Please understand that I feel deeply for NoLa and am doing everything I can to help, both in $ and with time. Right now we’re just a situation where life makes one rather, well, self centered….moving back to a hometown 18, nearly 19 years after leaving it…
As they would say–yeah, it’s a luxury problem, but it still is, well it is still my damn
life. How the hell do I parse my own personal situation (which is intense on many levels) my family’s (even more levels)
and then these people I don’t know, but god, I wish I could help , and if I can I will….
That said, call me an asshole, we just moved and it’s hard to think about that less than 80% of the time right now.
We’re lucky, yes. We are.
something I wrote to a friend tonite
Being back? It’s quite strange. I felt great joy
as we sold our house in Illinois–it wasn’t the right place for us for
so many reasons (they are so polite but not friendly), and I felt at ease for the first time in a while
staying at my sister’s. It was something good to be in the back yard
with kids in the pool and a beer with the neighbor chatting over the
fence–unlike anything in my last 18 years. The physical act of moving things into the
house and into place has been hard. Seeing James be shocked by no
longer being a Californian (and moving his brain to accomodate the
needed changing of southern stereotypes) and Emily missing her house
and school has been painful. For myself, I love the house, though find
myself embarrassed by it’s size, something I wouldn’t have felt
elsewhere(it is currently too big for us, but we’ll never
have to move, would like to entice his mother to come live here when she
retires, may spawn again). I also see
ghosts around many corners (what was, wasn’t, will never be) .
Sunday I’m going to the Unitarian Universalist meeting with my friend Laura.
There’s so much for me to do here, I can be helpful, I can be a part of something more than just my little family.
I can do some good–and my friends here, even after all these years are helping to set stuff up for me.
oh yeah and Friday–kid night with Laura’s family and later, adult time with some girls.
And I get to lasso Gpoo (my old roommate) into dinner out next week.
It’s just odd, so good and so different.
And while I DO NOT miss Illinois (tea party ladies aside)
I really really really miss SF right now. I feel my 22 year old self surfacing and saying…
“hold on just a goddam minute, I didn’t jump off into outer space to have you come right the hell back and settle down like a fucking housewife.”
And I do have to have a talk with that girl. It is 18 nearly 19 years later. I’m not the same. We did leave. We did have a big goddamn life.
