Home again, part 2

I know, I know, I know. I have gone MIA. Three weeks without a peep. Every minute at the computer, drifting around on Facebook or indulging my election obsession on the New Republic online, I have felt a tinge of guilt. I should be catching up on my blog. But in a matter of weeks my life has changed. I'm not missing in action, I'm drowning in it.

Not long ago, you could find me, eyes glazed over in front of my computer in the wee hours of the night, my fingers struggling to keep up with my creative bursts. These days you will find me snoozing away by 9:30 pm. The kids are at a new school an hour bus ride away. Bedtimes are earlier to accommodate our earlier commute times. At 7:10 am we are out the door, at 8:00 am I have discharged all of my charges and I'm off running errands or preparing for my newly expanded work hours. After teaching it's running kids to soccer practice, dance classes, piano lessons, or homework. Since we got back from San Antonio, we have been a chaotic flurry of activity.

I'm beat.

It feels like our trip to San Antonio was a million years ago. And a glorious trip it was, too. We left Monday night and drove as far as we could to a humorously named town in Southern Illinois: Effingham. We awoke early the next morning and pushed ourselves through Missouri, Arkansas, and into Texas. We stopped late that night about 40 miles out of Dallas to rest at another motel. The next day we took it slowly, stopping in Austin for some kosher Indian food. The irony is that in Chicago we live a mere two or three blocks from the largest Indian neighborhood in North America, yet, there's not a single kosher Indian restaurant there. We have to travel to Texas to get our aloo paratha fixes. We stopped in San Marcos to hit the outlet stores and get our kids shod for the new school year.

The kids were amazing on the trip. We didn't have a DVD player, just some art boxes my Skokie Sistah lent me. They stared out the window, chatted, sang, and played. I never heard a single, "I'm bored." Ptui, ptui, ptui, hamza, hamza.

We made it into San Antonio in the late afternoon, and stopped first at our old neighborhood, lovingly referred to as Kibbutz Shalom, to drop off kosher candies to friends and people kind enough to host us for a meal or two. Our quick stop quickly evolved into a block party, as neighbors streamed out of their homes to greet us. It was so good to be home.

Soon after, we made it to my parents house where the warm greetings and hugs and kisses continued.

It was a magical visit. We spent a lot of time at my parent's house just hanging out and eating, but we got out one day to take the kids to the zoo.

Rain prevented us from paying the animals a visit, but we did get to ride on the train.

I also paid a visit to my old workplace, UTSA (I developed that website), and my dear friends and colleagues. We took the kids to the JCC pool, and to Malibu Grand Prix. Both were completely empty, since school had already begun. Speaking of school, the principal of our kids old school in San Antonio, and a dear friend of ours, kindly offered to let the kids spend a day at the school with their old friends. I don't think any kid looked forward to going to school quite as much as mine did that day.

There aren't enough superlatives in the world to capture the beauty and warmth of our first Shabbat back home. We stayed with a young couple who were originally from San Antonio, but were living in New York before we moved to Chicago. They were now living in the house next door to our old home. They were gracious hosts, especially considering how little time we spent with them.

We ate dinner that night with our very best friends, and just like the old times, played our favorite card game until it was time to stagger home, way past midnight. Normally I wouldn't have dreamt of keeping our kids up that late, but this wasn't a normal evening. My son and his best buddy played all night, as if they hadn't been apart for a day.

My daughters followed the older daughter, the Bat Mitzvah, around all night, clinging to her like little starstruck groupies, and she, in turn, was so sweet and patient with them. Meanwhile, the old fogies played cards, chatted, and caught up on the past few months.

We missed them so much it ached.

The next day we went to shul, or at least tried to. I dropped the kids off at their old classrooms, and then proceeded to inch towards the sanctuary. Every two steps I was stopped by an old friend for a hug, a greeting, and a chat. It took me forty-five minutes to get to my seat. And as I moved down the aisles of the women's section, I stopped to hug, and whisper hellos. Towards the end of services, the children were brought in to the sanctuary, as is the custom at our old home. The boys clambered up to the pulpit to sing the closing prayers, the girls filed into their seats. My baby made a bee-line up to the pulpit to be with her big brother who was singing the concluding prayers loud and clear, surrounded by his old friends. I fought back tears. The services concluded with the rabbi blessing all of the children, and the tears flowed.

That afternoon we enjoyed a delicious lunch with our hosts, and were lucky to celebrate their mother's birthday with their whole family. That evening we had seudat shlishit, the third meal, with our old neighbors, and caught up on their past year.

In between, we shamelessly managed to sneak in another game of cards.

By the time Shabbat was over, we were stuffed, happy, and tired. No trip to Hawaii or the Caribbean could be more relaxing or fulfilling. No haute cuisine could be prepared with more love. We were back in our little Gan Eden, Garden of Eden.

