Now for the delicious time of flight.  I used to journal by hand on planes, now I have to wait until we reach 10,000 feet to begin, not that it takes that long.  Julia is sitting with her iPad playing one of the games I put on two nights ago for this trip.  I put a few games on (no killing by any means and no bird throwing) when we first got the iPad and then took them off when school began and Julia wanted to play games on the sly. (I do take it as a sign of development that she tries to sneak something that is forbidden.  Ah, finding the positive in the strangest ways.  She whined for a bit and then stopped, becoming very content with the math games that I left on.  

However, for a weekend of travel, I decided to treat her.  I’ve also been looking for my version of appropriate games and found a decent puzzle game (up to 400 pieces although we are starting with 25 -- 25 on the screen is sufficiently challenging for me.  For Julia, not so much).  Right now, she is playing TanZen HD, a computer version of something she plays at home.   7 shapes to put into defined patterns.  She zipped through the first 10 or so, but now she is challenged which is good.  Her graphic eye is good but she needs to work at these and try different combinations of shapes.  She is patient and tries over and over.  She also does the kid-intuitive thing of finding out what the rules are as she plays.  I consider this the great generation divide.  When I put a new app on any of the electronics, I want to read all the rules and directions.  I also want to refer back to them when I run into problems.  Julia, like her contemporaries, just futzes around until it works for her.  

During the past few weeks, and getting more intense as time passes, Julia’s Concerta (ADHD med) seems to be losing potency.  It takes longer for it to kick in  in the morning and by 5 in the afternoon, it has worn off.  She has grown over the summer and there are signs of puberty.  We also have not seen her meds doc since before vacation which has not allowed for any possible adjustments.  This is too long to go without a visit.  I must have written that he cancelled two appointments along the way, each time resetting another month out.  Finally, I called and asked to change to another provider who has more time for us.  We were re-assigned and this time to a doc instead of a fellow.  I don’t know whether this is a long term assignment or just a stop gap measure.  In another corner of our world, consistency has come to be a challenge.  

School update, I went in on Monday, voiced my concerns and they were addressed.  Her teacher even sent some portable work for our trip which is great.  We will do something when I finish this and later today, we will be at Cheshire’s apartment alone for a few hours and we’ll do a bit more.  The regularity of work for Julia is important for mood and well-being.  She may balk at putting away the toys to sit down to math or spelling but school work regulates her more often than not.  

And talk about regulation.  Julia is a good traveler and has been for a long time now.  Picking up her heavy back pack, which she carries and which now has a little bit of our communal travel needs, I think about weighted vests and leg blankets.  Does a heavy backpack help regulate her?  And if not regulation, she is in training to be a great backpack traveler.

Walking through an airport and boarding a plane reminds me that next summer, we could travel.  Of course, financial ducks need to be in a line, but therapy ends on June 30.  We could board a plan on July 1.  Now where?  China is still out, and in fact, I think it would still be better to stay away from Asia for now.  My yearnings go two ways, no, three -- I’d like to go and do some work somewhere.  A Bolivian orphanage?  Or, I’d like to go visiting in Europe.  Italy beckons and we could stop over in England.  Or a family week at Findhorn and then go south and see British friends.  Or back to Paris for food and art and Monet’s garden.  In the back of my mind is a promised trip to Australia -- to see a dear friend and a cousin in-law who I’ve never met.  I think about linking that with an Asia trip but it is a big world out there and taking time on another continent, one that I’ve never thought much about aside from my two friends there, could be exciting.  And then, for the third yearning -- just a beach.  Sand and water and time being quiet.  The time on the Isle of Wright right after David died is still in my mind.  Not necessarily there, although that could be an option.  Maybe a long Jersey beach vacation?  Or somewhere not as intense as the Jersey beach is such beaches exist.  

Winter has not even begun yet and I don’t mean to be planning my life away.  Still, if luck favors the well prepared . . . 

I have my first Quest integration meeting next Monday evening.  I planned child care and congratulated myself on being organized.  Just before we got on the plane, my provider texted me that she is sick.  So I shot an email to the facilitator of my group with the warning that I might not make it and asking whether I could bring Julia.  Arg!!  I should have worked on a larger pool of respite providers before this!  That doesn’t solve my immediate problem but  no reason not to do it.  

As I wrote on the LEND blog, the work that we are doing in Quest somewhat mirrors some of the work in the Pockets in the Rocks workshop.  The reinforcement of the similar exercises and the different choices in exercises informs what I am learning.  Still, I am such a beginner.

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Later, in Brooklyn.

One long cab line, and one cab driver who got lost in Brooklyn and we are in Cheshire and Chris’ apartment.  It is such a home.  The difference between this place and the other apartments she has shared with one or multiple roommates is stark and telling.  Soft, comfortable, warm, decorated -- just enough of Cheshire to recognize her, some parts that I suspect are Chris, and then a few things that may be theirs together.  I am pulled up short by the old family things that Cheshire has.  Of course, I urged her to take anything that I was not using, and she had first dibs on anything and everything that I wanted to get rid of.  Still, to see my grandmother’s living room rub, my blue easy chair, my mother’s teapot, the table I bought for my Chicago apartment, and the pictures -- Jim’s, family photos, David’s movie posters.  Seeing it all makes me sad, makes me hopeful, makes me joyous.  I take them in until suddenly they look better and more useful here than they have for a long time.

And then there is the music.  Cheshire sorted through my records and took a bunch home, along with a turntable.  Chris has some from his father.  They have a tuner that is just a little more sophisticated than the one I was trying to push off on her.  As we listened to the Beatles and Billy Joel, I am struck by how much the sound is something that I remember.  It is by no means better than on CD or uploaded from iTunes, but there are no scratches and or complaining noises.  Just some quality that I have lost.  For a moment I regret letting my stereo and records go to strangers.  And when I suggest that Julia and I watch a movie as we wait for Cheshire to come home from her work day (Chris having to go to a school function and leaving us alone for a little while), Julia asks if we can play “this” record.  She has pulled out of crowded shelf the original cast recording of Carousel.  I ask, “really?”  “Yes, this one,” she insists.  Carousel is an old favorite of mine, no where near the sophistication and complication of a Sondheim, but  . . .  like a dear old beautiful friend.  “Just because its June, June, June . . . “  I know most every word and could tell stories about listening and of performing this show.  

Ok, am I going to be teary through this whole weekend?  In the city with some of my own stuff, enough to make this feel like home.  Listening to records, apartment neighbors and streets sounds with Julia drawing a card for the bride and groom and playing with the magnetic poetry on the frig.  

I don’t know.  Could I live here again?  I assumed I couldn’t.  I imagined that I had been spoiled by midwest living -- space, houses, quiet neighborhoods, easy commutes.  Am I projecting backwards?