The post-holidays, post-birthday, post-celebration blues have set in.  There was so much to do leading up to the move, so much to do and see as we floated across country, so much to worry about as we settled in.  So much to organize, to distract, to try to keep normal, to put on the list and check off, to put on the list and forget.  The days were frantic even as I tried to stay calm and even.  And the work at home, with the kids, with work, with everything kept coming, and so I didn’t have time to sit with my thoughts and think about anything.

And then I did.  And I wish I hadn’t.  Because the over-riding thought is “What the hell was I thinking?”.  Seriously, what the hell was I thinking?  I long for my home. 

Let’s put aside what my rational mind knows — my professional opportunity is a good one, and I am only just beginning. That there’s no way I will feel connected, or rooted, or even close, anytime in the next 6 months.  12 months even.  Maybe even two years.  That my sadness and longing for home is inevitable, even if this place I’m at now proves to be home in every sense of the word.  And only time will tell.  Let’s put aside the sun — the weather woman saying “Today is a cooler day, with highs of only 75 along the coast, 81 inland”.  Let’s put aside not having to fight with my kids about wearing anything but shorts, dresses, and flip flops (at most).  Let’s put aside my very natural, very light, highlights that make me as naturally blond as I’ve paid to be the past 17 years (the math there is depressing and I dare anyone to guess how much getting good highlights in NYC adds up to over nearly two decades). 

Let’s put it all aside because my heart is choosing to totally disregard reason.  And there’s a great big void for Brooklyn, specifically, but dare I say, all of NYC.

I miss Union Square.  Finding parking on 13th Street every Saturday, spending an hour plus at the best dance studio that exists anywhere (if you think dance studios are a dime a dozen in Los Angeles, think again).  Feeling the hardwood floors that have been moved on and tapped on and jumped on and spun on.  Seeing dancers from 4 years to 50 years come in and out, celebrate, move, create, teach, inspire.  Watching little souls come alive with music that vibrated. Then walking down 14th street, full of activity, to Union Square.  Into the Farmer’s Market, the chess players.  The gatherings on the steps.  The pigeons, the squirrels, the chatter.  The sun bathers, the tourists, the locals, bantering and talking and staking out benches for talk and picnics and people watching.  Finding the musicians playing piano, guitar, banjo, ukelele, washboard. Hearing their songs, watching them play, giving applause.  Sitting on the steps of the playground, keeping track of 3 little heads attached to brown bodies.  Surrounded by people and not talking. Or surrounded by people and talking.  Leaving feeling the same way either way – like I had just spent the afternoon with old friends, even if I had known no one.  Imagining getting a sitter to have drinks a stone’s throw away, dinner at one of the 100 spots right next door. Sipping an iced chai latte (I have not had one since Brooklyn, habit stopped) while the kids fell asleep driving back over the Manhattan Bridge.  I miss Union Square.

I miss the Brooklyn Museum.  Sitting on the steps, watching the water fountain shoot uneven streams up in the air.  Seeing people come and go, in and out, talking about the aesthetics, about the exhibits.  About the First Saturday parties.  Finding spots underneath the trees to retreat from the summer heat, or in the glazing blast of the Fall sun on the wood steps.  Stepping inside to hear the echo bounce off the statues, the shuffle of feet on marble floors. Imagining minds broadening just by being near the Museum, its myriad exhibits, its energy.  Watching joggers run past — to the west, to get to Prospect Park.  Black, white.  Hasidic Jewish women in wigs and skirts, running. Men from Nigeria, 110 pounds wet, running.  Men pushing strollers, running.  Women pushing strollers, running.  Heading toward the Prospect Park loop, along tree lined Eastern Parkway.  Massaging the dollar in their hand that will buy them water on the way out.  Stopping and stretching on the inviting steps of the Brooklyn Museum, next to the glass doors of the atrium. I miss the Brooklyn Museum.

I miss living in the condo that we own.  Knowing each scratch on the wood floors are from us.  From Butter running to say hello to us at the door.  From Deucey jumping up for a treat.  From moving new furniture in, from letting the kids test their scooters out inside when they got them for Christmas.  Sun beating down through the skylights that made me want to buy on the fourth floor, no matter what work the future might entail with 48 steps to climb each day, no matter what.  The arizona tan on the walls, the sag harbor green in the bedroom, the gelato paint in the bathroom.  I was meant to have a house painted gelato.  I miss the scribble, left by Gemma, on the doors that the Magic Eraser couldn’t even eliminate.  I miss the white wainscoating in the kids room, small specs of red near each bed where they’d hide their wall art habit.  Climbing the spiral staircase on the outside, where the step was the widest, and seeing my decorative storage boxes faded from the loft windows and their endless stream of southern sun.  Redecorating the living space 3 times over, trying new looks, making new lives.  Seeing, but never hearing, the planes fly overheard to La Guardia.  My neighbors who were all perfectly diverse, a perfect little microcosm of Brooklyn, bringing all walks of life together under one roof separated into 8 with a backyard. 