On Sunday, my son was invited to a school friend's birthday party, and for the first time on our trip, I missed being in Chicago. At the end of the birthday party, hot dogs and cake were served. The birthday boy's mom served kosher hot dogs, but prepared in a non-kosher kitchen, with most likely non-kosher buns. It was heartbreaking telling my son not to eat them when he was clearly so hungry, not to mention how uncomfortable it felt, but at least he got to eat cake. I had forgotten about those awkward moments.

A day or two later, the real vacation began for my husband and me. We left the kids with my parents, my abuela, and Tia Mirth and headed to the San Antonio riverwalk for a romantic getaway. We booked a room at a fancy hotel, the Emily Morgan,

across the street from the Alamo.

We could see its rooftops from the gargoyle-protected windows.

In the seven or so years we lived in San Antonio, I had never taken my husband to the Alamo - or any other touristy site in the city. That was all about to change.

Neither of us could remember the last time we had been away from the children for more than an overnight escape. This was a treat we were going to make the most of. We visited the Alamo,

rode a downtown horse-drawn carriage where we learned our hotel was haunted (and I was born in the same hospital as Carol Burnett and Oliver North),
and then we went to the famous Landing to hear the Jim Cullum band play live. We walked the river from one end to the other.

And the next day, we did it all over again, visiting El Mercado, the Mexican market place where we admired Mexican dresses, art, and colorful tchotchkes.

We walked around the historic King William District,

gazing longingly at elegant old mansions.

We tried to visit the Blue Star Art Space, but the artists were sleeping in that day. We walked around La Villita, the old artist colony, and ended up back at our starting spot: the riverwalk.

Each day we enjoyed breakfast, lunch, and dinner at San Antonio's newest kosher restaurant, a long walking distance from our hotel.

We tried everything on the menu, and I loaded up on a real Texas ice tea. Fortunately, I grew up in this area. I knew where to find the restrooms.

That evening we visited my husband's favorite part of the trip:

The Buckhorn Hall of Horns, or as my husband put it, the most un-PC museum in America

with its walls and walls of animal carcasses, including many endangered species, and horns, antlers, and tusks galore.

My husband's favorite part was the historical dioramas, especially the Indian scalping the cowboy. We took a short break from the Texas heat (not that I would ever complain) to see a movie, and then I took my husband to San Antonio's raunchiest tourist attraction: Durty Nelly's. How on Earth had we missed that?!

We crammed as much as we could in a few days, but left enough to give us something to look forward to next time, like the Tower of the Americas and Hemisphere Plaza.

The next morning we enjoyed our last breakfast at Greens, and wished the waitstaff a fond farewell till next year, and then we went to the MacNay Art Museum.

The museum, housed in a stunning Spanish Hacienda had recently had a new wing added on. I hadn't been there since my wedding portraits were taken. It was as beautiful as I had remembered, if not more so.

Finally back at my parent's house, we gave our girls their matching Mexican dresses,

and our son his Mexican soccer jersey (Viva Morelia?), and celebrated my parent's 49th wedding anniversary, and my son's 9th birthday

with a kosher artisanal bread tasting,

and cake.

Finally, it was time for the Bat Mitzvah. When we first met our friends, the Bat Mitzvah was only two and a half years old. We had been invited to spend Shabbat with them, and when we arrived at the house, we found her naked as a jaybird, at the top of the stairs. Her first words to us were: "I just made peepee in the potty!" And today she is a beautiful, poised, talented and smart young woman. And she rocked her Bat Mitzvah, from the intelligent and funny mini-sermons during the torah reading, to the touching and loving thank you speech, to the exquisitely chanted haftarah at the end.

The weekend was filled with great meals and a dramatic entrance to the synagogue's brand new social hall. The party was a nostalgic throwback to the good old fashioned Bat Mitzvah parties with fun music, dancing, and a warm, relaxed atmosphere that even the old fogies could enjoy. But no one anywhere in the vicinity enjoyed it quite as much as my two daughters who could not be pried off either the dance floor or the Bat Mitzvah herself. My daughters macarena'd and hokey pokeyed the night away. They shook, rattled, and rolled, and if my middle daughter had her way, her Bat Mitzvah would be exactly the same. Exactly.

The next day we stopped by at the brunch, intending to stay a short while and leave, but parting was such sweet sorrow, and the blintzes were just sweet. We fortified ourselves with fruit, omelets, bagels, cream cheese and lox, pastries and blintzes, and our friends packed us up some more for the road. We rolled out of their house an hour or so later, sustained until at least Texarkana, and headed back to Chicago.

I wish I could say the journey back was as easy as the journey there. It wasn't. I cried all the way to San Marcos, and by Missouri, we were ready to find a motel and get some sleep, but the evacuees fleeing hurricane Gustav had already booked every roadside motel up and down interstate 55. We drove on bleary-eyed to Illinois, and once again found a place in the Southern part of Illinois, not far from effing Effingham, to stop for the night.

And the next morning we were all moving at full speed. School had begun for us all, as did soccer practices, piano lessons, and dance classes. And it's a good thing, too, because if I hadn't had to hit the road running, if I had had a moment to think about it at all, I would never have been able to leave San Antonio in the first place.

You see? You can always go home again. It's the leaving that's hard.