices were insane but not Jim-Carrey-as-Count-Olaf-laughing-maniacally-and-wreaking-havoc insane. For all its neighbor-related flaws, it's a mighty fine house. It's been good to us. It might end up being even better if the equity provides a nest egg to allow us to move elsewhere.
I am thankful that I'm on page 403 of my first novel. That it will be complete within weeks (um, I think). That I've kept at it. That it may even (too soon to tell) be good. (I hope.)
I am thankful for friends, here and elsewhere, reachable by phone, email, IM, hugs. I'm thankful for my old buddies, the self-styled Gang of Four, still close friends, for internet-kindled friends who have over the years become in-person friends like Toni, Otto, Diane, Michele, and Tiny Coconut.
I am thankful for Tiny Coconut's presence in my life. Thankful for the impulse that led me to start a words-mainly mostly-daily blog complete with comments, the irritation that led her to write a comment in my entry about the grocery strike, the curiosity that led me to her blog, the realization that here was a very cool person, the friendship that has developed in the past year. I feel lucky. Besides which, she makes a mean turkey.
I am thankful that my mother is one of my closest friends. Thankful for her perceptive mind and big heart and great cooking and unwavering, honest support.
I am thankful for the twenty five pounds I lost last year, though not so much thankful for the thirteen I gained back. I will be very thankful for their retreat. Yup.
I am thankful that in this dark cloud of a political regime, people seem to be caring and talking about it a whole lot more than they have in years. I am thankful that I don't have to feel alone in this. I am thankful for the small seeds of hope I feel when I see that anger and that passion.
I am so thankful that the horror and sick fear I felt this spring and summer about Damian's kindergarten fate haven't materialized and instead he's in a nurturing place with a warm teacher and is HAPPY there (though we have to work on the making-friends-at-school thing a bit more).
I am thankful that Cocoa found us and demanded to be brought home a year and a half ago. Sometimes an animal is just an animal. Other times an animal changes a household in ways both mysterious and obvious. My long tailed black kitty of the shiny soft fur and the round yellow eyes and the cricket obsession is one of the latter. Oh, I'm thankful for Dante the catbear too, but he's more the "Hi, Cat" and "Please stop licking my hair now, cat" kind of guy.
I'm surprisingly thankful for Damian's drum set. For a child to have a gift, to discover that talent early, to have the injection of self-esteem, not to mention the pure pleasure of music, these are blessings. Besides, he rocks.
I'm thankful for this blog for a host of reasons. I'm thankful for my readers, the ones who write and the ones who simply read but keep coming back. I like that. I like you.
I'm thankful too for my family's continued health (not something to take for granted!). And for TiVO (also not something to take for granted). And for my sleek new aluminum PowerBook (ooh yeah) and my lovely new Digital Rebel camera and my slim white iPod. And for central air this summer and forced heat this winter, simple pleasures but not so insignificant. And for other material possessions, most especially our it-is-too-sexy! Sienna minivan. But mostly for the intangibles. Health, contentment, love and friendship and mental energy to do (some of) the things I love.
I've spent a lot of time in the past envying what other people have. But sometimes that feels, well, dumb. It's far easier on the soul to look at what you do have. The rest? It can come. Or not. I don't need a Jaguar. I don't need a mansion. I just need a little more time and a little more connectedness and maybe a few more dollars. But I really do have a lot to give thanks for.
And I do.
(Told you. Sappy. That a problem? Deal with it.)
Thanks to everyone who commented on my Toronto post. It's too soon to say if we'll actually move, if we truly do want to move, if this is the best thing for our lives. But I have to say I like the idea of migrating from a country known for its standard of living to one known for quality of life.
I realize Toronto isn't New York and if we measure it by those standards, we'll probably be disappointed. But it's not Los Angeles either. This city, as I've said before, fits me like someone else's underpants. Tight in the crotch and the wrong shape altogether. But I find myself wondering now what it would be like if we could afford to move back to New York. Can you really go home again? Can home possibly live up to your memories? I'm still a New Yorker in my world view, in my preferences and my blunt speech, but I talk slower now, walk slower now (when I’m not racing alongside a six year old boy), and I like living somewhere without the stink of garbage in huge bins along the street. I think about moving back and it feels almost as foreign as moving to a new city. I love New York, but do I belong there? I can't know without moving back but with the cost of living there, we can't afford to find out.
