The three of you who read this blog (thank you, I love you) have mentioned to me that I didn’t write a housing update. This will be short and sweet. We did find housing. It was that last house that our lovely relocation coordinator worked tirelessly to find for us that I wrote about in the Nail biter & Our Superhero post. We were flying back to Brooklyn the next morning at some ungodly hour, so it was this cute, last minute place or a gorgeous villa very far away from Dan’s office, which would have meant an hour and a half commute each way to work.

The home we chose is on the smaller side (Brooklyn friends, don’t be mad, I know this is beyond large in our warped world)—over 2500 square feet vs. the 5000, 5 floor almost-palaces we saw. We are actually under our housing budget—I can’t say that I am often under budget for anything, so this was a big win. The villa is very simple and bright, with a big kitchen, in an expat neighborhood with an amazing community center (a pool for the kids, a room with a climbing gym for them like the Chuck E. Cheese’s at the Atlantic Center used to have, but cleaner), 4 bathrooms and an extra bedroom for all of our American guests (right? please?). Most of the expats in this community are of Indian decent. I did see one white woman in the neighborhood, but I think there are going to be a lot less people that look like us than I thought when I heard the word “expat,” which is great because the last thing I want to do is take my children out of a diverse school to put them in a bubble with other people who are just like them.

It took from the end of February until about a week ago to get the lease signed. Much, much longer process than in Brooklyn. And in India you can request certain things. So we requested a dryer to go with the washer that’s already there, and 2 TVs! How insane is that?!? In Brooklyn you you feel so lucky to get a lease that you suck it up and are happy if there’s a new coat of paint on the walls.

Oh, and although I didn’t post a photo, there is a small backyard, but simple enough that there aren’t any good hiding places for snakes, which was a must for us since there are 4 kinds of venomous snakes that live in Bangalore. And they like backyards, apparently. More on that next time!

After school ice cream break

Toddler Masan at The Chocolate Room after her first movie

Sweet, curious baby Evie

Sweet Mia at Carroll Park last spring

I LOVE my children. Yes, this is the sort of thing people say before they say something scathing about them. (And yeah, it’s veering somewhat in that direction, but hang tight because it’s not bad, promise). I do love my kids more than anything. It took 9 long years to have 3 kids through pretty much every means available. It took 9 years of prayer; loads of painful, annoying, marriage-testing medical intervention; gut- and heart-wrenching, tiptoe through the mine-fields, emotional free-fall open adoption; and the good old fashioned, pain in the ass of 9 (which is really more like 10) months of the morning sickness, bloating, and depression otherwise known as pregnancy.

So they are hard won, these kids. And they are my life and world. Being a mom was the only thing that I really knew that I wanted in this life. I was lonely before they came along—something big was missing. Once Masan got here I could breathe again. However, and here comes the scathing part—the chores necessary with raising small children SUCK! No one told me I was going to be Cinderella without the mice to help me or talk to, stuck in my farthest-thing-from-a-castle apartment in Brooklyn, washing dishes, making beds, folding laundry, dealing with the trash and recycling (which we can only take out to the curb twice a week and takes up valuable square footage in my already teeny kitchen), cleaning up spills and crumbs, making meals, packing lunches, picking up and refolding all the clothes that the youngest has emptied out of all the drawers in her room, etc. OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN for seemingly all eternity. This must be a circle of hell.

Everyone knows the deal and gets the picture—I don’t need to go on and on. I’m not talking about the school field trips to MOMA or the birthday party planning or the playdates—those things are really fun, well….except when the playdate fun ravages your apartment just in time for dinner prep, homework, bath time, and the whole night-time routine. The other kids head home and you are left with your 3 kids inevitably on a sugar-high because you served fresh-baked cookies (from a mix, of course) because you love your kids’  friends and so that you could seemingly be the really great hostess and cool mom—“oh, it’s totally fine that your kid peed all over the floor in the bathroom and my 18 month old walked through it and tracked it all over the carpet,” having to clean up the toys strewn all over, the crumbs mashed into the rug in every room, the sticky juice spilled on the floor, all while trying to get homework done, shove something healthy into your kids for dinner, bathe them, read to them, tuck them in, say prayers when the only thing that you want to do is have a glass of wine, sit on the couch and not move one muscle while binge watching ‘House of Cards’ on Netflix for the next 3 hours before you sleep walk over to the bed and collapse, ready to be up at 6 am when your kids jump on you and start arguing over who can lay closest to you (which is so sweet, but really annoying at such an early hour). And sometimes your husband comes home in the evening just in time to help you handle this nighttime chaos after his chaotic day, but most of the time, you are on your own to help keep this ship afloat. (Sorry, the venting dam has opened and I just can’t stop the flow!) And pretty much every morning the kids are up at 6 am, the husband has already left for work, and you have to get the kids out the door without any help while the baby hits you over and over in the face, obsessed about eating the Trident gum tucked away in your night side table, and homes in on it like her life depends on eating it, and throws herself on the floor when she is denied. Somehow you strap her to your chest, get the other 2 out the door, in appropriate uniforms and wearing backpacks, with even a French braid done for one of them, and by 9 am you are ready to collapse, but you really should take a shower and brush your hair. Or even better, have a moment to write a blog post about it because when you tell your husband all of this stuff, he tells you that you complain too much.

