Summer Has Arriven

Just when I consider cheating on the Bay Area with another city, it busts out a weekend like the one we just had. Glorious blue skies and temps in the 80s. It even stayed warm late into the evening on Saturday.

And on top of an exceedingly pleasant picnic at Lake Temescal, a fun and productive foray into front porch sprucing, and some classic neighborhood moments–including a swarm of kids sitting on my porch eating strawberries and watermelon and jumping off the wall into my friend Jennifer’s arms–on top of all that the fabulous weather afforded me an opportunity to bust out my Longs sun hat. Kate, in turn, got a chance to wear a swim diaper. As such, we were both decked out in some of our favorite attire. We were happy as clams, us two.

It seemed that, in mid-April, Summer decided to stop in early for a spell.

For all I know they’re having a fresh snowstorm in Minnesota right now, and Chicagoans are still pulling the hoods of their down parkas up around their faces when they venture outdoors. And God knows it’s pissing rain in PAWT-lend.

All I can say is, “Bay Area, I’m sorry!”

At the Playground

Kate and I were inside a wooden train structure at the playground the other day with another mom and toddler. The other girl took the steering wheel of the train.

Other Girl’s Mom: Where are we going, honey?

Other Girl: To the beach!

Then Kate took her turn at the steering wheel.

Me: Where are we going, Kate.

Kate: Costco!

Clearly I’m taking my daughter on more enriching afternoon outings than that other Mom. But I’d hate to judge her.

Making Space for a Growing Family

Once the mayhem of work died down, it was immediately replaced with an endless stream of household chores based around the displacement of the office for Kate’s Big Girl Room.

It’s been nothing short of maddening not being able to roll up my sleeves and do my fare share of the work. But the half that doesn’t involve lugging heavy boxes, furniture and electronics involved dismantling and re-establishing computer equipment, wireless internet service, etc. So either advanced pregnancy or lack of tech know-how has stymied my usefulness. And turbo-charged with the nesting instinct as I am, this leaves me to just pester Mark, sit and watch, and pipe up with occasional undoubtedly aggravating suggestions.

The whole endeavor has been extremely stressful on Mark, since A) I’m nagging, B) he’d doing all the work and C) he’s wedging it into whatever free time he has on weekends. Also because this process entails adding more stuff to a small house and trying to figure out where the hell to squirrel away the stuff we already have.

Can we jimmy another human into this space–replete with its own wardrobe and cavalcade of gear–and still be able to find our 2006 tax returns? At this juncture, that remains to be seen–though we seem to be close to emerging on the side of success. Everything is still not in its final resting place. For example, all our important (and some not-so important) documents still reside in a towering 5-drawer file cabinet in Kate’s new Big Girl Room. Good to have them at hand for her in the event that she wants to review our life insurance policy, or check out some detail of Mark’s birth certificate on some sleepless night.

And just when you think it’s the adults who are in charge of the house-space wrangling, Little Miss Toddler has to get into the mix. When I recently came home from a long car ride and was making my way to the bathroom, Kate stood in my way. “No use this bathroom, Mama,” she said sternly. “Why not, honey?” I asked, trying to be patient and not sweep her aside as my pea-sized prego bladder prepared to burst.

“My alligator in this bathroom,” she explained. “My alligator need privacy.”

Remind Me Why I Like it Here Again

I swear I’m not sitting around the house wallowing in a sea of one-eyed self pity. But I must say, there is something in the air that’s got me in a mild funk, and I think it’s the growing number of friends who seem to be high-tailing it out of the Bay Area.

Monday the Politos packed their bags and bid SF an adieu after 16 years. School issues, the high cost of living, job stuff and general city-attitude malaise wore down Julie’s will to continue on here. And after a night of discussing whether a move to Marin or some other part of the Bay Area might be the antidote, the idea of Boulder, Colorado leaped to mind, and next thing you know they were on an exploratory mission looking at housing. Two months later their flat is sold, their kids and possessions are packed, and they’ve become our friends who used to live here.

