Departure

We leave tomorrow for the NW. Just the kids and I are going; this time of year is tough for Brett, who is in the middle of field work, deadlines, and crazy schedules. Interestingly, the weather here cooled off significantly today, and I understand it is supposed to be hot in Portland. We're ready...well, not quite, still have some packing to do tomorrow. But we've worked hard to get all the laundry ready, go through the paperwork and get ourselves organized. Visiting the northwest is strange for us, because it is home, in so many ways. But increasingly, home is here now, and it feels so bizarre to go back and visit.
We'll be gone for 3 weeks this visit--and while that isn't nearly as long as last summer's 7 weeks, it's a pretty long time to be away from Brett and our routine, our stuff and our new life. Still, a majority of our friends here get the hell out of the city in the summertime, so it's sort of part of this lifestyle--the dads stay here and work and drive upstate or wherever their families are when they can.
Our big kids are really excited to see relatives and friends from Oregon--they've kept up many relationships there and it is a big, juicy vacation for them. For me? Well, it reminds me that I haven't fully committed to this city. That we don't have this place that feels like a real home, that we haven't said we're going to stay--it makes me feel a bit rudder-less to go back to something so familiar without an anchor here. We keep bumping up against the same brick wall--we never actually stop looking at apartments here. They are close...but just out of reach.
*****
This sounds wistful, longing. Perhaps it is. But even so, I don't think I'd trade this for that. We've had a pretty good summer here--several trips to the beach, waterslides, upstate for a pool party, track and golf for the kids, killer watermelons, fountains, swimming, water fights, ice cream and popsicles at will.
Just yesterday, having dropped Maya at The Frick Collection, I wandered Madison Avenue--it was all mine--quiet in the morning--ice tea and a pedicure, window shopping and meandering. We sat in Central Park for an hour so the girls could play after their art class. Then we headed home for a brief rendezvous with our boys, who had played soccer in another part of the park while we were gone. Brett and I had a date in the afternoon--to the NY Historical Society's Grateful Dead exhibit--it was small, but a trip down memory lane for us, and we loved the decorated envelopes from fans who were begging for mail order tickets to a Dead Show...Afterward, we sat on a park bench and I felt the first whispers of autumn--it was warm, but there was a change--a reminder that the summer will fade, eventually, if not this week.
Today we went to a birthday party at Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. It was filled with kids and theater games, a walk across the street to the beach, where the kids swam while we watched from the sand.
That's all for tonight--just that I'm not sure whether I'm leaving to go back home tomorrow, or that I'm leaving home to go back. Regardless of which one it is, I'm already missing my sweet husband and life partner, and I'm realizing that maybe I need to think of home as less a place and more a relationship. Our family is a home, even if it is temporarily lodged in an apartment in Harlem. Even if it is spread out across the country for a few weeks.