goodbye Brooklyn, goodbye

Pardon the ugly looking blog. I am messing around with it. Its temporary. I hope.

Yeah, we moved. Out of Brooklyn. The kids have their own rooms, we have a playroom and a friggin dishwasher, and about 5 cars drive down my street every day. And I have a yard, front and back and the house is really, really awesome. A few neighbors came and rang my bell to introduce themselves. Another 5 or so introduced themselves out front while we raked on our front lawn and the kids helped fill the leaf bags. The block is lined with huge sycamores and the back yard has a dogwood tree and a big, big pine tree. Tonight Jack asked us what that beeping noise was. It was crickets. We no longer live in the flight path to LaGuardia, white noise decent every 2 and a half minutes. Our elbows no longer hit the sides of our bathroom wall when getting dressed after a shower. We can make all of the noise we want, there are no downstairs neighbors to complain. No downstairs neighbors smoking pot or cooking steak-um’s or burning some fish thing one girl made once a week. No creepy neighbors, no yapping dog at 5:30 every morning. We get to paint the walls any damn color we choose. Its ours (and the bank’s). A place that belongs to our family, and will be inherited someday. I have been so overcome with emotion over the last few days. Watching my kids ride their scooters up and down the block or playing in the backyard. This is where they will grow up, and I am so thankful to have landed here and be able to give them such a nice home. Ruby rode her bike all over with her friend today. She has never done that outside of Fire Island. We all sat together at the dining room table. We couldn’t all fit in our kitchen in the old apartment. There was some great stuff about living in Brooklyn. Mostly the friends I made. Socializing at the playground will be something ill miss. All the other parents with the same look on their faces, they had to get out of the house with their kids. And Ill miss the Greenwood Cemetary, and Prospect Park. But thats it really. Its funny, after ten years and huge part of my identity wrapped up in being a Brooklynite… I am older now, and want different things for myself, some quiet and some community and a good school district. I will not make my kids sacrifice to fulfil some need of mine to cling onto Brooklyn pride. I am not twenty or thirty anymore, wanting to be in the middle of it all are down the priority list. I just don’t care about that anymore honestly. I never thought I would think this way… but I could care less about Brooklyn. Ive done it, ten years of it. And I have sacrificed a lot to be there. I am just ready to move on. Ill see some of my Brooklyn friends over the next couple of weeks. Ill have to make the effort to stay in touch. We have some friends here too. Lots of drop by’s this week. Its been nice. Our fridge has a lot of champagne in it. (pancakes and mimosas?). Its a huge life change. Already I feel so much calmer. There is so much we want to do to this place. There are four rooms of Ralph Lauren dusty light yellow, and bedrooms with muddy floral wallpaper, a spiral shrub, and some tacky gold fixtures. But nothing major. OK, the grand to fix our chimney aint cheap. But it will so be worth it this winter snuggling up in front of the fireplace. We have many years ahead of us to make the place ours. It already is starting to feel like its ours. I never thought I would have a place so nice. I am so grateful that life has sent me this way and that I am here at this point. I am a lucky girl. And 30 minutes to Manhattan!