Our Days are Numbered

We got C.C. a blank wall calendar for Christmas—the page above each calendar page was pure white so that she could draw whatever she liked.  She sat on her knees, hunched over it on the dining room table, her markers spread around her.  “What happens in February, Mama?” she would ask me.  “Valentine’s Day,” I would say and she would incorporate whatever holiday or other theme into her drawing.  It has a dinosaur theme, of course.  May, the Mother’s Day month, shows a mother Maiasaura and her baby in a next.  Maiasaura means “good mother dinosaur” and C.C. says the mama is me and the baby is her.

Today we turned the page from May to June.  C.C. had drawn an airplane with a Spinosaurus pilot, flying all of us away from Barcelona.  As it turns out, we don’t leave until July 1, but turning that calendar page did really make something shift inside me.  Now I can see all of the days we have left on one calendar page.  The kids have two weeks left of school.  It sounds trite, but the past six months have absolutely flown.  I finally feel as though I live here.  I have friends, my work is going well, I know where to buy chocolate chips, peanut butter, and drugstore mascara.

So I have started to shut down various threads that have been a constant for me this year.  A couple of weeks ago, as I looked at my schedule and thought about all of the travel I had left, the guests yet to come, the moving arrangements that needed to be made, I realized I needed to end my Spanish lessons.  So I’ve already said goodbye to Sylvia, who has been my tutor since I stopped going to the intensive, four hour per day school.

I love my life in Brooklyn, and I miss my friends and family, but a part of me wishes I had more time here.  Just a little—one more year, maybe.