Moving on, Two Years On

Two things are happening.  First, we are moving to Munich.  Second, it is the 2-year anniversary of the debacle otherwise known as our wedding.  I won’t share that particular story here, though it—in all its disastrous glory—is always a crowd pleaser.  But the marriage/moving combo brings up a lot of familiar feelings.  As I sit here thinking about the past two years, I have to wonder why I’ve only recently felt the desire to write.  Maybe because at my job I work entirely alone, and that draws you inward.   Maybe because for half a second, as I struggled to adapt to life abroad, I was scared I had lost myself… perhaps to be found again in the written word.  Whatever the reason, the result is that when I reread my own words, things tend to make more sense.  Those themes: coming, going, loving, leaving, missing, searching, rising above—I read them and understand them more clearly than I even remember feeling them at the time they were written.

I want to commemorate this day appropriately, but I don’t know what else to say than that.  So… I’m pasting a bit that I wrote a few months ago when I was toying with the notion of writing a novel.  The idea of writing a book based even loosely on my own experience is dead (hence the blog), but the last section of the prologue recaptured a certain time and place.  Per definition, the story is not true (no, really…!), but there again are a few of those crazy themes that pop out whenever I sit down at my computer…

With that, the backwardly married couple crossed the threshold backwards and abandoned their Midtown jewel.  They were defying the age-old tradition—set forth by at least one generation—of moving to New York to find excitement and love, followed by a hunt for the primest piece of real estate allowed by budget and market.  The anti-climax of marriage, often a mere byproduct of the real estate transaction, would eventually ensue.  Folks who complete this most basic of exercises in precisely the reverse order—a disorderly order that begins with marriage, followed by moving out of the very residence that should have been their sole source of happiness—are definitively backwards.  And surely it is only a disoriented pair who would then, to top it off, search for fulfillment in another city, a foreign city that has neither Hudson nor real estate, Fifth Avenue nor Barneys to recommend it.

The backwards couple waved goodbye to the movers as they climbed into a mud-splattered black Lincoln.  As the car pulled away, Adrian suddenly leaned across Michael’s lap and rolled down the window.

“Thanks a lot, fellas!” she shouted.  “If you’re ever in Budapest, look us up.  You know the address!”

To everyone reading this, if you’re ever in Munich, look us up. And happy anniversary to my ever-loving, truly amazing husband.  GGG.

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Tagged as: moving, Munich, New York City