I'm a different person now than I was when we left Park Slope. Some is about mothering a special needs child (and LA has been a good place for him during those first crucial years, replete with cutting edge services). Some is due to the choice I made to leave film editing and pursue screenwriting and then the intensive exposure I got to the script development process, all very much entangled with the fact that I live here in Hollywood. The people I've met, the experiences I've had, they've shaped me and even though it's often been painful, I can't regret the lessons learned.
Would I be the person I am now if we'd stayed in New York? Somehow I doubt it. (Though the thought of who I might have been instead intrigues me.) Who will I become if we stay in LA another ten years? Twenty? Who will I become if we move to Toronto in two years? How would that still-unknown environment shape me? Is there a point in your life where your surroundings no longer alter you, when you become fixed, a butterfly in amber, forever mid-motion? Conversely, can you find what you need wherever you are? I know many good people in LA, many people not in the film industry, they're often refreshingly sane and non-competitive. I think we could stay here and be fine. We could find our fit, and to some extent we already have. So maybe that would be okay. But the lure of change is strong. The idea that a place could fit us better, that we don't have to struggle to find our place in that world, it's seductive. (Not to mention deciduous trees and the taste of snow and family hundreds instead of thousands of miles away.) And so I think we'll continue to contemplate and explore this surreal but surprisingly sensible move.
Oh, and I appreciate the info some of you have given me about Canadian services for autism. And yes, I now know about Friday's Supreme Court ruling against the parents who felt the government should pay for their children's intensive 40 hours a week ABA programs. Instead the court left it up to individual provinces to decide, which mostly means no. Fortunately for us, Damian is well beyond needing that level of intervention (and we were never exactly ABA aficionados anyway). Even if we stay in LA, he'll probably outgrow the need for much of anything within the next few years. He's doing fine without an aide in his regular kindergarten class (more on that in a Hidden Laughter entry soon, I promise); in fact, the inclusion specialist told me yesterday she couldn't tell him apart from his peers.
I'm still researching what it means to have a child with mild developmental issues in the Toronto school district – whether the district offers occupational therapy, what kinds of accommodations you can ask for in an IEP – but I'm optimistic that Damian can get what he needs up there. I'm more worried about the quality of the schools themselves. Mostly wondering how nurturing they are, how stimulating, and how well they keep a bright child interested in and excited by learning. I exhausted myself researching the same questions here, it's overwhelming to think about doing it all over again. But so it goes. Is it worth it? So far I think so. We'll see. Future unknown and maybe unknowable but kind of exciting, for all that.
I don't know how to say this so I'll just say it. And I don't know if it's going to come to anything or if we'll stumble and turn back before the finish line or decide we didn't really want to be in this race after all. I have no idea, none at all. It's just a concept right now, just a thought in the process of forming. But it feels real, at least at this moment in time. Feels good, even. Contains hope. And Dan and I both need that right now.
A week ago we started talking about moving. Not just out of this house. Not just out of this city. Out of this country.
O Canada, oh yes.
Toronto, to be precise.
It started with the election, of course. Probably every liberal (or should I say true-blue blue-stater? feh.) in the US said something under their breath to that effect on election night or the day after, right? "Time to move to Canada. New Zealand is awfully pretty too, have you seen Lord of the Rings?" But how many meant it? I'm guessing very few. People have lives, homes, friends, family. Roots. Emigration is a very big deal. Even to Canada. Hell, moving across town can feel like a big deal sometimes. Moving to a different country because of politics when this isn't even a dictatorship? Too big to do for real.
But it works for us. Not only did we both feel at peace for the first time since the election, but it makes a lot of sense. My mother lives in Nova Scotia, my brother is in Montreal. The rest of our family is on the east coast. We could drive to see them! Plane flights would be an hour, not six! Real family Thanksgivings and Christmas dinners and summer holidays at the beach together and Damian knowing his cousins and loving his grandparents, yes. And Toronto, from what I've heard and read, is a real city, with a real subway system and real walking streets that go on and on the way they're supposed to instead of dribbling out after three blocks, with neighborhoods chock full of character, with parks and skyscrapers and a real downtown and small pubs and cafes and all the things a city should have and this one we live in now sort of does, only you have to drive from one to another, enhancing the disconnect. Toronto would enhance the connect, and how I miss that. And we'd be back in a place with fall foliage, snowdrifts and snowball fights, the awe and power of the first spring flower. Green summers. Green, green, green. Trees and streams and waterfalls and flowers and oh, green.
Ahem.
We'd also be in a strong filmmaking community. We don't know yet, we won't know until we explore (and network our brains out) but there's a reasonable expectation that Dan could get enough editing work to keep us afloat. And housing is cheaper. As in: half the price. As in: we could afford to put a solid down payment on a nice house and have money left over from the sale of this place. A nest egg, finally. Money for Damian's college fund and our old age fund. A security blanket we've never had and probably won't if we stay here.
