Skipping Town

Lucia has handled this move with surprising aplomb so far. She was mellow and fun during the move; thought all the craziness and mess was funny; and really just went along with things with nary a complaint. (Much of this is due, of course, to the fact that my parents’ sole job was to entertain both girls nonstop for an entire week. They excelled at their task.) But now that Grandma and Pop-Pop have left, and Andrew has gone back to work, and it’s just us here in this strange new home, Lucia has moments of homesickness. Sometimes it strikes when we’re doing something she enjoys, like painting rocks; sometimes it’s when we’re playing; sometimes it’s when we’re reading books or doing some other quiet thing. “I want to go home,” she’ll say suddenly. “We are home,” I say. “This is our new house.” “No,” she’ll say. “I want to go home—my regular home.” It is so sad. I tell her that I miss it too, and that it’s hard to say goodbye and move to a new place, but soon we’ll love our new h...

Moving day: Lucia running around yelling “What a mess! What a mess! You’re making a mess!” Friendly neighbors: In our first few days, one family brought muffins, two brought beautiful plants, and we were invited to a cocktail party where we met lots of people from the street. It’s a real community here on our block. We feel extremely welcome. New activities: The girls and I have been exploring. Yesterday we fed bread to ducks at a duck pond—Lucia loved it. As the ducks (and a few squirrels) crowded around her feet, she tossed the bread grandly into the air while shouting, “They love it! They love it!” Later that day, another neighbor stopped by to introduce herself when she passed by on a walk with her four young sons. The two middle boys immediately began running around the yard—and Lucia ran right after them, giggling and running with them through the bushes in her barefeet. Later, when we talked about our day, as usual I asked what her favorite part was, convinced she’d say...

Dear Littlest One, What a month it’s been for you! You’re so very nearly mobile, crawling backwards and sometimes managing to get yourself forward, too. You’re getting into a sitting position on your own, even using that motion—lying down to sitting to lying to sitting—to move around. You are making “ba ba ba” and “ga ga ga” sounds, trying to keep up with all the talking going on around you. You love to stand up, and you beam when we put you onto your feet and exclaim, “Standing! Who’s standing! Big girl standing!” Even Lucia gets into it and yells “Big girl standing!”, to your delight. You have one goal in life: get whatever it is Lucia’s playing with. You have no interest in anything else, anything I might give you to play with. You have eyes only for Lucia and her toys of the moment. You are persistent and steadfast, and though I’m glad to see you asserting yourself, I foresee many a battle in the near future. You have two teeth now, middle-bottoms, and are growing some...

Dear Little One, Because of all the craziness that went along with the move, I neglected to write a letter this month. And so I will write a brief one now, belatedly, with just a highlight or two. Forgive me! One big thing was your mastery of the “arm slide” at the playground. You’ve loved it for a while, but I always supported you when you leapt off the platform. Finally, you pushed me away, and did the lift-off by yourself. You were so thrilled. It’s a little sad that we left just when you discovered this new great thing. I wonder if you’ll remember it. You’ve come out of your shell even more, talking to our (now former) neighbors and often playing with other children at the playground. You take things to heart and notice everything, and when you’ve been wronged, it sticks with you; you’re just learning to talk about things you don’t like. When we were at the park a few weeks ago, two little boys in our playgroup were roughhousing; later, when we talked about our day bef...

We’re here, and so is all our stuff, and if you were with us for the past few days, you’d understand that this is no small accomplishment. The past week has been a blur. Last Monday, Andrew and I went to the bank and got a certified check for the closing costs and the balance of our down payment. On the way home from the bank, we decided maybe we’d better hoard what little cash we had left—so we decided to cancel our movers. Mom and Dad thought we were insane, but the more we considered it, the more reasonable an idea it seemed. Plus, people who’d just moved into the top floor of our brownstone offered to give us all their boxes. It seemed like it was meant to be. Tuesday, we headed into NJ for the closing, an intense two hours of signature upon signature. That morning, we canceled the movers but did arrange for another moving company to do the actual truck loading, driving, and unloading. When we got home, we started packing. Wednesday, we continued packing. For fifteen ho...

I've always loved the poem "Autumn Perspective" by Erica Jong. It's on my mind every day now as we settle into our new home. Here it is: Autumn Perspective Now, moving in, cartons on the floor, the radio playing to bare walls, picture hooks left stranded in the unsoiled squares where paintings were, and something reminding us this is like all other moving days; finding the dirty ends of someone else’s life, hair fallen in the sink, a peach pit, and burned-out matches in the corner; things not preserved, yet never swept away like fragments of disturbing dreams we stumble on all day . . . in ordering our lives, we will discard them, scrub clean the floorboards of this our home lest refuse from the lives we did not lead become, in some strange, frightening way, our own. And we have plans that will not tolerate our fears--a year laid out like rooms in a new house--the dusty wine glasses rinsed off, the vases filled, and bookshelves sagging with heavy winter books. ...

Today, we are moving out of New York. Our boxes are packed; the movers are on their way. To mark the occasion, some thoughts. *** I moved to New York City in 1999, when I was twenty-two years old. Now, twelve years later, I can’t remember what I imagined was on the other side of that move. There was graduate school on the near horizon, and maybe that was as far as I thought. I think, in the back of my mind, I planned to stay—this was, after all, where I’d dreamed of being for years; but if I did, I definitely hadn’t thought about how that would work logistically. I had no money, had never had a job besides waitressing, was young and cloistered enough to feel a measure of stability and relief when I got a work/study job with the Columbia Libraries paying $8.25/hour. I have to steal Joan Didion here: Was anyone ever so young? I moved into an apartment in Morningside Heights, on West 118th Street, that had been assigned to me by Columbia’s housing office. I remember getting ...

It’s our last week in New York. Last week, Andrew drove the girls and me to PA and then took the train back to New York, leaving us to spend the week with Mom and Dad. Though it was a fun week for Lucia (The hose! Watering flowers! The playground! Bubbles! Chalk and Pop-Pop’s stones-and-squares game!), it turned out not to be the relaxing getaway I’d assumed it would be. I’d unwisely taken on a very large freelance editing project, which would have been fine—but Greta got sick mid-week and threw everything into an uproar. She had a high-ish fever, which I managed with Motrin, and a trip to a local pediatrician to rule out an ear infection (there was some ambiguous ear pulling) revealed an eye infection instead. She was uncomfortable, and teething, and unable to either settle herself to go to sleep or to stay asleep. She slept with me most of the week, which was great for her but not so great for my own sleep. By the time Andrew returned, I had past the point of zombie-land and was...