ON LEAVING NEW YORK / ON MOSCOW, THE SEQUEL

Nestled low among the rolling hills of northern Idaho lies a tiny little town surrounded by wheat fields. 

Six hours from anywhere, in the middle of nowhere, the town was called Moscow. 

(Rhymes with Costco.)

This is the story of a girl with no home.

--or--

This is the story of a girl whose home is everywhere. 

Moooooviiiiing to Moscowwwwww. What is there to be said about moving to Moscow.

I think we've seen this episode already?! We've already done this once, right down to the tiniest detail, and it goes so beyond deja vu. It feels like time travel. It feels like bizarro worlds colliding. It feels like when you dream that you woke up and got ready for school, and then you really wake up, and you're like, oh man, again?? It feels like we are being given a mulligan, like we're just re-doing our Moscow time from the first time around, the first time twice, only this time the details are just a little bit different, and most of it is much much easier. 

Por ejemplo.

Instead of moving here from Brooklyn to go to school, we are moving here from Brooklyn to teach at school. Con mucho paycheck, gracias and cha-ching!

Instead of moving here from Brooklyn with a neurotic terrier named Pan, this time we are moving here from Brooklyn with a four-year-old named Huck. (Though really, exactly the same thing.)

Instead of moving here from Brooklyn Heights, this time we are moving here from South Slope! SO MUCH DIFFERENT. lol.

Everything here is precisely the same as it was the first time around, and yet nothing at all is remotely the same. I can't put my finger on it. But the Wal Mart is now a Super Wal Mart and there is no Miley Cyrus line to be found. 

***

I keep thinking about how the last time I held my baby as he slept through a long R train ride home was the last time I'll ever hold that baby sleeping on a long R train ride home. Just two weeks ago. Huck had fallen asleep on his hard orange bucket seat with his head on my lap and his long legs straight up in the air, resting against Brandon's shoulder. So I scooped him up by the armpit (he's getting so heavy!), placed one long leg on each side of my lap, and then I gently rested his head against my neck, like we do. Subway Sleeping Position, TM. I let the rocking of the subway train move us from side to side, and ran my fingers through his hair. Just like always. Just a mom and a baby swaying with the rhythm of the city, just one last time. It breaks my heart just a little. At the same time, I don't think I need it. 

***

I sat at the gate at the SeaTac airport last week with that same very-sleepy Scorpio, just one week later, his heavy head knocking against my clavicle as he bounced in and out of falling asleep. We were waiting on our final connection, a puddle jumper of a plane that was about to traverse the entire state of Washington in just under an hour, with a free glass of wine, they told us. I've decided that's strategic. They have to lube you up first. It's the only way to bearably leave all of civilization behind like this, to come to the middle of nowhere, to this Bermuda Triangle of nonsense and wheat fields and cows, where time stands still and nothing is real and it takes six hours to get to anywhere worth being. 

Perhaps Moscow is like the Hotel California? I'm starting to form a theory on this. You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave. I keep wondering, did I never really leave? Were these last five years all a dream? Is this the Matrix?

Maybe it's more like LOST. This makes me the Kate, yes? Not the doctor lady, please. But would that make Brandon the Shepherd or the Sawyer? Good crap let Brandon be the Sawyer. Only but Brandon is such a Shepherd. Sigh. Oh hell we are so stuck in a total time loop here. 

***

I think what I'm going to miss the most about New York City is that feeling of pure, sweaty, blissful exhaustion at the end of a long day. Basic stuff is harder out there. Satisfyingly hard. You work for it. The way the dry cleaning bag clings to the skin on your arms when you're carrying it home on a over-warm evening in the middle of June. The walking. The schlepping. Already I miss the schlepping.

But WHY are the parts that hurt most the best part of city living? Like, crying in public. Why do I have the fondest memories of stepping in gross puddles of gutter water, and not of bike rides through the park? Weird.

***

For a while I found it all quite humorous. I really enjoyed my weird emotional detachment to the situation. People would ask me if I was excited to move or if I was going to miss New York City, and I'd sort of shrug at both and say "sure," like someone had just asked me if I was okay with Pepsi instead of Coke. 

***

Being in New Orleans for the week (post on that one in the works), that really helped. It made a nice break between the sadness of leaving and the sadness of arriving, and it gave everything such a surreal feeling, like all of this was just another extension of vacation, just another airport, nothing permanent, nothing real, until, that is, I glanced at a face at the airport in Seattle that I thought I maybe recognized. And then shit got rill.

