Ars Longa, Vita Brevis

I am always a little bit homesick after visiting the city. I feel that way after I go back to Texas, too. It's not that I want to live in NYC or in Houston again, but that I have a bittersweet nostalgia for all that is good and a selective blindness about all that is not. We chose to live in the 'burbs even before there were kids, wanting a home, a yard, more space, a slower pace, at a price we could afford. But then we were both commuting into the city five days a week and enjoying all of its charms and few of its hassles. Then for a bit, Mama alone commuted while I was at home with the babes and I could feed off of her city energy and enjoy things and tales she brought back. Now, of course, she has a much easier commute and I like having her not-so-far-away, but I miss the city.

(My one Connecticut joke: do you know what they call people from Connecticut? Connecticutters? Connecticutians? Connecticutites? No. Commuters.)

We want to raise our children here in Connecticut, where the laws support our family as does the community of which we are a part. I had a suburban childhood and loved it, wanting that for them. And with mommies with a familiarity and love of the city, the kids will have the best of both worlds, especially with grandparents still in Queens. At least we are going to try to go down regularly, knowing that as life gets more hectic and scheduled, visits will probably be fewer and farther apart.

I wish there was a way that I could easily do that with my career, the other thing from yesterday's visit for which I still yearn occasionally. Like living in NYC, working takes on an afterglow when you aren't actually doing it. Long meetings with curators who can't explain the exhibition for which you must program? Budgets that don't allow you to do what you dream of? Audiences that don't show up? All that email and voicemail and still more meetings? No, I remember the great tours and the packed lecture halls and the crisp new brochures and the comrade-in-arms colleagues and the engagement with art and scholarship. I'm homesick for my career. But I can't have that for 2 hours twice a week, or even next year for 2 hours three times a week--especially because I only want the good parts, not the annoying ones, which is why I haven't tried too hard to find something professional to do just yet (to the disappointment of my professional friends, those without kids). Just as we wanted to live in the burbs, we wanted a stay-at-home-mom for the kids, someone totally focused on and available for/to them in these early years (not to say that work-away-from-home moms like Mama aren't totally focused in a philosophical way on their kids, but there isn't the same kind of present-ness/presence. And believe me we talk about it. We're like the "Blue and the Grey"--or was it "North and South" with the split family?-of the Mommy Wars. It's Reconstruction here now. Except no one won and no one lost). And just as I'm not ready to sacrifice my community here for the city, I am not ready to sacrifice my SAHM-ness for my career. I want it all, know that's not possible, and am just a little down right now. At least, with art and the city, there is always something to go home to.