arrangements

i spent the weekend in portland, oregon. and i realized something.
going back is never the right way to look at it.

old friends. the kind that are more like family than not. what starts as a semi-facetious comment on facebook about going to see lauryn hill. the soundtrack of our entire friendship is set to 'the miseducation of lauryn hill' and to see her live ten years later, together, is the kind of thing you don't pass up on. even though lauryn hill is not the same. and we are not the same. and the music is not the same. and even though you didn't think you expected it to be, you somehow feel foolish. like you were trying to capture something from ten years ago, when you loved with reckless abandon and truly felt as though she sang your heart for you and you were young and living on an island in the middle of the pacific ocean where your feet hit warm water every day and the tradewinds moved through your room. you were trying to go back to bottle a bit of that air and you didn't even realize it.

bryan and i have been toying with the idea of moving to portland. it's just hard to get ahead here in la, you know? although i'm sure it's hard everywhere at any given time and i think sometimes i subscribe too much to the idea that things will be better if i make a change. if perhaps we find the perfect house with a yard and we start a garden, then our children will be happy and we will keep them safe. i'm not sure geography has anything to do with that but i'm sure not counting it out.

life doesn't go back. i am halfway through my pregnancy. and time is going by much faster this time than last. i started to feel bad because i realize i haven't been documenting this pregnancy like the last, merely noticing flutters and taking my vitamins and sitting down more frequently. finn morphed into a one hundred percent little girl in the two days i was gone and i carried on a phone conversation with her that was full of complete sentences. this was the first time i had been away from her, ever. i felt a bit guilty because i didn't actually feel guilty. instead, i slept in until ten am saturday and sunday. i ate brunch at restaurants with a long wait and sat, smiling, while drinking decaf coffee and talking with my sister friend without having to say 'mommy, is talking right now.'

there is no going back. that's why i take these weekends and i brave the airplanes (because i have, in recent years, started to abhor flight travel) and i don't apologize for any of it. i think about moving because that's what it's all about. moving forward, up, out, in. it's about change, always. and finding the middle ground where you can lay your head in between.

it's about realizing that sometimes your soundtrack was fine just the way it was.