Lavender Bitters, Plum Ginger Gin Cocktails, and Band of Bitters

Here's the thing...

We are terribly alone right now. We are far away from our old friends, the people who helped us know who we are.

We watch documentaries on Netflix streaming. They all take place in NYC. This, maybe, isn't the best form of entertainment choice.

Our house in NJ is trying to destroy us for leaving it. Then there was that hurricane that stopped everything in the real estate market in the northeast. Acts of god are not welcome. We are doubtful and hopeful.

And with a mortgage. And rent. We are squeezed so hard it's making us squirm to catch our breath.

Two months after moving into our rental house, we finally hung two pictures on the wall. Both in the girls' room they share. One is a picture of flowers that I bought at the IKEA in Elizabeth, NJ. It matches the girls' lightshade. The other is a large swatch of fabric from the nursing cover Karen used when she breastfed the girls. For thirteen months. I put them up yesterday in their rooms, right before we loaded the kids in the minivan to go to the pumpkin patch. I stood alone in their bedroom, straightening the pictures. And I was transported back to our house up north which now sits empty. I could feel myself standing at the diaper changing station, looking at the flower picture over and over and over. With twins, so much time was spent looking at that picture. And I remembered my heart breaking a little when Karen cut the fabric of her nursing cover so she could fit it into the frame, only because I knew we were done with it forever, two little heads bobbing under that fabric, Karen tucking them close to her body when we were out in NYC, usually at Shake Shack in Madison Square Park.

To see these two picture, on walls that aren't ours, here in Atlanta. A little something snapped in my head. And instead of going to pick pumpkins, I thought we should pack up and go home. Home to NJ. Go put the pictures back where they belong. In that empty house that soon won't be ours. Hopefully. And not so hopefully.

But in spite of it all. Being poor. Being alone.

In spite of it all, we are happy.

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