LA Bound Again

We are heading to LA for a wedding and to see friends, who are not yet 'old,' but simply friends. I have a calendar full of coffees, lunches, therapy, and dinners. In the midst of all the social whirl, we are throwing my son his 5th birthday party with friends from his preschool. It has been a trip on our calendar since finding out we were relocating to New York. How I feel about going back is still something I'm contemplating. There's no doubt I'm thrilled to see friends, to catch up, and to see my son happy to have a birthday party attended by friends he's missed.

However, I've not yet nostalgic about the city, its environs, by any means. There hasn't been enough emotional distance or time to eviscerate my general antipathy about this place I had grudgingly called home for so long. Yet, I can't seem to fully remove the tentacles of my former life as I meet friends of friends from LA, the ties between East and West becoming significant for other reasons.

So, we will leave this island, something we haven't done since arriving that early Sunday morning from the Vineyard. A jet plane will take us three hours backwards to a land full of sunshine and palm trees. My son is undoubtedly excited about seeing his Tia, his nanny. She is equally excited, having cleared her calendar for our entire trip. This reunion is sure to be a happy one. Our four days will zoom by, my days spent behind a car wheel, muttering about having to drive once again. Then the day will arrive when we will be picked up my our usual driver to take us back to the airport.

For some of our friends, they will convince themselves our move was merely temporary since we have come back so shortly. For others, they may realize how fruitless such delusions as they say 'goodbye' to us yet again. This farewell will, for me, feel more like the real one since I will know it will be a long while before I head westward again.

The quiet of the phone will again signal the end for most of these relationships. Most of the people in LA will now regard us as another family that had lived there but now live in New York. We, our family, will take a place in the New York mythology, a way for people to grapple with the many symbols of this place so familiar to us through the loving homages of Woody Allen movies, yet so unfamiliar and scary for those that have no intimate experience with it.

I hold my breath now as I ready my son for our long journey back. Sleep, such an elusive thing, has been even more elusive the last four days, an appropriate preparation for the emotional stirrings this trip is having on me. I know all of this will settle into a muted strain as I get our bags, our rental car, and drive to my girlfriend's house for a loving reunion. And a loving reunion it will be with so many. I pray it will be so.