Coming Home...
And so begins a new volume of life...
Wow, did the jet lag set in after we arrived home on Sunday morning from our whirlwind trip to Newark where we obtained our official visa stamp in our passports, and then spent a couple of days in Manhattan (thankfully, my in-laws live in NYC so we were able to crash in their spare room). We were both completely wiped. I am usually pretty quick to recover from travel, but these three days involved quite a bit beyond getting our visa and initiating our move with the container company.
We spent time with Yoav's parents, we spent a couple of hours at the Guggenheim to take in the Jenny Holzer exhibit. We met with friends for dinner followed by hanging out with a relative who recently moved to NYC (it's been a while since I had double engagements in the same evening). We also squeezed in a lunch with some other friends, and then it was on to some shopping for a few clothing items on 34th Street followed by more shopping for clothes on Fifth Ave1. We also snatched up some OTC drugs not easily sourced in Portugal, and fit in a trip to Whole Foods to pick up some of my beloved French Vanilla Stevia2. We wrapped up Saturday with an early dinner with the in-laws and then a car service to Newark Liberty International for our red-eye home.
When we were flying over on Wednesday night, I said to Yoav that it felt weird that we no longer have a home in the US. It also felt like the end of a major time in our lives. He agreed, and we both shared that we felt totally okay with that... Just a weird thing, not bad, just weird.
Now for a little bit of history...
In 1986, at the age of 21, with only a high school diploma, and after having spent my entire life within a sixty mile radius of Sacramento, California, I packed up two suitcases along with a sleeping bag and $400 in my wallet, boarded an Amtrak to start a new life in Seattle. This was my first extended time away from home, and this was a true test of my adaptability. I'll spare you the details, but let's just say, I was still very wet behind the ears and had no real clue how the world worked. Seattle in 1986 was a completely different city than it is today.
Seattle was grimy and dingy, but it was also a lot of fun. I made friends fairly quickly with outcasts and misfits. As I had long felt like an outcast and misfit, there was a kinship among us. My friends were some of the most creative, interesting, delightfully odd and quirky people I have ever had the pleasure of knowing3.
I wrote that two paragraphs above because I have long seen life as a series of volumes with multiple chapters within. My move to Seattle is what I would consider volume three (volume one being childhood until 6th grade and volume two being 7th grade until I moved to Seattle). I have throughout my life viewed different periods as chapters within larger volumes mostly tied to major moves from state to state or important people coming into and/or leaving my life. As an adult, I have lived in six US states4 and now Portugal, and there have been four very important people who held the highest level of friendship. Two are still in my life, two no longer are.
On several occasions during our time in New York, I said to Yoav that I was looking forward to going home. His response was the same. When we were waiting at Newark Liberty International on Saturday night, it hit me that not only was this trip monumental in our process of moving to Portugal, it was also closing out my volume encompassing my life in Philadelphia over the past seven years (the final chapter being our preparation for the move)
As our Airbus A321-XL (TAP Airways) cruised at 30 thousand feet above the Atlantic, an entirely new volume began to take shape. Much to come in this new volume, but to begin with chapter one... Let's just say it's entitled "Coming Home"
While there remains so much unknown ahead in this new life, we are both very committed to making it work for both of us. There will be challenges and many moments of exasperation, but from that we can only grow as people. As the old saying goes... Without risk, there is no gain.
As mentioned in my post on Friday, I am working on a post about observations. I will try to have it up no later than early next week.
Adeus, por enquanto
ONE MORE THING… I have been receiving inquiries about the fires near us. Not going to lie, living with constant smoke in the air isn’t great, but we are safe otherwise and staying indoors as much as possible. Here are a couple of pics from yesterday and this morning.
When I say shopping on Fifth Avenue, don’t think we are all that fancy… We only went to Uniqlo, and only because I recently learned there are none in Portugal (much to my disappointment). I have been a fan of their undergarments for years.
I picked up four bottles of French Vanilla Stevia at $9.95 each, enough to last for twelve to fifteen months. As I was writing this, I discovered it is available to order in the EU... Only €42 per bottle plus shipping. I have been using this stevia as part of my breakfast for about 15 years. It was only $5.99 a bottle back in 2009. Still worth it for me.
Sadly, the vast majority of my friends from the early days of Seattle are no longer living, including the legendary Isidore Martinez, AKA "Isidore... Is a whore... Is a mattress" (yes, that nickname is very inappropriate, but it was 1987) and later "Aunty Izzy", with whom I was friends well before she became an established fixture in the nightclub scene in the 90s. I had friends who worked on telephone sex lines (remember those?), friends who worked at clubs, bars, adult bookstores, and in home health care. We were truly the misfits and oddballs. Between HIV Aids, drug use (and addiction), hard living, and poverty, most of them just didn't make it in the fucked up world we all came through. I managed to keep in touch with a couple of them until we eventually lost touch over the past decade.
I grew up in Central California, as previously noted, mostly in the Sacramento area, but as an adult I've lived in Seattle, Portland (Oregon), back to Seattle, then to Chicago, followed by New York City, then Philadelphia, and now Porto. Before moving to New York City in 2007, my one and only dream was to live in New York City. I never imagined I would leave my dream city after just over ten years.
I think you are in for a grand adventure!
Great reading! Welcome! When ordering stuff by mail from outside the EU, be aware that (postal) customs can be a huge problem. You may have to pay import taxes (higher than the value/cost of what you are receiving - invoices needed - and even if it is a gift!), you may have your stuff "lost" for months in the postal service dispatch points... Those are EU rules. Same hardship goes for shipping stuff to all EU countries and for stuff purchased from outside the EU. Even Brexit ruined easy sending and receiving mail and parcels from the UK.