I miss my friends. I miss running into 1000 acquaintances every day, never knowing which friend I’d bumped into.  I really miss my neighborhood friends.  

I miss having a library walking distance that had more than just books.  A library that had tables outside, concerts inside and out. Story times and craft centers and a cafe.  I miss the best library I’ll likely ever know.

I miss not being the only mom that works.  How do moms in LA not work? I know some work, I know (I work with them!). But not on my school drop offs.  Not on my class volunteer sheets that only require volunteers from 12-2 every day.  Not in my kids’ school yards.  I miss not knowing every parent of every child that my girls and my boy go to school with.  I miss getting to pick my girls up from school every night, the 5:58 rush hour to make it there before 6.  The slow departure, with the other kids there until the very last minute, refusing to go home even after 9 hours of school, wanting to eek out a few more minutes running on the ramp of the recently vacated restaurant on the corner.  Shouting goodbyes at intersections as we departed north, south, east, west for the 2 block walk home. I miss my kids walking by Dee’s Pet Store every day, admiring the owner from afar, bonding with him over a mutual love of animals.  I miss the bodega owners letting each of my kids pay and say thank you, no matter how long it would take to let each one pull out his own money.  And I hated the bodegas when I lived there.  I miss them!  Life is funny that way.  

I miss people being fashionable and healthy.  Ironic, huh. I’m in LA, where the world is skinny and celebrity fashion originates.  But somehow I’m missing it.  Outside of work – and my kids school yard (where 85% of people are as hip as hip can be) – I’m not seeing it.  I didn’t even realize until this very second that I cared one bit about fashion. (Nor did I realize that I’ve been anywhere except work and dropping my kids off at school, but that’s part of the story that I have to figure out another time.  What I’m saying is still true even if the facts aren’t fitting together).  

I miss walking.  I miss passing by other people walking when I’m walking.  I miss running in Prospect Park, and along the West Side Highway.  And city runs over the Brooklyn Bridge at dusk.  I miss running by the Barclays Center, in awe that it wasn’t always there, that some people didn’t want it there.  I miss the sidewalks being layered with memories.  My memories, others’ memories.  My sidewalks here don’t even have their first layer, they feel too fresh, too unused.

I miss having the world – quite literally – at my fingertips.  To be able to brush little bits of that world onto my kids by just opening the door.  What falls onto my kids when I open the door now isn’t quite as broadening, it doesn’t quite expand them the same way.  Remember, I put aside the rational — which includes that I know there’s plenty to be found in LA.  I’m taking them to the Getty Museum this weekend rather than the beach, where I’ve seen just one (thousand) too many strung out and high, leathered from the sun, crazy not because the weight of the world and the heaviness of a city overpopulated with ambition and challenge but because they have done too little.  (Yes, it is true, I’m judging the crazy people I see in LA vs. the crazy people I see in NYC, and today I think the NYC crazies are more valid in their right to be crazy and lost and over the edge. On another note, maybe I’m not meant to live by the beach despite how much I love the water.)  There’s plenty more places I want to take them – museums and neighborhoods and spaces.  But it’s not just all there when I open the door.  

I miss everyone knowing my face, if not also my name.  I miss people sitting on their stoop and watching their community do whatever each person did in a day.  I miss people living a bit outside, even on 100 degree days and even on 30 degree days.  I miss not feeling invisible each day.  I didn’t feel quite so invisible before.  And I turn 40 in less than a week — less than a week! — and now I feel invisible and I’m wondering what the hell was I thinking?  This timing is not good.  Three months ago I had no crisis, now I’m having a mid-life crisis.  There is a crisis and I’m turning 40 — very unfortunate timing!  When I’ve thought about a mid-life crisis — others’, not mine, as I’d never contemplating having one — I never realized that you could have one just due to really bad timing.

So I’m left with this feeling of longing.  For Brooklyn, for being known.  For being visible.  For being rooted and being home.  48 days after arriving, and 6 days before I turn 40.  

F*&*.