I.O.U.

I’ve been trying to find the time to sit down and answer the questions you asked in your last post, Elizabeth, but with Steve away, life has been a bit of a yard sale in our house this week. So here goes:

a few of the things that make Santa Fe home 

How did I know not to move back East once I started having babies? That’s easy. By the time P was born, I’d lived in Santa Fe for 13 years. Even though my family’s not here, it felt like home. Way more home than my mother’s house in Connecticut or my dad’s farm in Virginia. The home where I’d grown up in New Jersey was long since sold; my one set of parents are relentless nomads and real-estate junkies, moving to a new house every few years. The others are nesters: putting down deep roots on a farm that I love but have never lived on full-time. I’m a little bit of both: The wanderer in me came to Santa Fe 16 years ago, knowing no one and having never set foot in the state. It was supposed to only be for the summer, but three months turned into one year and so on and so on. I love the mountains and the shabby adobes and the way the high desert opens up to the west, all the way to the Rio Grande and even farther, on a clear day, to Mount Taylor and north to the purple hump of San Antonio near the Colorado border. I love my friends, many of whom I’ve known since the early days, when we could stay out late drinking margaritas and get up early to ride our mountain bikes. 

There was never really a precise moment when I had to decide, OK, I’m staying. I just stayed. And, even with two young girls, there still hasn’t been a moment. Sure, I sometimes fantasize about leaving—moving to a real mountain town like Telluride or a place with better schools like Bend or some place old and reassuring and familiar, like Vermont, but it’s hard to imagine chucking it all and starting over some place new. So we compromise. We travel. We go home. We spend part of the summer with grandparents in Canada. And when we grumble about the effort and expense it takes to get there and back, I remind myself that we could make a conscious choice and move back to be closer to family. But we’ve built a life here. It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty great, and it comes from the best place of all: love. Go easy on yourself: You chose home, just like I chose home—they just look different. And don’t worry. Santa Fe isn’t going anywhere and neither, for now, are we. 

OK, next….How do I request something from my child when the first request goes unheeded? Hmm, that’s harder. I guess I rephrase with a choice. “You can get your pajamas on now by yourself, or I can help you.” I try to make one choice obviously fun and enticing. “You can jump into your sleep sack or I can put you in it.” Then I throw in a little redirection for good measure: “Show me how a lion would jump into the sleep sack.” That usually works. If it doesn’t, I probably break down and threaten something mildly unpleasant: “If you don’t get into your sleep sack, we won’t have time to read a book.” I let it be known that I don’t want to say the same thing over and over. Distraction works, too: “Maybe you can put some lotion on your belly in the bathroom.” It’s nothing very clever but I found it gets us through the sticky points. For now.