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I just returned from a stunning two-hour bike ride with Gonzalo, my brother-in-law. We left his house as the sun was rising, and biked through the rolling hills of Wisconsin farmland. At certain points I was sure I was plucked from my sister’s house and inserted into a gorgeous landscape painting. In a couple of hours, my sister Chrissy and our kids will awaken, and we’ll drive out to a farmhouse we’ve rented, where the rest of the family will join us for a long weekend – twenty-plus people all together.

I am home.

Recently, at book events, it occurred to me that I am perceived as someone who left one life behind to embrace another.

I would venture to say that anyone who has made a change in their life has been thought of in the same way. When one of my best friends recently moved in with her boyfriend after decades of being single, I felt a certain loss, as if she’d left me behind. Odd, considering we only saw each other once every few years. Yet, it represented a moving away – from me.

Its funny to catch myself seeing change as a leaving one part of oneself to embrace another. Because, upon closer speculation, I’ve found it just isn’t true. A few nights ago I went to the East Side in Milwaukee, where I was meeting with a book club just two blocks from my college apartment. I smiled. If someone had told me in college that 25 years from now I would be returning as a Jewish author, I wouldn’t have believed it. I would have assumed I would have had to make incredible life changes to reach that point.

But the changes were not drastic. They were just steps in becoming more of who I already was. And I couldn’t have made those changes without my family. My father supported me when I chose to move to New York City after college. My mom taught me how to spiritually soul-search. My siblings cheered on my every career move. In all of my changes – relocating to New York, becoming Jewish, moving to California -I didn’t leave anything behind. I simply added on.

“I love Wisconsin,” Harrison embraced me last night.

Not only are Harrison and Olivia surrounded by loving aunts, uncles and cousins here, they also see me in my original context.

“I do, too.”

This is my landscape.

Tags: Manhattan

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