Moving Day a Deux

It is day two of the moving extravaganza. I am now truly a high-tech geek, having purchased a portable wireless card for the lap top. Our entire lives are in boxes marked NY1, NY2, or MVY. We have decamped to one of those horrendously bland, corporate apartments across the street from the Grove for the remainder of our time here. All of our nostalgia about our lovely cottage, really a euphemism for a large box with lots of character, has waned with each box being loaded on to the back of the semi-diesel truck. The worst of our sadness was during the last night we slept in our house amid the piles of our belongings all marked for an intended destination. When the packers arrived the next day--I was nursing a bad hangover from the party I attended the night before--we were just insuring our belongings that we would need the first year was going to arrive timely to our apartment, and not be sitting in some warehouse on Long Island. The house, this place that holds the secrets of any house where lives been lived, where tears have been shed, now looks nondescript; its character, really the character of the inhabitants all removed in one clean sweep. It is now ready for its new owners, to make this place their home, to allow these walls to hold their secrets, fears, dreams, and the sadness of any life.

Neighbors have stopped by to say a last farewell, each one promising to call for drinks, which none of us expect to take place. I drove away from this house without a glance back. I don't know if that's what I'm feeling entirely...I will most likely sneak by and peak at it surreptitiously, allowing myself to be sentimental about it all.

We finished this long day, really the culmination of so much work of all these weeks, at our friends for dinner. I've been thinking about how friendships are, in their own way, an issue of timing really, much like any relationship that is about chemistry, attraction, affection, and intimacy. There are some people that you may have crossed paths with at some earlier point in one's life, yet found them wanting in some way--perhaps not exciting, perhaps too exciting, intellectual, too intellectual, too alcoholic, not alcoholic enough, superficial, not superficial enough. The point is, friendships, like any relationship, is as much about when you meet someone as the individual. I only bring this up because in these last two years, I have have met a few women who are the ideal friends--each sassy, funny, smart, accomplished, and tough--for me. And for me at this point in my life. I think about how ironic this is since I've complained about how so few people, namely women, I've met here are truly friends material. Yes, I have ridiculously high standards, but I'm always seeking the types of friendships that you see on TV shows and in the movies. You know what I'm talking about. It's the foursome, threesome or twosome where they get together for coffee, drinks, or a meal and have an ease about sharing of themselves and their lives. And yes, I've had most of that, but I guess I'm always seeking that posse of girlfriends to see you through husbands, kids, divorces, deaths, and face lifts--if one is so inclined. Of course, just as my life was to take such a dramatic turn...I meet a couple of women, who would be the ideal friends for the long haul. In fact, one friend, really such an ideal mate, is someone I just met a few months before my life was to take such a turn.

Anyway, these friends of ours, had us to dinner, all serving to remind me of the loss of leaving. There is sadness, which seems to linger with each conversation, each meal, yet, I can't help but look forward. Again, I am in that place of looking ahead, yet the tug to turn around overshadows any excitement.

I am no longer a true Angeleno with no address or phone number, other than my cell. Yet, I'm not a true 'visitor' since I still live here, have connections here, my doctors, friends, hairdresser, and all those people who help maintain you or your life all here. But like the packing up of the house, each of these relationships, no matter how tangential or relevant, is coming to an end. When I went to my dry cleaners for the last time, I, of course, brought a home baked pound cake. The Korean owner, one inclined to complain about the weather, asked, "This it?" To which I answered, "Yes, this is it." She went on about how the weather in New York is so bad, her concern written all over her pale face. In that one exchange, so oddly intimate, there was a twinge of sadness for me and for her. I'm certain she and her husband had endless discussions about me--how much stuff I seemed to bring in each week--and my 'black' husband, biracial child, etc. But during these five years, we had built a bond. I'm certain my dry cleaner in NY will be Korean, and we will establish the same strange familial cordiality that I had with this one. I'm sure this new one will find my life as fascinating as this one did--for all the obvious and not so obvious reasons. But again, it was the last time I would pick up my clothes at a place so close to the infamous Hollywood sign, the one image synonymous with dreams being made and dreams being shattered.