Well, if it's snowin' in Brooklyn

I've been away, both physically, in Brooklyn, and mentally, in my brain. Time to get back on the blog horse and write some more. It's hard to write this because we are still so unsettled and I still wonder, at times, if we made the right decision to move here, and to do it so suddenly. Well, that was of necessity, because Dave's company closed. Still...

It's also hard to write this because I self-censor in the fear that if I don't I will say too much and The Wrong Person will read it and I won't get that job, or I will hurt someone's feelings, or I will reveal too much to the world.

Having said that, I've been thinking about two things lately: Brooklyn and skiing. Our trips to New York are based around Lily's playdate schedule. We try to maximize her friend time and we squeeze in our visits around those. This time, over President's weekend and into February vacation, she saw three or four friends for good chunks of play time.

What made me sad was her sorrow at saying good bye. Lily used to see Ariadne several times a month for playdates, and daily at school. With the exception of some younger sisters of some of Lily's new friends, no one here seems to play pretend the way Ariadne does. And Ariadne's mom says the same thing: No one in her Brooklyn friends plays pretend the way Lily does. The heartbreaker: As we drop Ariadne off with her mom on our way out of town, Lily waves and says sadly, over and over, Miss you. Miss you.

When do you get over the sorrow? Am I destroying my child's life? I hope not. But I don't honestly know.

This week was my birthday, 46 on the 28th, and thank goodness for the little bit of snow we do have. Wednesdays are half days for Lily so we picked her up at school -- she was very disappointed she couldn't take the bus, the big event of the day these days -- and drove a half hour up route 63 to Northfield Mountain to cross-country ski. Now, it's been many years since I skiied. I only skiied cross-country and I only did it for a few years, pretty much stopping in 1988 when I moved to New York. Besides, my shoe size changed after I had Lily and I could no longer fit into my boots.

This day I kind of remembered how to move my feet, though, and we headed off in an interesting direction that turned out to be harder -- read, steeper. I spent some time walking down the hills. After awhile we backtracked a bit a novice trail. All in all, not bad for the first time in oh, 20 years. I only fell a couple of times, well, we all did, and only panicked once, when I could not get either my boot unhooked or my skiis uncrossed. The other two did great, of course: Dave has skiis and used to go out in Brooklyn once or twice a year when there was snow. Lily has been downhill skiing this winter. She's a natural.

We got a good couple of hours in, and while my jeans were soaking -- gotta get some snow pants -- I had fun. Afterwards we had dinner at Mi Tierra, a small good Mexican place in Hadley. Homemade torillas. A fine way to spend a birthday.

Today Lily went to a Purim carnival with a friend and her little sister who likes to play dolls. So Dave and I walked on the bike path in Amherst for an hour, just from Station Road to Southeast Street and back, but it was hard going at times in the icy, chunky snow. Beavers live all along this part of the path, and we saw some terrific dams and dens, as well as some of their snack trees. The path has enough snow and is quite flat, so perfect for cross-country skiing. Gotta get some skis.