Monthly Archives: January 2007

New Jersey, renting

Back in the saddle again…

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We are back in NJ, land of beaches, soft fuzzy pets, and rude drivers. We really enjoyed being home, my only regrets being that I was too tired to visit everyone. I am planning a return trip this summer for several weeks, so I am hopeful that I will have time to visit those I missed this time around.

It was a very calm visit, mostly spent with Mom and Dad and a few others. I had lunch with a good friend/former professor of mine, and have gotten the exciting opportunity to work on several environmental law cases. I am happy that I can work in Colorado from here, it is a rare gift to have a career that allows one to commute from 2000 miles away.

We had a lovely baby shower, lots of friends and good food. Everyone was so sweet and I am so thankful to all for the lovely gifts.

I think we need a different house. The one we are in is so annoying that it is hard to imaging staying in it for long. I believe this contributes to my desire to return to Denver. It is often the small things that make or break an experience. For example, our bathroom door randomly locks itself about half the time in a completely inconsistent manner. Therefore it is often the case that I will reach for the handle to leave the bathroom and find myself locked in. Sigh. Monkey’s bedroom door locks from the inside when slammed. (A fact I discovered during an argument and remedied with a screwdriver and several minutes of cursing.) Our dishwasher turns off whenever you reach for a dish in the cabinet above it, the front door sticks shut, and it’s colder than a cellophane wrapped whorehouse in the klondikes in both bedrooms.

I believe if I lived in a house where none of these things were daily issues, I might find my life here more pleasant. However, there is something about the Rocky Mountains being in plain sight as you go about your daily business. It seems to provide me with a sense of home that is absent in this mountainless land. Maybe I will get a similar feeling from the ocean, or the mass of trees abound here, but for now, I miss my lady in the mountains greeting me each time I leave the house.

Monkeyis excited to get back to school, and I am pleased to be able to return to the office, so there is a sense of getting back to it. Please keep emailing and calling though!! I need to hear voices without jersey accents if I am ever going to avoid getting one myself!!

family, home

Home is where the heart is…

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It’s good to be home…

Coming home means so many different things to me. It means seeing friends and family, visiting old haunts, eating actual southwestern mexican food. It also means settling back inside myself.

I get a sense of calm from being in my childhood home, a sense of belonging that is more complete here than anywhere else. It’s as if this house has seen all of my life, all the parts of me that have come and gone. The ideas and identities I have tried on and discarded along with those I have kept. This house has borne witness to the events that shaped me. It’s walls proclaim my successes, and skillfully fail to mention my failures. It knows me like nothing else.

Coming home to this house is like coming home to me.

This morning Monkey is singing to her Nama in the bathtub upstairs, the washer/dryer is running in the basement, an occasional zipper making a clicking sound against the side of the machine. The furnace is humming a sleepy “wum wum wum”, a sound I associate with cold weather and good books. The air is crisp and cold, and the house is quiet. All these sounds come at from the past and present, heard over and over throughout the years, each one a different step in my personal evolution.

Here, in this house that has housed my family for over 30 years, it is easy to be calm and quiet, to settle into the day and wait to see what comes my way. I don’t feel the need to go make something happen, I am content to simply be.

In our own house I have the sense that I am still building my “new” life, that nothing is quite settled or certain yet. Is that why I lack the quiet feeling of the house I grew up in? Will my new home feel as settled to me after I have been in it for 30 years or is this feeling available only from walls that have seen me from the beginning? Will my children come home to me when they are grown and feel this sense of completeness? When my parents pass on, will I ever feel it again?

There is something magical about having anything in my life that stays the same. Sitting here at the table I ate thousands of meals at, I listen to the furnace noises and remember curling up in a blanket with my brother over the vents on cold winter days. I remember my mother telling me to put some socks on ‘for christ’s sake’. I remember countless christmas and easter mornings, sitting on the top landing of the stairs with my brother, listening to the quiet house and the furnace while my parents dressed, eagerly awaiting the bounty below.

It’s good to be home.

random

The good, the bad, and the ugly part deux…

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Measuring lives is a nasty business. How do you determine what actions are good and what are bad? Granted we all have some basic societal understanding of what those terms mean,(i.e. murder bad, charity good), but we also have disagreement throughout the world as to what is good and bad. For example, many people in our country have said you are a bad person if you voted for Bush, while others have said you are a bad person if you criticize him.

Do we measure someone’s effect on the world through the people they know or the things they do?

I think a little of both, but honestly, judging people through the eyes of those who know them is likely going to produce the best idea of whether they are good or bad overall. That is, if there is such a thing as an over all good or bad person. (Remember, Darth Vader died saving Luke in the end!)

My mom and I used to talk about throwing pre-death funerals for people. We were going through some very painful times watching our loved ones pass on and we were wondering why we all wait to tell the people we love what we think about them until they can no longer hear us.

I still think the pre-death funeral idea is a good one. I would love to be able to tell my parents all the things I would say at thier funeral, and then know they heard it all before they died.

I also wonder what would be said at my funeral, or what the people in my life think of me. I have certainly hurt and wounded people close to me, I also like to think I have helped people. I know I can be petty and small, but also try to be generous and giving.

In the end, maybe the truest answer is that people aren’t good or bad, they are both, and as long as they are trying to do good things, I think I will mark them on the side of good, regardless of whatever accidental, incidental, or simply stupid harm they may have caused.