And the vaunted Canadian warmth and Toronto niceness (it's "Toronto the Good," after all) is a far better thing for Damian than the egocentric aggression that pulses just under the surface of Los Angeles society. My son will probably grow up quite capable and definitely highly skilled and sweet, to boot, but somewhat socially naïve. He needs to be somewhere where you can trust people. This is not that place.
We've never visited Toronto. We plan to rectify that as soon as we can (though with work and school considerations, it might be some months before that happens). Maybe it won’t live up to the promise, maybe we'll get there and shrug in indifference. Just a city. No feeling of connectedness. Maybe so. It's possible.
It's also possible that Dan will find the film/TV community there insular or small. Who knows? It's also possible we'll discover the schools aren't to our liking or that we have no affinity for the people who live there or that the buildings are ugly and characterless. It's also possible that the immigration lawyer will tell us in a couple of weeks (after he researches the question) that Damian's diagnosis will bar the way to immigration. It's possible this move isn't for us after all. We have two years to explore the issue before we have to commit, before it becomes official. All I can tell you is that right now it feels like a way out of our treading-water lives to something that – at least on paper – makes a whole lot more sense. Somewhere we can find happiness. And that hope, it feels good right now. So good.
I keep starting to write here but everything I write turns into a political rant. Which I always delete. Not because there's anything wrong with a political rant, but I read enough of those these days and it makes me too upset to write one myself. I'm not saying anything new with it. Just that this sucks in a whole lot of ways. Profound suckage. So consider it written, consider it read, consider it digested and cogitated and even replied to.
Moving on. Not going to stop thinking about it but not going to write about it here. Not right now. Can't.
Moving on, yes. The babysitter situation, how did that turn out for you, Tamar? Ah, yes. The babysitter situation. Well, I decided to forget about Sitter A, the one who lives close by but has a potential job conflict (ie: her boss wasn't giving her an answer on making certain hours set in stone – or so she said). Called Sitter B, who doesn’t live so close but seemed very sweet in the interview. First called her reference. Who said she was fine. Um. Fine? Yeah. Fine. Okay, then. Could mean anything, really, and we liked her and I trust my instincts (and Dan's, for that matter). So. Called Sitter B. Oh yes, I'd love the job! Great. Wonderful. Here are the hours, as we discussed. The EXACT hours as we discussed. Oh, that early? Really? Well, I'll have to try it, see how bad the traffic is at that hour.
Sitter B didn't work out. And I understand that – why drive 45 minutes in rush hour for 2 ½ hours of work? (The drive back would be shorter, non-prime-time, but still.) And I'm even okay with that. Because when I looked at it, looked at what it meant to hire someone to come every week for a set amount of time, looked at having that person in my house, under my authority, playing with my child but not knowing how at first – I don't know, it felt weird. Especially the part where I write a check every week. That part most of all. We don't have much discretionary money. We have a large mortgage, we have more to do to the house (termite damage, ugh) (kitchen floor tiling, yay), we may need a new car soon (Dan's commuting car is now sixteen years old, a grizzled old fellow by any standards). Do I want to – do I need to – pay someone a weekly salary? It feels like a luxury item. I'm not bringing in money. How can I justify shelling it out?
I can still write, it's just a matter of reorganizing my life. Exercise while Dan dresses Damian (this means Damian and I both get up earlier than we were, also a plus). Supervise Damian's drum practice after he and I have breakfast. Take him to school. Come home and write for three hours, interrupted briefly for lunch. That's plenty, really. I've written thirty five pages in the past three weeks. Not a huge output but not bad. Especially considering the near paralysis that set in November 2nd and the rest of that week. Staring at the screen, completely separate from the story. Post traumatic stress, they're calling it. All us miserable liberals. But I digress. Thirty five pages, not bad. Can do this. I have approximately fifty to seventy pages left of this first draft. I can do this without a weekly, scheduled babysitter. I can. And I will.
Sitter A called back last week. Said she's willing and able to pinch hit for us. Babysit on weekends, babysit here and there on weekday mornings when I need to go to a meeting or somesuch. I have my doubts she'll come through, but we'll see. I'm okay with it either way.
Sometimes, I think, you have to look at your life sideways. The solutions you think are the obvious ones don't always work. I find myself evaluating a lot of things this way these days. Turning my life upside down and shaking it out, seeing what's really inside. What really matters.
