It's been too long.
But now we're back. And dear, we have missed you.
One week ago we loaded all of our worldly belongings into a moving truck and bid farewell to our gloriously spacious limestone apartment in Brooklyn. It was easier than I thought it would be to say goodbye. For the second time, we left the home in which one of our children was born. We left the borough that we have called home for the past two years, with its expansive neighborhoods and clusters of trains, its promises for families and artists alike, its small neighborhoods and big apartments. We crossed the river, and we came home.
We crossed the river, and we could breathe again.
We crossed the river, and wondered why we ever left.
We drove up the Bowery and into the village. The air was different. The sounds were different. The trees all along the tiny village streets were blooming in shades of white and pink, and when the wind blew just right a shower of petals would fly down upon us and brush over the moving truck. With the truck double parked and the church bells ringing throughout the neighborhood for Easter sunday mass, we unloaded everything into our new home. Nico sat outside leashed to a store gate, watching as her whole world was carried forth into a new home in the neighborhood in which she was raised. She lay on the warm sidewalk in a patch of sun and smiled, as much as a dog can smile. She knew that she would soon be running in the dog parks that she knew as a puppy. She knew that she would join us once again on our all-day summer outings in the city. She was a happy girl.
Gaby and I made a decision together, a few weeks back, to embark on a journey with our family. We wanted to begin consciously living an experience-based life. We had tried the Brooklyn home, the three-bedrooms, the commuting lifestyle, the backyard, and the quiet neighborhood. We had discovered that the grass is not always greener. We had felt out of sorts for a long, long time, and we had worked and opened up to each other to find out why. And when we let ourselves be totally honest, we realized that what we wanted, what we truly wanted, was not in Brooklyn. We wanted to raise our family in the one place on this earth that we loved like no other, the place that had an energy that seemed to beat along with the rhythm of our own hearts. We realized that being in that energy, and raising our children in that energy, was more important to us that any amount of space. We knew that when we were in the village, our life was not about the size of our home or the amount of belongings we owned, it was about walking out of the door and having experiences. And so when the perfect little place seemed to find us and all of the stars seemed to align to allow us to sign a lease on it, we leaped. And we landed in our own little paradise.
Our piles of boxes and furniture, which had been downsized to only about a third of what we had owned a mere few weeks back, surrounded us in our teeny tiny new ground floor apartment. We stood with our children and looked at our new space. We gazed out of their two big bright windows and watched the hustle of our new block, pointing out the different types of dogs walking by and the different colors of flowers on the trees. We would have a lot of work to do in the coming weeks to make our little space into a home, but already, we could feel, this was our palace. This was our tiny palace in the middle of the great big kingdom of Manhattan.
And so with immeasurable joy and gratitude, I welcome the huge changes that spring has brought to us. Life is so magical, and we have so many adventures before us. I'm so happy to be home.
