We made the decision to leave Red State Capital City Suburb when we were in London last year. We really wanted to live in London, but that wasn’t possible, so we decided the next best thing would be to move back to East Coast Big City.
It took us a year to organize the move: get new jobs, sell our house, buy a new house, let the girls finish school. That whole time I was full of doubt. We had such good friends and neighbors; our life was easy and affordable; the girls were so happy. Why on earth, I asked myself nearly daily, were we putting ourselves through this upheaval?
The talismanic moment I used to reassure myself that we’d made the right decision was one cold, rainy Friday afternoon in London. I was walking to King’s Cross on my way home from work, carrying my umbrella, stepping around the puddles, one in a stream of umbrella-carriers and puddle-avoiders, the Euston Road traffic honking and crawling beside us, and I felt perfectly, indubitably, deeply happy. I loved the work I was doing; I loved the place I was living; I was looking forward to the evening and weekend; the rain and cold couldn’t put a dent in my general sense of well-being. It was a completely unfamiliar feeling.
Yesterday in East Coast Big City it was cold and rainy. Late in the afternoon I went out to do some errands and then to the café to work. I was navigating the parking lot by the bookstore and hardware store, looking for an empty space, avoiding the cars coming the other way in the too-narrow lanes, turning my windshield wipers on and off to try and match the intermittent drizzle. I thought of that cold, rainy Friday afternoon in London, and I knew we had made the right decision.
Though I would still move to London in a moment. Even today.
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