Curves ahead

You think you know how your life is going to change, you feel like you have a good idea what is coming up but the truth is you have no idea. That is where I am at lately with a new baby coming any day now. I wrestle around on the floor with Finn and wonder if he has any idea what is coming. He kisses Kate’s belly when we ask where the baby is and he has even learned the baby’s name, but does he know that soon that baby will be born and come live with us? Does he know that he will no longer be the sun to mine and Kate’s universe? I don’t think I even know what that is going to mean. My Friend Liz said that when she was pregnant with her second she thought she couldn’t possible love him as much as she did her first. When he was born that changed for her. I am excited for our new baby to join us but part of me is sad to have my affection split. My friend Matt told me that when his girls were first born he didn’t really like them. He loved them but they were newborns and he didn’t know them yet. He felt guilty for it and both loves and really likes his kids now but I worry that I might feel like that with the new guy. Finn is so freaking cute right now with his growing vocabulary and his tiny voice. When he hears me come through the door he yells out “Oh no!” and runs squealing into Kate’s arms to hide from me. One thing that Matt told me too was to not worry about it too much, guilt is silly. I know that’s the truth. It is an exciting time and the more I try to imagine how it’s going to feel and what’s going to happen the more I know I have no idea.

Plans (written by Kate)

With a baby on the way and a job I hate, a change is in order. Occupational options are limited in Indianapolis, I'm in love with an MFA program in Seattle and James has a family friend highly connected in the computer industry in Portland. So to the Pacific Northwest we go. In a very short amount of time, we have weighed the options, prayed for a clear and peaceful direction and then been caught up in the momentum of all things falling into place. In one week I will give notice. In two weeks we drive to Iowa for my cousin's wedding. In three weeks we will pack up a trailer and send James and his parents off with our stuff. And shortly after, Finn and I will fly to Portland to meet up with James, find a place to live and generally begin the process of making our acquaintance with a new city, a bigger, more hippie-friendly, mass transitted, rainy city.

We are overwhelmed by this decision and generally feeling in equally powerful levels: really sad to be leaving Indianapolis and the people we love here, a place and time that we will likely look back on as Utopian communal living with beautiful and talented people, leaving my parents who have been both generous and overwhelmingly loving and a short drive away; and feeling really excited to be starting over and finding a new city and community to be connected to and love. We know that this is what we are supposed to be doing right now, a supernatural sense of direction. But we are fully aware of what we are leaving behind and hope that we are half as lucky again.

We are city people, James and I are. Every time we go to New York or Chicago or even smaller cities like Cincinnati or Louisville, we are energized and inspired. I picture us riding the subway, taking Finny to school and stopping at the flower market to pick up some daisies for the front hall table. We will look to be around people and activity and cultural centers always and this move feels like the realization of that part of us. Not that Indianapolis does not have its appeal, it does. We have certainly been surprised by the cultural, artistic and athletic thriving we have found here. But with Indianapolis, there is the sense that we know or will know soon all that there is to know about the city, that everyone is connected enough that if you know five key people, you know them all, which is great in a lot of ways. Being connected is a thrilling sense of belonging in overlapping relationships. But we both have a sense of more things to see, more book shops, cafes on corners, art galleries and boutiques to know. We are perhaps instilled with that very American manifest destiny, of exploration and discovery—not of anything new or uncharted—but new to us. And we are thrilled at the prospect.