Thankful

I'm thankful for so much, really, truly. The obvious: my partner, our health, our kids, our wonderful, generous families, the relative ease of our new life. In this moment of the thanksgiving weekend, finding myself very fortunate, I had various posts in the works about privilege, about family, even--bittsersweet--about the people we have lost this year. But tonight, I find myself thankful for something simpler: a break.

Over the past four years, Thanksgiving has found me pregnant, nursing, pregnant, nursing, and working on top of that. Last year, the holiday break from my day job included reviewing student papers for my teaching job and taking calls about a legal issue related to my Board position. This year, I'm not pregnant, not nursing, and I did not check my work email (for my one and only job) once.

For months, there has been something constantly hanging over our heads. Big things to do, like selling our house, on our own, at the bottom of the real estate market, or planning a cross-country move with two small children; deadlines for work projects; a job search; the rigors of starting a new job (or, for Dave, school). And smaller things too, like choosing side tables for the living room (although, arguably, this took nearly as much time and energy- if not stress- as the former two.) In any down moment or time off, we have been running off somewhere: to visit family, to visit Boulder in preparing for the move, to weddings and to funerals. But this weekend, there was nothing that we had to do. And I remembered what I've been waiting for for ages: that feeling of being settled.

For months, it feels like I have dreamed of a time that I could just sit and read a book. This weekend, not only did I finish the wonderful Pulitzer-prize winning The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, but I read (in two days) the wonderfully trashy Prospect Park West, a novel that both made me glad to have left Brooklyn and sad to have it portrayed thus, a novel that paints many of the challenges of motherhood in sympathetic, if unflattering, light. Reading both a book that educates and illuminates something about the human condition, and one that, in a way, holds up a mirror and asks you to look at who you are: what a luxury to go both places in one weekend!

This weekend, we also saw friends--friends!!--in Boulder, including some neighbors we met at a party (their daughter, about Eleri's age, is "the other Ellery") as well as a friend-of-friends, which feels like an accomplishment in three short (long?) months here.

We enjoyed Boulder, taking Clio ice-skating on a small rink downtown, taking walks in the neighborhood, heading to the playground, and driving this morning to the Children's Museum in Denver. But also leaving plenty of downtime in which, I must say, I really enjoyed quality time with the girls, and quiet time in our house. Last night I started editing the year's photos for the annual Christmas photo book, and I noticed something: all year long, it looked like we were in the midst of moving, and not even most so when we actually were packing up the house. While our upstairs in Brooklyn came together quickly, the main level--where we spent all of our time--never quite did. As much as I obsess over home magazines, love decorating shows, and want to live in a space that makes me feel good, the constant stream of paint chips and half-made decisions in Brooklyn was part of the constant looming to-do list. I don't think I realized this until our neighbors invited us over to see the work they were doing on their home--doing themselves--before they ran off to Home Depot, joking, as they left, that all they really wanted to do was go to the Butterfly Pavilion, a nearby attraction that they have not been able to visit in their few years here, though we have in our few months.

Over our 5 years on 30th street in Brooklyn, we acquired investment pieces slowly- the beautiful solid cherry farm table that Dave's Dad made for us, the Phillipe Starck white Ghost chairs (the largest splurge we've made), the orange rug bought with Amex points- to mix with the "heirlooms," such as the white tufted "boudoir" chairs and 60s cabinet from my grandparents and the Asian armoire (and headboard) from my parents. Every time something new came in, something else felt wrong, had to be changed, and the process felt unending. The process was unending: we never finished it for ourselves, but instead finished it for potential buyers, making choices that were more "neutral," less personal. In the end, there was one bonus to this: when we left Brooklyn, the house had not yet sold, so we left it staged, opening the opportunity to finally (at long last!) replace the no-longer-white sofa that was purchased a decade ago, long before kids were in the picture.

In Boulder, with all the major pieces in place, decorating was just a matter of the smaller touches: new curtains, a dining room rug, a desk chair; I researched sunburst mirrors (for above the couch) and side tables (for beside it) obsessively but quickly, and I love that, 3 months in, I can look around the living room/ dining room and think: done. (Well, almost: I'd like new throw pillows on the white chairs, a yellow leather or lacquer tray on the coffee table, and some glammy frames for family photos on the end tables, but that's all just fun stuff, anyway.)

So let me amend: this weekend, I find myself grateful for the simple thing of having a break, and enjoying it in a house that is itself settled.

How ironic that it is a rental!