In the time they were prepping for their move, they did what I’m sure I did when I decided to move out of NYC. They kvetched and complained about every element of this place that they couldn’t wait to be rid of. They lamented the public transit, the pushy people at the gym, the school system and the job environment. Granted, they had had a spectacularly crappy year for a number of reasons which may or may not have been directly associated with San Francisco. But at one point I had to sit Rick down (over email) and entreat him to suspend the Bay Area bashing until they were out of earshot from all of us they were leaving behind. Part of it was I didn’t agree with everything they were lamenting, and part of it was I agreed with some of it and just couldn’t deal with hearing it. I wanted to stick my fingers in my ears and drone, “La la la la la la” until they stopped talking and decided not to move after all. (That never happened.)

The thing is, that things don’t suck for Mark and Kate and I here. Mark loves his job. I have a great gig too (when I have two functional eyes and am able to do it, that is). And even though we don’t own our house, it works for us and is in a great little ‘hood with neighbors we’ve come to know and a great library, restaurants and shops just two blocks away. Somehow, the shift just from SF to the East Bay has had an impact on some of the kinds of things it seems were getting the Politos down. People truly seem to be friendlier here. We’re not ensconced in fog. And where SF has an almost weird lack of children–babies, sure, but no kids ever to be seen–we’re in a vertible family wonderland here.

But sometimes, despite all this, I feel like my emotional attachment to this place is tenuous. I think about all those places where successful professionals and their families are living happily in large homes they own, in good school districts and with friendly neighbors. And no one is working 70 hour weeks to sustain the dream. Beyond the fantasy image of this place though, I come up against a roadblock when I try to determine just where this Utopia is. And when you add Mark’s career in the limited magazine realm to the picture, our potential pool for paradise locales dwindles to even fewer places. And let’s face it, New York City ain’t going to solve our real estate woes.

Yesterday I had lunch with a friend, who casually mentioned that he’s talking to some companies in Austin, Texas. He made it all sound like a remote possibility that he’d move–though he did remark on how damn affordable a 4-bedroom house with a pool is there. Despite his downplaying the potential for the move taking place, I could just tell that he is a goner. In six weeks we’ll be planning his goodbye party and Mark and I will be down another dear old friend.

Ah well. If you love them set them free, right? And maybe someday, when the time is right for us, the McClusky family will find our Boise, or Boulder, or Austin or wherever it is that the grass is greener. In the meantime, we’ll be chillin’ here in Oakland if you’re looking for us.

California Re-Entry

Last night Kate and I returned from our nearly 3-week East Coast Tour. We didn’t have baseball-style t-shirts made to commemorate the event, but if we did the backs would read:

Bristol, RI
Harwich Port, MA
Westfield, MA
Chappaqua, NY

What’s great about going away for so long is that you don’t worry about not having time to do all the things you want to do. The down side is that gives you the “we’ve got plenty of time for that” attitude, which ultimately leaves you realizing that you didn’t do as many of the things that you wanted to do because you thought you had so much more time to do them.

For instance, we only got to the beach twice. For shame! (Some of this had to do with poor weather. For all the time I spend longing for East Coast summers, I forget that it rains there a lot, and there are also a lot of overcast days. RI really should consider having a rainy season as we do here. It sucks during it, but it gets it all over with in one fell swoop.) And we didn’t spend anywhere near enough time with friends like Ellen, John, and Story. Kate never had a play date with Danny’s daughter, Jekka. I’d wanted to call my mother’s Polish friend Sophie to introduce her to Kate, and that never happened. And I wanted to maybe visit my mother’s other friend Linda, but no.

I’m sad to report that I also only had Del’s Lemonade once. Tragic. For those of you who have never truly lived–i.e. never had a Del’s–it’s a delicious slushy lemonade that’s native to RI and sold at carts and some actual bricks and mortar Del’s establishments throughout the greatest little smallest state in the union. To be honest, if I’d never had one, and someone served me a Del’s on a cold winter day in South Dakota, I might not think it was The World’s Best Beverage, as I do. But there is something about having one on a hot humid day, combined with the fact that you can only get them at home, and of course the nostalgia/childhood taste memory factor, that make me a rabid Del’s fan. God they are good! We served them at our wedding, in fact–in martini glasses before the ceremony, not the traditional waxed cup.

Which leads me on this stream of consciousness to extol the supremely perfect wedding present my beloved friend John gave us when we were home–a framed Del’s cup. Not just framed though–it’s under this museum quality glass to preserve it, and it’s on maroon velvet. The frame is a thick dark wood, ornately carved. It’s fucking brilliant, and as much as I love owning it, I love that I’m lucky enough to have a friend cool enough to think of giving this to me as a wedding present.

