(hank in his favorite spot at the new house… in the coveted corner)
HAPPY, HAPPY NEW YEAR friends! i am starting 2025 in a very different place than i began 2024. so much has changed in the last eight months that my head is still spinning and i have been trying very hard to process it all… even though i am a woman, a gender universally famous for juggling children and work and life in general, i have learned that i do not “multi-task” well, which is why i have been totally bunkered down in my new house and new life and not writing because all of my energy has been going into SETTLING.
here are the broad strokes: last fall, after fourteen years in boulder, first husband and i decided to move back to california, specifically, my hometown of berkeley. i am just beside myself to be back home and i am so grateful to first for agreeing to the move. the timing was fortuitous because theo was GRADUATING from high school (i STILL don’t understand how this happened so quickly) and getting ready to go to university and lucy was about to start high school. theo is now at TOO-lane (as the locals pronounce it) in new orleans, and absolutely LOVES it. (of course, we are DEVASTATED by the new years attack - theo was NOT there - and heartbroken for the families and the wonderful city of new orleans that we have embraced with our whole hearts.) theo leaving for college has me feeling all kinds of things: PRIDE and JOY that he ended up somewhere that makes him so happy, but also pretty WRETCHED because i miss him so much. (interestingly, i asked my mom how she coped with the anguish of me leaving home and she said she really wasn’t that flapped! it WAS nearly forty years ago so maybe she just doesn’t remember how destroyed she was or maybe she really was okay - she is “stiff upper lip mid western” while i am gooey feelings everywhere, all the time…) i KNOW that the whole point of raising children is to prepare them to launch, but i could have used a bit more runway. i was so gutted after we dropped him off in august that when we got back i crawled into his bed and tried to smell him… i couldn’t because i was crying so hard my nose was all stuffed up. i cried A LOT for a while - to the gas station man, my builder, my brand new neighbor, my dad… and then, thankfully we had a series of visits: fall break, parent’s weekend, thanksgiving and now winter break. i thought i had accepted his new status as a child of mine who doesn’t always live with me until i took down the christmas tree. somehow packing up all the funny little ornaments the kids have made over the years just gutted me all over again. i MISS being a mother of young children (except when i see a toddler melting down like yesterday - this little, howling kid in a bear hat whose parents were trying to get into the car while managing three other small ones, a dog and all of their fishing gear down at the marina - i don’t miss that at all!)
(theo’s graduation day… WHY we took photos in the parking garage when the beautiful mountains and sky were just outside i am not sure… maybe just too rattled by the whole experience?)
(lucy also GRADUATED… from middle school - the kids just before her celebratory dinner)
(the last hug before we left him in his new dorm… that was a TOUGH day!)
(the long awaited family weekend at tulane…PRAISE JESUS! it started POURING during the football game!)
(we do have more traditional ornaments, but my favorites are these wonky ones the kids made!)
i WAS mollified by the fact that once i got the tree out of the house i could VACUUM up all the needles. tree take down day is the BEST vacuuming day of the year, rivaled only by the clean up of matzoh crumbs after a passover dinner. yes - we celebrate nearly everything in this house (including a raucous TENTH night of hanukkah this year with all of the cousins because we were in different locals for most of the nights. first and theo went skiing in colorado and lucy and i headed to LA where we had hailey beiber smoothies with our dearest friend, mark, dim sum at din tai fung - DELICIOUS, mahj jong with the delightful kaufmans and their incredible dogs and vintage shopping on melrose.) * we are in SHOCK and absolutely HEARTBROKEN by the destruction of the mulitiple LA fires. sending strength and love to los angeles.* the other good part of cleaning up the holidays is i found our abandoned advent calendar that was only one third opened and HANK was in there! i have never seen a cuter chocolate. of course we can’t eat him, but it was exciting to find more treats. i WILL eat the other ones even though i am finally back at my bar method classes after a six month hiatus and i am pretty doughy. after nearly fifteen years (off and on) of bar, i have finally upped my weights from twos to threes (which is PAINFUL, even though my kids still find the threes pretty wimpy - i have been taking fistfuls of advil) in an attempt to combat my dinner lady arms. i am worried that i will give myself a black eye if i swing my arms around too vigorously and my dangling skin smacks me in the face.
(lucy with all of the kaufman dogs: gertie, gus, goldie and grandpa!)
(we went to town - built a town? this year with gingerbread [we had lots of HELP from our wonderful friends, leslie and lily]… unfortunately i didn’t account for the humidity in california that kept the gingerbread softer [colorado is dry as a bone, there is NO humidity] and several of our houses collapsed in “earthquakes.” one house did make it all the way to LA to the kaufmans, but grandpa polished it off in the middle of the night. luckily grandpa was okay after eating all of the building materials and even some of the plate!)
(chocolate hank in a cable knit sweater)
(real hank in a cable knit sweater)
lucy has been a super trooper about the move. she has fully embraced berkeley high (my alma mater!) and has joined this incredible hip hop dance team, is playing volleyball and has a very cool internship with a U.C. berkeley museum. she is hanging out with a lot of interesting new friends (along with her long standing camp pals) and is barting and bussing and adventuring all over the bay area. she is also spending a lot of time with my parents, which is really sweet.
hank has also made new friends. there is a park just one block over where all the neighborhood dogs go around 5 pm for “doggy happy hour.” hank enjoys zoomies with cupcake (a pomeranian), ollie (a chihuahua), hercules (a mish mosh), disco (a small wolf looking guy) and gonzito (another frenchie.) he really likes the temperate nor cal weather and has a distinct prance in his step. he is getting much more exercise and frankly, he looks like a super model!
we are all really happy in the new house and love living “southside” (i grew up northside) because it is so easy to get to the city and the high school and is still only ten minutes from my parents. unfortunately, the house needed a lot more “not fun” work than i anticipated (fences, electrical rewiring, roof stuff, drains - i never thought i would be so excited about a drain but it started dumping rain nonstop right after they were installed and now i am not worried about my house flooding!) but i’ve had a fantastic building team who have been meticulous, efficient and lovely. and now it is all done except the plantings in the garden, which will happen in the spring. we DID put in fake grass in the back yard. we have a HUGE live oak tree that makes so much shade nothing will grow under it. unfortunately, the fake grass is NOT low maintenance (which is typically one of the big benefits of fake grass) because the oak tree drops so many leaves that i have to rake my fake grass with a special fake grass rake. i also have a big blower that is like a bazooka so i use them in combination. i’m learning that i really don’t like raking… i may have to get a fake grass vacuum because i DO love to vacuum. or i might have to enlist lucy - she gave me this gift certificate years ago and i never took her up on it…
i have really enjoyed being my own client for all of the house renovations… i am so EASY to work with! but i am ready to expand my client base beyond myself now and excited to restart my business in 2025. berkeleys - i am so HAPPY to be back among you and look forward to lots of fun in the coming year. boulders - please come visit! we MISS you! wishing you all loads of love and peace… happiest new year! x0x0xx