I have a game for you.
The setup is that you start by moving across the country, as far away from your hometown as possible. Your quality of life increases due to various reasons, but the dilemma is that you can not take with you all the people who mean most to you, as they unfortunately have lives back in that other place you left behind.
The game begins when you plan your first trip back home. The objective is to spend true, quality time with your family while also squeezing in as many meetups with close friends as possible. You must do this while also balancing work. The idea is that you can only head back 1-3 times per year, so out of the 8,760 hours on the calendar, you get a block of approximately 400 annual hours to divide among the people who mean most to you in your life. That’s 4% of you year.
Inevitably, people are going to find out you’re there, and they’re gonna be pissed when you don’t hit them up. You’re going to lose friends. You’re going to upset your family. It’s never going to be enough for most people. So, if you haven’t already figured it out for yourself, this is a losing game. You lose every single time.
I’ve been playing this game for 7 years now, and this last trip home I said fuck it and decided to cheat. I just slipped right in. Crept into JFK in the dead of night. Snuck right past security. Turned off my location, in a metaphorical sense.
My reason was entirely based on my brother and his wife having had twins last November. Their story is not mine to tell, so the only detail I’ll share here is the very obvious fact that they put in for one and got two. That’s insane. I think vending machines are the only other time that happens, and in that case it’s only positive. Two bags of Doritos is totally manageable. Two babies at once is batshit crazy.
February came around and I still hadn’t met my nephews. I was in all the text groups, getting all the photos, and it was wearing on me. My brother would tell me stories about them and it felt like he was talking about strangers— because he was. They were strangers to me.
This year was supposed to get easier. Unfortunately, calendars are a human construct, and January did not get the message and still decided to be a complete shitstorm. February dealt me much of the same. It was all very mundane and worldly hurdles. Difficult stuff, but very American and human problems. Anyway, I tried booking a flight multiple times, but something would always yank me back to LA. Each time, it felt worse and worse.
When I finally found a window, right at the tail end of my brother’s paternity leave, I decided I’m not telling anyone. I didn’t even tell my parents. I surprised them a few days into the trip, which gave me some time to just be with my brother, my sister-in-law, and my nephews.
My brother kept apologizing in advance leading up to the trip. “I don’t know if we’re going to be able to do much. We’re exhausted.” They were going through it. They were feeling the effects of every doctor’s visit, every learning curve and every hour of lost sleep being multiplied by two. I assured them I don’t need to be entertained. I just wanted to assimilate into their schedule of feedings and burpings and middle of the night wails from a baby monitor.
That’s exactly how it went, and it felt like a vacation for me. I know that by saying that, it’s somewhat obnoxious because they’re in the trenches and I get to clock out. But after being mired in my mundane problems, it was a welcomed perspective shift to be engrossed in their world. It was really beautiful, and precisely what I needed. I felt recharged. Like I’d suddenly zoomed out.
They enjoyed it too. We laughed a lot, and while I was worried about them, they’re doing fine. They have perspective.
One night, I left their house to visit my parents for dinner just a few towns over. When I returned, I asked how their evening was and my sister-in-law mentioned they had a few cocktails and danced in the living room. It was a detail said in passing. Nonchalant. But it stayed with me. Jumbled my perspective. It made me want to dance with Adriana in our kitchen the second I got home.
Perspective is perhaps the most powerful old guy weapon in my tool belt. I say old guy because it’s one of the few advantages of aging. You don’t have perspective when you’re a kid. Not only have you yet to do anything or see anything, but even after you have amassed a handful of experiences, you only have those experiences. You need a healthy amount of bumps and bruises, of wins and losses to develop real perspective. And you need an empathetic heart in order to feel the weight of others’ experiences and stir them up in a pot with your own. That’s when it becomes a weapon.
I had rehearsals yesterday with an artist I’m music directing for. I got there early and the owner of the studio began talking me up. He’s from New York too. His father was a music publicist. He’d opened the place 41 years ago, and he was proud to still be there. He hinted that it was scary at many junctures of his life. He used the words, “I was on the ledge multiple times,” and attributed his success more to luck and fate than to hard work, though I felt he was likely selling himself short. He was interested in who I was and what I do, who I was working with that day. He was a sponge, like me. He was New York, through and through. 41 years out here did nothing to hide that.
Our conversation didn’t last long, but it was enough to know he had perspective. He had twice or three times the perspective I have. He’d sharpened that tool and chiseled out a life for himself. And he wielded it like a sword, cutting down whatever mundane trials and tribulations stood in the way of the happiness he knew that he deserved.
This is incredibly powerful while being entirely self-aware and carefully respectful. Your brother and his family were absolutely blessed (and so were you, that sweet photooooo omg)!
As a new mom who just went through those first few months of parenthood last year, your gift of time - given so that they can breathe and remember it's still feasible and they're allowed to do that sometimes - is a glimmer (like a trigger, but positive) that will stick with yall like nettles you pick up during a hike. It's a moment that's both immediate and lasting with the potential to induce emotions each time it's acknowledged. Painful as you can't do it as often as you'd like, but you still get to do it and be a part of an incredible stage of life. 💜
Truly hope the scales balance out for you sooner rather than later, and that you learn how to beat the game using your own house rules!