Half as much

I've been busy since school started with serious party-hopping which means many pinatas to be broken. I've also had some great fun hanging with new friends such as Lauren, Sadie and Heather. The upswing in social activities means that we do way less village exploring and it means that we wind up at home between parties rather than out and about.

I'm a Cancer and I like hanging out at home, but something shook me the other day. I was walking out of my Osho meditation gathering and saw a house for rent. The house was on Jacobo Dalevuelta, right next to the house Steve and I rented when we lived here 12 years ago.

All of a sudden, I saw a different life unfold for me, where we lived in the centro as opposed to in a quiet-ish neighborhood. Where we'd be smack between two parks, across from a yoga center and right by a Friday tianguis. It would be the hubbub life, where you step outside your door to see what's going on. Twelve years ago, we would stand on our balcony and listen for the calenda processionals, dashing out to follow the brass band.

I felt myself longing for that version of Oaxaca. But does that version include kids and getting them up to Volcanes for school every day? Crossing bloody Ninos Heroes de Chapultepec--in essence, commuting? It seems silly to commute to take kids to school when Steve and I both work at home full time and enjoy the fact that we can take a back country road to the school and get there in 10 minutes. And that I can walk back in 25, stopping for a cactus smoothie breakfast on my favorite median strip.

I like rituals and checking in with neighborhood people, but I also like ambient buzz. Maybe we don't have enough of that around here?

Then I wondered if the old life I romanticize about includes the ability to have Jenny around. It reminds me of something I said to my grief group therapist a couple years ago, that I lead a second choice life with Jenny gone. I've reconciled that somewhat because I suspect many people don't even get their second choice life.

Then I remembered something Jenny said that I think I blogged about before. My dad once told us, "We Makofskys always have to work twice as hard for half as much." Jenny said, delighted, "Half as much! I love half as much. That's enough."