The Daily Struggle

I am fine.  We are all fine.  Even if all I do is kvetch.

I do a lot of talking about my feelings.  But I fear, lately, that I am sounding worse than I am.  I talk about the move, making friends, feeling lonely, missing people, worrying about the kids, etc.  I have to – talking is part of my process.  I’m an extrovert and I don’t like to keep things in.  And, let’s be honest, people rarely talk about the easy things that are going off without a hitch; we talk about things that are a struggle.  So I am constantly chatting away and often about things that aren’t awesome.  The truth is that things are going pretty well, though.  There are up days and down days, but I am not unhappy and even think we are doing pretty well.  Besides, for me, I give voice to my problems because problems that you can talk about are manageable ones.  You can worry when I stop talking.  Just needed to put that out there.

We’ve been in Seattle for almost three weeks now.  It’s still a huge adjustment, one that I haven’t even begun to tackle, really.  But there are things that we’ve been doing that are really wonderful.  We’ve been exploring the city and spending time with friends.  We eat dinner together as a family.  The girls are doing well.  Alexa had her first solid food the other day (I promise to post pictures soon).  Avery is interested in playing, running around, making a mess, seeing animals, painting, etc.; mostly she doesn’t care *where* she gets to do that as long as she does.  As you can see above, she is jumping and playing with rocks – the fact that the Space Needle is in the background matters little to her.  Many of the struggles that we face are struggles we would face anywhere.  A two-year-old here is a two-year-old there.

Sometimes, when things are feeling very hard and I get down, it really helps to look at my family and remember that I am doing this for them.  My family is awesome.  I worried a bit about the fact that moving will necessarily put additional strain on our marriage and on our family.  Of course that is true.  I think that we are handling it really well, though.  Yes, we need the girls to get on a decent schedule so that we can have more alone time.  And yes, I probably could use a bit more time to myself so I can do things like write this blog or, I don’t know, pee without an audience.  (Finding a babysitter is a high priority at the moment.)  But Avery is the sweetest and snuggliest little monster there ever was.  Her current favorite saying is, “I love you, too, mama. Much.”  Alexa is incredibly cute and charms everyone who sees her with her giant smiles.  And Paul and I are having an adventure, which is pretty damn cool.  This moving thing, it may not be easy, but I think we have it under control.

Home is where the heart is

I am doing the things I am supposed to do to get acclimated. I have unpacked. We found a new home and signed a lease. I am trying to reach out to old friends who are nearby. But in truth I am still just going through the motions. In my head (and in my heart?) my life is still in New York. I am just not there to live it.

This isn’t to say that I have no friends here. We are very social people and we have been spending time with new and old acquaintances and even some dear old friends. But I think it will be a while before I feel that we fit into the fabric of a social circle the way we did in New York. And certain relationships – best friends, moms and dads, people around whom you build a life – those just can’t be duplicated.  My hope is that, in time, they may be approximated.

I’ve also been doing my best to get out and explore. We have had miserable weather this past week in Seattle. It’s not known for great weather, of course, but a few people have told us that this is the worst they’ve had in the last year at least. So we’ve had to find things to do indoors. While researching things, I learned that one of my favorite authors, Jeanette Winterson, would be doing a reading from her new memoir at the Seattle Public Library. I went and then bought the book. She wrote this:

I have noticed that doing the sensible thing is only a good idea when the decision is quite small.  For the life-changing things, you must risk it.

And here is the shock – when you risk it, when you do the right thing, when you arrive at the borders of common sense and cross into the unknown territory, leaving behind you all the familiar smells and lights, then you do not experience great joy and huge energy.

You are unhappy.  Things get worse.

It is a time of mourning.  Loss.  Fear.  We bullet ourselves through with questions.  And then we feel shot and wounded.

And then all the cowards come out and say, ‘See, I told you so.”

In fact, they told you nothing.

(Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?, 2011 iBook edition, page 98).

And I’ve been wondering, between staying in New York and coming here, which would have been the sensible thing and which the risk?

A Visit to the Aquarium

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A few pictures from our trip to the Aquarium.  (Note: almost all of these were taking in extremely low light, lower than my rusty old Nikon that only goes to ISO 1600 can really handle.)

Sleeping in Seattle

We are here.  After several weeks of finalizing the decision, making arrangements, saying goodbye in a thousand ways to the people and city that we love – not to mention a trip to Disney World – we packed up our life in New York and got onto a plane to Seattle.  With 14 bags of crap.

Being here so far has been a bit surreal.  We are exploring the city, of course, but that makes it feel like we are on vacation.  Well, vacation where we go to Target pretty much everyday.  Even our temporary housing feels like we’ve rented a condo for a week, like we might if we were going skiing or something – especially with a walk-in closet and a fireplace.  Paul starts work tomorrow, though, and I am pretty sure that the enormity of this will hit me like a ton of bricks at some point this week.

Until that happens, though, I am glad that we’ve been having fun.

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