To The Next Episode.

     Spanning the room, I take in the boxes, packing tape, and general mess, the all too familiar vision makes me feel like a woman on the run.  If you are a reader, you know that ever since before Soph was born, Eric and I have been traveling.  Most recently, we attempted to settle in L.A., buying a house, moving our things from various cities to our new home, and even putting some decorative touches on the place.  That, however, did not stop us from jumping on that plane to New York for Eric's next Broadway show.  Here we are 4 months later, boxing up our lives again and heading back across the country.  
     Only this time, it feels different.  Instead of looking up what coffee shop will be close at our next destination and what children's museum the city will have to offer, we are going home.  Just as the time in NYC was so needed to catch our breath, we are excited and grateful to be headed home.  What a journey the last 4 months have been?!
      The planning to get here, the search for subtenants at our LA home, the excitement of New York City at the holidays, and the new depths to relationships that illness can bring to a family.  When we set out for our time here, I knew it would be different.
     Are we excited about going "home?"  Are we sad to be leaving NYC?  Both.  We have many mixed feelings, but the one undeniable feeling is that it is time to go.  It has been a journey.
     From the time Eric auditioned to the time we got to NYC, life was a whirlwind.  He booked it!  We squealed with delight, like a Gather family harmony.  What tremendous things we had heard about the Broadway play he would be joining the cast of!  He desperately wanted to be in a PLAY on Broadway and here it was...his chance to do that.  The job I had taken to keep us afloat for a few months in LA was wrapping up, so I stayed on a week and finished my job, worked things out with Sophie's preschool, and finished getting the house ready for subtenants.  I was excited too!  It was a miracle that we got subtenants for exactly the time we planned to spend in NYC.  I was going to get to be with Sophie full-time again, which we all figured out during my days of working, that it was just too soon for her.  She still needed me home, as long as she wasn't in school.  And New York!  It was going to be  Fall and then the holidays!  These are the seasons that are the backdrop for so many romantic movies about NY for a reason!
     Maybe I'm saucing it up too much.  Allow me to expand.  When we tried to sublet, Eric planned for me to show a possible subletter our house.  When  a guy I will call "Gothic Creeper Joe" showed up at the door for the appointment, my heart dropped a bit.  As I answered his questions, I wondered if he would be back that night to try to drink my blood or something.  I shoved off that intuition and began asking him some friendly questions (i.e. Where are you from?  Do you work close by?) that were met with awkwardness and conflicting answers, leading me to believe that I had better set the alarm tonight.  Don't worry though.  "G.C.Joe" never came back and we rented to some recent college grads.  In our attempt to find a place in NYC, after much searching and the help of our friend in real estate, we found the perfect place (2br, across from a park, safe neighborhood) and, only after copious amounts of paperwork that NYC demands from renters...we lost it to a higher bidder.  That's ok, cause we ended up here...on the Upper West Side.  And now that we have had the experience of living here, I can't imagine this time anywhere else.
     We cased the neighborhood and I bought some books about New York, in relation to kids.  It's a different place with kids.  I say that in the best way possible because we have had an absolute ball.  We've seen Broadway shows, walked through parks, played in parks, visited museums, and have eaten at some wonderful restaurants.  If you are visiting NY with your kiddies and don't know where to start, check out these books.








     As magical as the holidays were, with all the wonder of the city, traveling to see our folks, and having family visit; The magic has begun to fade away and the coldness is setting in.  January 31st and the return to our home couldn't come soon enough.  Sophie's ballet class has ended and the weeks are long for her without her classes.  I'm feeling like I can't settle into or commit to anything long term (job, friendships, classes) because our eminent trip home looms over me.  Eric is growing tired of the monotony that can dangerously set in when doing 8 shows a week on Broadway.  We didn't see our friends as much as we hoped.  They have all moved on to different neighborhoods and different walks of life.  Things don't seem to change so quickly when you're in the middle of it, but when you come back to a world you've known and so much about it is different, it's a humbling experience because we see that we, too, have changed.  I feel like we were in a magic snow globe for a few months and now all the snow has settled and you can see the imperfections of the figures inside.
    Packing always does this to me.  It makes me feel sentimental and a bit dramatic.  Naturally, I guess. All the things that were once put on a shelf or stacked nicely in a drawer...um, I mean, thrown into a drawer never to be found again, are pulled out and revisited as we are forced to examine our life with a fine-toothed comb.  It's healthy, I think.  We have no choice but to rid ourselves of anything that isn't necessary.  It's Feng Shway. Fing Shwau.  Fung Schuay.  Whatever.  You get it.
    With Eric's new TV show on the horizon, things in LA seem promising.  We get back to our home on the 31st and are supposed to find out the next day whether or not the show gets picked up.  So, I guess no matter what, we are going home.  It's a new episode in our lives.  The adventure continues and we roll with it, baby.