Okay, where was I? My point was that the fun things about parenthood are amazing, but I am slowly turning into a middle-aged, no time to work-out or take care of me, version of Cinderella. So basically, Cinderella with grey hair peeking out of her handkerchief and no babysitter for the ball.

Dan keeps telling me that in 6 more weeks everything will turn into roses and sunshine because we will be in India. He seems to think that because we are going to hire some help that much of what is dragging me down will be done for me. It all sounds too good to be true. Is hiring someone to help me battle the constant air pollution that invades all homes in India going to help me escape my prison of never-ending housework? I am doubtful. I want to be able to see India, to explore with my kids, to make new friends, to experience all that this scary, interesting, foreign-to-me country has to offer. My biggest fear is that I will be trapped inside my “villa” with more bedrooms and bathrooms, but doing the mundane things that I do everyday in Brooklyn.

The walls of the block-long Met Supermarket kitty corner to our block on Smith are now completely gone. There is a giant hole that goes at least 2 stories down, crumbling brick, dust, and debris where we used to get our milk, $10 Polly-O string cheese, suspect organic produce, and whatever other necessities we needed with the Trader Joe’s 5 blocks away was just too far to walk to. The Met will probably be resurrected as a shiny chain, like the Michaels on Atlantic or the Mac store 2 blocks down (both of which I will probably sheepishly shop at).

When I lived on Bergen and 4th Avenue 15 years or so ago in an apartment share with 4 other roommates, someone’s boyfriend and his hermit crabs, my cat Fiona—who ate one of the hermit crabs, and one bathroom (on the block where a taxi yard lives/used to live (?) and an entire 4 story apartment building once collapsed, that still hasn’t given way to the change that’s swept Brooklyn in the past how many years), I would walk from my place to Smith Street down State or Bergen Street–whichever felt safer at that time of day, and once I reached the Met, I knew that I was probably fine. If I had any issues I could run into the store and feel safe. It was like a single-gal-in-the-city-beacon—the familiar bulletin board outside the blackened, dusty automatic doors overrun with old fliers, the smell of kitty litter inexplicably permeating the air of the supermarket, and the two owners taking turns yelling at the check-out gals as they chewed their gum, rolled their eyes and tapped their press-ons on the conveyer belts in boredom.

I had more than a moment of sadness as I passed the hole that used to be the Met on the way to the playground the girls and I named ‘Met Park’ 5 years ago when we moved to Smith. The sadness was exacerbated by the Met going the way of anything old and unprotected in this city, but had begun during a conversation earlier that morning about what New Yorkers love to talk about more than anything else in the world—the rising cost of real estate. My wonderful friend was talking about looking at 2 bedroom apartments in this area with a price tag of $2 million. One bathroom. $2 million. Although I know how outrageously expensive this neighborhood has become, this really pissed me off in a significant way. How dare this city?!? How dare this place change and become unrecognizable and unaffordable to any “normal” (whatever that means?!?) people.

I dug a bit deeper and realized that what I was actually so angry about is not all the wealthy folks who are the only people who can afford to live in MY neighborhood, but the fact that I am leaving and might not be able to afford to live in MY neighborhood when I return. My kids might not get to go to THEIR diverse, free, challenging and lovely school when we get back from India.

As I pushed Mia on the swing at Met Park, with one eye glued to Evie as she ran around in her uniform with her school buddies, I expressed my fear of the return to Brooklyn and the changing neighborhood to a friend of mine who was also pushing her youngest on the swing. And she said simply, “It’s irrelevant.” What? Huh? Wait, stop. Huh? Let’s pause here. It’s irrelevant.

