Susan Senator

Feeling so restless. I have not felt this way in a long time. I am reading a book, Sweet Ruin by Cathi Hanauer, very good, very me. The main character describes a subway ride in New York, something I haven't done in a few years:

It cheered me no end, all these different faces and bodies, all the thoughts and lives. I spotted a seat and lurched over, squishing between a plump woman in a red sari and a skinny old -- man? woman? -- holding bags of leafy vegetables. The train screeched forward, and I smelled bodies, sweat and perfume and hot dogs, saw ads for milk and vodka, a plea not to give to panhandlers, a number to call if you've been sexually abused. ...The subway, with its blunt, no-bullshit beauty and ugliness. There was nothing like it in the suburbs. Absolutely nothing.

I want that!!! To be able to write like that and to be able to experience that. My mind starting racing forward, thinking, how can I get that, or some of that? In the fall I'll be traveling to conferences again, which is exhilarating but not exactly what I'm talking about. I'm thinking more permanent. How I loved DC, from the hot, hot weather to the political electricity in the air. Maybe if I lived there I could work for the Special Olympics, or the Washington Post. I've certainly gotten nowhere with the Boston Globe.

But then, there's the question of where would Ned work, where would Nat go to school? What if the school system is not as good? Would I be ruining his life? But what if it were better? The New Yorker actually wrote about one autism family's experience with Montgomery County Schools, which were also in a lawsuit with a different SPED family, that went all the way to the Supreme Court. But I have a friend in Fairfax; maybe it's better there?

Would Max and Ben hate me for making them move?

Or what about my lifelong fantasy, of living and working in New York? I've never done that. Is that never to be? Is that over? Is there no way I can accomplish that? How would I even begin figuring out where Nat could go to school in NYC (Manhattan or Brooklyn)? Where would Ned work?

There's always Philly, where we went to school and fell in love. I have friends there, it's affordable, and a city I love. But, again, where would Ned work that would be interesting to him? Where would I work? The Philly Inquirer? Not so much. Maybe Penn? The Writer's House?

How do people decide to leave a part of the country? By the way, I'm only talking about leaving one part of the Northeast for another. I doubt I could live in the south, as beautiful as it is, or the vast midwest. Or California, God bless it. I'm still totally a Northeaster, just maybe not so much Boston anymore. We are so wedded to Boston, but sometimes, I want a divorce.