full circle

Two months ago today we rolled into the Tristate area after our two week drive from Los Angeles. It feels longer than that, in the way that time stretches when everything's new, every week is not yet choreographed, and nobody's stuck in a rut.

Another anniversary: one year ago last week the people of United States, in a fit of gullibility and appalling social paranoia, re-elected the worst president this country has ever known. Which sent the two of us into a downward spiral of depression and despair. Which, a few weeks later, led to the idea that we could leave this country. Move to Canada. Toronto, to be specific.

As we began to look into it, we realized that we were as eager to be getting out of Los Angeles, finding a way to escape the Hotel California, as we were to be leaving what felt like an ever-more-oppressive regime. Eager to be moving back to the Northeast, with architecture and scenery that feels right in my bones, a drive away from family.

Then a friend – and I will forever be in her debt for this – said, "No, don't do that, come here, come back to New York instead! Dan can probably get work here, they're hungry for editors these days." The thought made me so happy. We'd stayed in LA for so long because Hollywood is the center of film and television post-production, not because we wanted to be there. The move to Toronto was predicated on the idea that he'd begin again, that we'd make it work because we had to, because we could no longer stand being in Los Angeles. In our lives there, to be exact, lives that had begun to feel like an appropriate-to-the-city endless ride on an exercycle: you pedal and pedal for miles against the unchanging, enclosed scenery of a sterile gym.

And now we're here. In New Jersey, sidled up next to New York City. Where we belong.

One year ago I had absolutely no idea we could do this. It turned out to be so simple. All it took was the re-election of a sociopathic jackass and his evil puppet masters.

Do I regret that we're still in the US? Yes and no. As we drove through the country two months ago, I realized that I love a lot about it. Could I feel the same about Canada? I'm not sure. There's a lot to like, to be sure, but this is a personal thing and I'm not sure I feel the love.

Am I somehow less committed to my political ideals because we're here instead of filling out immigration forms and making plans to move north? Maybe and maybe not. It's a tough one. What kind of country will Damian grow up in? Hell if I know.

I choose to believe things will get better now that Harry Reid is showing some backbone in the Senate and democratic governors are being elected by huge margins and Bush's ratings are in the toilet and Fitzgerald is truly investigating what we on the left have known for years, that the invasion of Iraq was prefabricated, planned before 9/11 and then shoved down the throats of the populace (not to mention Congress) with lies, more lies and a dollop of Soviet-style propaganda.

I choose to believe things can turn around. How much? That I don’t know. I do know that this country, my country, is and probably will continue to be more conservative than I think is right, is and will probably continue to deny rights and services to people I think deserve to be treated as equals under the law and in our hearts, is and will continue to be a place I live in with equivocation and doubts. But is Canada the answer?

As I looked into the move, I realized that Damian's services and education would be compromised. That Dan's work possibilities would be severely compromised. And that we'd be starting fresh, creating a social network in a completely new city. The combination was daunting. And it's a country like any other country, with positives and negatives. You have to feel a strong commitment to this particular kind of change to sail past the negatives, it seems to me. To embrace the move completely.

In way, it comes down to this: what's important in life? Friends, family, physical environment, your town, the political climate, quality of work, quality of education? What matters most to you? It's not set, it's an ever-shifting multi-variable equation, and intensely personal.

It upsets me when someone judges me for not leaving the country, stacking me with the hordes of liberals who meant it for one moment, who planned to leave but then got cold feet from inertia and the security of life as they know it. That clearly doesn't apply to us. We did move. Three thousand miles. We just made a different decision about what parts of that equation matter more. For us.

Still, that idea, the urgency of it, the "must go, must go now!" overwhelming need, that did well by us. It got us here. And this is immeasurably better for us than Los Angeles was.

Dare I say it? Dare I think it? Can I possibly, in some selfish part of my brain, be glad that Dubya got re-elected? We needed a catalyst. When the heavy weight of a multi-ton vehicle is embedded deep in a ditch, when your wheels are turning but have no traction, you need a really big force to haul you up out of the muck. Was there another catalyst that could have done it? Damned if I know. Interesting to contemplate.

Glad we're here, though.