At any rate, I’m happy to be home with Mark and to have our sweet nuclear family together again. But I feel the need to have some great why-I-love-living-in-California experiences quickly to help ease my re-entry into my usual world here. It’s just so damn charming and familiar and comfortable in RI. And the houses are all so old and cool, and the trees are big and shady and there is Dunkin Donuts at every turn and good spinach pies and Sam’s Pizza and funny childhood friends who I still like in their adult form, and of course my family. So you put all that in one hand, and then in the other hand you have our life here and our friends here and Mark’s rad job and the no crappy winter thing, but the expensive housing… It just seems like both ends of the scales weigh in pretty close sometimes.

But anyway, the long visit did give me a good dose of it all. And for all that I’ve complained that I didn’t get to do, I did do and see a lot. The Forta July Parade rocked our world, per usual. This year we were happy to have the Eberdave clan, now featuring Baby Henry, for their second year. And Dana (our wedding photographer) and her great hubby Joe joined in the fun. Words can’t describe how fantastic the parade is, nor how soul stirring it is to be part of the mayhem at the Connery’s. Kate was a trooper and wasn’t freaked out by the excessive people, noise, etc. And this year we boasted four high school bands that stopped marching, turned towards Casa Connery, and played a command performance for us. Four bands! Until you have a huge marching band with horns, drums, cymbals, and polyester-clad teens blast you with song, you won’t know how immensely thrilling it is. God it’s fun.

Post parade day Mark, Kate and I headed to Cape Cod where my sister Marie’s family has a house. We had one night there solo, in which Mark cooked excellent steak on the grill, and then Marie and cousin Nancy came to join in the fun. The beach there is like the Caribbean–blue and clear. It’s not super warm, but it’s no nut-shrinking Pacific Ocean. Ah summer.

After Mark left (sniff!) to return to CA and work, Kate and I went to Westfield to visit my dear dear Aunt Jenny, Mom’s sister, for a night. She is an act of nature. She’s almost 80, and works taking care of old people, if you can imagine such a thing. (To meet her, you wouldn’t be surprised one bit.) She had 18 relatives over for dinner when we were there. The woman makes a ham that could bring a grown man to tears, and she is scurrying around taking care of grandchildren, ironing her grown son’s shirts, and talking smack about the dozens of women who call her daily to chat. Don’t ever ask this woman to sit down and relax. She says she’ll die if she stops, and she’s happy going, so there’s nothing to do but stand back in amazement. At any rate, it was great catching up with her and having her meet Kate, with whom she was smitten.

Kate and I also spent a night in Chappaqua, NY visiting my friend Lauren who was at her parents for the month, but has been living in Hong Kong for nearly 5 years. So happy we decided to make this detour. Despite a hellish drive home to RI after it, our visit was deeply happy-making. Her children are dreamy and her mom is really interesting to talk to at the kitchen table. They live in this super-cool Frank Lloyd Wright community. If we’d stayed another night I would have had my bags sent for and moved in. Again, Kate made a splash. The neighbor came over one day and said she was told she had to see this baby “who is like a model.” Ha!

And for the record, Kate really was an angel for the whole trip. It is such a treat introducing her to people and sitting back and agreeing with the compliments about her cuteness and smartness and sweetness. I keep feeling like she and I have these bonding experiences and they just keep accumulating. I guess it’s that whole “I love you more to-day than yes-ter-day, bah dat da da daaah” thing.

For all the visits and lunches and dinners and gatherings one of the nicest things about our trip was the little routine we had at my Dad’s house. Kate would wake up early and I get her and go downstairs where my Dad was already awake with the dog and doing the crossword. Kate would greet Grandpa and Katie the Dog with a hearty “bye-bye”, then when Joan woke up we’d all go into the kitchen and Kate would sit in her booster seat and the four of us (or five when you count the dog) would each eat different breakfasts. The adults would take turns trying to convince Kate there was food beyond Cheerios she should eat, and Katie the Dog would happily eat any baby food that fell to the floor.

Sometimes with travel it’s about the museums that you went to and the sights that you saw, and sometimes it’s about the little things like finding that great place for breakfast that you go to every morning.