She went on to say that travel changes us in profound ways that we can’t even imagine. She asked me if I had ever gone back-packing for 2 weeks. Uh, not even overnight. Okay, so what’s the longest you have traveled? Maybe 2 weeks when I was in LA after grad school or the 10 days I thatched roofs in the Dominican Republic in high school. Ohhhhh, okay, well, you will see. (Please note that I am paraphrasing this conversation because I am more of a forest person and less of an each individual tree person, so I understand the big picture while not being able to repeat verbatim each piece of the puzzle).

Anyway, that simple gem of wisdom from my wise woman friend has given me such a sense of peace and freedom that I just hadn’t had before. I was trying to keep one foot here while being open to what’s in front of us. And I can’t do that. I have no idea who I will be once I leave India. Everything might change. I’m so excited.

I write this entry as Mia bangs her head against my desk and slaps my leg with her little hand because I won’t let her eat the small metal pieces that attach to a picture frame. The older gals never banged their heads in frustration so this is a first for me (I hope this phase is short-lived, poor Lovie), but I can see where she’s coming from. I can see why this might be a choice when words won’t come and the emotion is overwhelming.

Today I feel like banging my head against my desk also. Instead, I have basically been walking around the apartment in circles wearing my pajamas, trying to figure out where to start with the newest sorting project—what to keep, what to store, and what to ship to India. I have been purging slowly, very slowly as to not startle myself, for weeks (and it’s surprisingly much easier to let go of things than I thought it would be. Some things are easy to give up—we really don’t need that huge bag of candles from IKEA for that garden party we are going to have in that future Brooklyn apartment with a yard. Time to give up that dream. And other things that I thought would be hard to give up aren’t really— having 2 copies of the book we made in 2011 to send out to prospective birth moms isn’t really necessary). But now I need to step up the pace (since we leave in 8 short weeks), and decide what gets stored in long-term storage and what gets shipped to India. Some of the time I want the girls to pick 20 toys each, pack them up, and be done with it. And other times (they like these times better) I want them to take most of their toys so that they will feel familiar surroundings in an unfamiliar place. As I have been told by my dear husband, I can’t make a decision to save my life. He’s right. And I know where this indecisiveness comes from, but I just don’t know how to overcome it right now. I want to make a good, logical decision that makes this move easier and my kids happy.

But since I can’t decide what the strategy for sorting should be, I follow Mia around the apartment as she drops her banana and chewed apple here and there, wiping up the sticky as she goes. And I read a chapter of a book, but can’t concentrate because the thoughts swirl and the guilt encompasses–too much to do to relax. I even watch a bit of Elmo with Mia. Then I decide to take a nap. At least this way the thoughts turn off. When I wake up I feel guilty for not doing anything. So I get up and sort one living room shelf of stuff into give away, storage and bring to India. One small task done and it took ALL DAY LONG.

So what’s the deal with this lack of motivation? Is it denial of the impending move? Resistance? Is it that I had too much to drink last night at the preschool auction and am just feeling sluggish? Probably all of the above, but mostly resistance to the big move.

We had a great time with good Brooklyn friends last night. It was just comfortable and easy and fun. And it’s here, not over there in Bengaluru. Who knows if or when we will make friends. Even if we do, I can’t imagine it’ll be as easy and familiar as it is with these friends. In stark contrast to last night, I had an enlightening experience this past weekend where I was an outsider at an event, and try as hard as I did to small talk, no one was interested in talking to me. It’s one of those situations that takes me right back to the first day of a new high school when the cliques were already formed, the hair had been recently permed (yes, Mom, you did try to dissuade me), the body was that of a 12 year old boy, and I had to eat lunch alone. At this event last weekend, I wasn’t dressed the way that everyone else was, I didn’t talk the way they did, and I didn’t know them. I was an outsider, and couldn’t break in. Of course this brought up fear of my future life in Bengaluru.

One huge thing I have going for me in this move is that unlike high school and the event last weekend, I don’t have to do it alone. I have a husband and 3 kids going with me. And the 3 kids do wonders for breaking ice with new people. The reason that I know so many wonderful people in Brooklyn is because my kids made it easy for me to connect with strangers. Is it terrible that I am relying on my children, especially Masan, to make friends for me? If I could only get them to sort stuff and pack for me.