Do I know him from work? Instantly I'm doing all my best memory searching. Or maybe I know him from church? If I know him from church, he's probably noticed my knees, and that my shorts are a few inches more above them than they were the last time I was here, and oh brother, will this be awkward? Is he smiling at me because he knows me? Should I remember his name? Or is this an example of 'This Isn't New York Anymore,' because people here are allowed to smile at strangers, and oh gosh, of course! That's it! The people here just haven't been trained the way I have to never make eye contact with strangers! And that--that right there--that's when it hit me. That 'This Isn't New York Anymore' feeling, that's a doozy. And not only is this not New York anymore, but now it's also the Palouse, instead. It's Schweitzer again. It's that place and those people and that culture that I nearly let bury me alive last time. I only barely escaped from by clawing madly out of the mud with the dirt under my nails and it didn't need to be that way, and I won't let it be that way again, only but what if it is? And and no, I really do think that I know that guy from somewhere.

Once the dam finally broke it broke good and clean. And I needed that. You have to let that sadness out before you can replace it with reality. Uncontrolled sadness purged out of every inch of me that night and thank the heavens. Once the tears came they didn't leave for hours. I was so grateful for that full head of Huck mullet to hide behind, and later for that dark plane and the roar of the engines to hide behind. And then I decided to be SO. MAD. at BRANDON. INSTEAD.

Anger aaaalways feels better than sadness or confusion. Keep that one in the back of your pocket for later. ;) and then it was over, and hope and excitement elbowed it's way in, and now I have a hard time really remembering what about this move made me so sad to begin with.

***

Here is what it is like in Moscow right now:

Anytime you go outside you immediately sneeze three times. I forgot about this! I'm allergic to practically the entire planet out here! Also your lips super get chapped at just about the same time every evening. You can set your watch by it.

Our old house on B doesn't even feel remotely mine anymore. Brandon is heartbroken that the new owners haven't kept up the landscaping, I'm surprised I didn't hate living on the corner of a busy street like that.

The mornings here are chilly, the nights are cold and crisp. It's beautiful. You pad around the house in your slippers and the floors creak in spots and the tea kettle starts to whistle and it's exactly what you always wanted in your life. The afternoons get hot and dry, it feels like what I imagine it feels like to be a cookie. The sun bakes hard and all the world smells of stubble burn in the wheat fields. It's pretty close to divine.

My favorite sandwich shop closes at 3. There's an antiques shop I keep wanting to visit that is only open three days a week, and I can never remember which three days those are. They're not logical days for being open, either. Another shop has a sign that says "OPEN SOMETIMES." I find this rather delightful.  

Brandon walked into the kitchen of our rickety farmhouse our first day in town after poking around for a bit and announced, "I AM SO GLAD WE DIDN'T BUY THIS HOUSE!" But that is only because he has NO IMAGINATION.

I waver between thinking this is the most natural thing we could be doing and that this is the worst idea anyone has ever had, ever, and I can't do it. There is no way. This is asinine! This is five steps backwards. This is me giving in too easily and not putting my foot down, and this is going to kill me, this is straight up going to kill me, and oh my gosh how did we ever leave this town, this town is amazing! This town is FANTASTIC. I love it here so much. Oh my gosh this was a really great decision. I am so glad we are back. Let's never leave!!

***

I looooove my farmhouse. Luh-huuuuuve it. I couldn't love a farmhouse more, it'd be impossible. It has apple green shutters, and gables! It has green on its gables and so I am calling it Green Gables, don't you even start to argue with me. 

***

It has been dawning on me slowly that I am going to be back on the hook for nightly dinners again. Unfortunately for all, successful implementation of a nightly home-cooked dinner is going to necessitate me calling it "supper," and probably I need a bell for nightly ringing, that's just how it has to be, there's no point in fighting it.

(Pause here for a moment while I envision myself as the lead in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, sacrificing all my pride and dignity for the sake of a husband, and reading bible verses to boys wearing long johns.)

(Heehee that is an amazing thought!)

***

Jazzy, or Tucker, or maybe it's Bonita, I'm not sure, but at least one of those old horses is still kicking around over there at that farmhouse on D. While stroking that velvety nose the other day, it struck me that this is what I was always meant to be doing, of course. Not hoofing it up the stairs of a dirty subway station, as much fun as that's been, but this. This is where I belong. And I know I've always known it, though it's also somewhat confusing. Does this mean I failed at the city? I don't think so, is that even something you can do? As if success in the city is some kind of value statement. Why would success have to mean staying forever? And seriously, who cares? Maybe all those people who go on and on about how great the city is and how much they love love love it there, and how they're proud that they live in such an amazing city, maybe they're all totally full of it.

. . . . No, definitely not. But maybe.  

And I kicked ass at that city, let's be honest.

*** 

What it really comes down to, I think, at the end of the day, is this:

Home is wherever you fight like hell for. 

This time that fight will be easy. And me, I got my war gear on.

It closely resembles a trucker hat.