You aren’t seeing things. I’m on vacation. Not in a relaxing place, not in a clean place, not in a cheap place, just in a DIFFERENT place than where I am every other day. I am away from my dear, sweet and truly beloved family from Friday to Sunday, visiting with old pals in the New York City area, mainly Brooklyn and Queens. I’ve had the good fortune of a kind and cool mother-in-law who was happy to come up from Greensboro, NC to hang with her son and fantastic granddaughters for the weekend. Thank God.
I am away from my daily reality so little that when I go away once a year by myself, for two days (this is the second year it has happened) that it takes about 12 hours to adjust to my childless and husbandless surroundings. I did not sleep well last night, but there could have been a variety of reasons for that. It wasn’t the delicious late-night quesadilla Taggart prepared for me or the tasty beer I drank. I think that I’m really used to my life, and that transition from the usual to the unusual is normal and important, even if it does only last a few hours.
After I was well-fed and entertained, I left Tag, Jill and Mac’s pad in Bushwick, met up with Jerry (of Earth City fame) in the outdoor mall that is Manhattan. There we ate at Pinkberry, browsed a bookshop, sat on a stoop, drank coffee and moseyed on up to Flushing Meadows, Queens, meeting James Bell (of Broadcast Channel You fame) for a Korean BBQ feast. Have you ever been there? Flushing? It is like you’re in a different country. An Asian country. I loved it there and in another life would have seriously considered moving to that neighborhood. But, alas, I moved from New York to Baltimore ten years ago, and there’s kind of no looking back. Unless I become fabulously wealthy and can have an apartment in New York but also live in some other city, a bit more suitable to bringing up children. Though, really, is Baltimore any place to raise the little ones? I do not know the answer to this question. Alls I know is that I’m doing just that, and it seems to be working out OK.
Tomorrow I meet up with Kate the Great and James and Jerry and we’re having brekky/brunch in Ft. Greene, and then I’m off to the Amtrax to return to my family who I can appreciate even more than I already do, at a slight distance, for forty-eight hours. My heart is in a Baltimore row house even though I am in an apartment in Brooklyn. Love is all around. Love.
20 Fingers, 20 Toes 