Oh, what a week.
Last Tuesday, my girls and I were traveling through Brooklyn in a cab, leaving our beloved city for the last time, on our way to the airport. Chicago-bound.
This Tuesday? We have an apartment in an old home in a downtown area of a quaint little suburb. I’m currently alone in my mother-in-law’s kitchen watching an epic thunderstorm roll across the prairie. We own a minivan.
I’m waiting for my head to stop spinning, but I’m afraid that won’t be for a while yet.
We still have to actually move into the new apartment and start emptying boxes. I have to figure out preschool for Poppy. We have to get new driver’s licenses and register to vote, get plates for the van and take it in for a tune-up. I need to set up utilities, research what joining Costco entails, and get new library cards.
And I’m working overtime to start laying the groundwork on finding a new tribe. I’m trolling AP message boards, looking for community listservs, scouting out playgrounds, and adding library story hours to our family calendar.
All this chaos aside, things are good. Very good. Poppy and Boo have spent lots of time with their grandparents this week – we’re spent a couple of nights at Gamma’s while we waited for T-Bone to join us in Illinois, and have since moved on to Nana and Papa’s place since they have multiple beds that will comfortably accommodate all four of us. Grandpa and Grandma hosted our annual family reunion, or Hoosierpalooza as we like to call it, and P got to spend the day chasing her second cousins around while Boo was passed like a hot potato among cousins and aunts and uncles and friends, grinning ear to ear at whoever happened to be holding her in any given moment.
This is why we came home. And even just a week in, it’s clear that it was the right decision. It’s hard to match the joy on a grandparent’s face when their grandchild leaps into their arms.
Or the craziness of seeing your daughter play with your cousin’s son, both of them just miniature versions of ourselves, kids who played together nearly 30 years ago.
Or watching your kids play with your old toys.
Or wandering through your childhood home with your little ones in your arms, eating apples fresh-picked from the orchard and introducing them to their family’s history.
it is good
good to be back home
how i missed this time zone
strangers are exciting
their mystery never ends
but there’s nothing like looking at your own history
in the faces of your friends
[ani d.]
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[featured sling: Sakura Bloom Pure Linen sling in Organic Maple]
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