A Brief Reprieve from Movies for Other Parts of Life

Hey team,

I'm going be quick today in the interest of ensuring I write something this month.

This past month has not involved a lot of movie-watching, but that's okay.  Instead, we've been traveling to see people and places that matter a lot to us, and taking time to recover from travel in between.

Probably unsurprisingly, getting out of the house for any extended amount of time with two children is a pretty heavy lift.  It helps that making that effort has been worth it--it's meant we can see people we love, enjoy places we love, eat food we love, and do things we love.  We've enjoyed beautiful light on beaches with gentle waves and easy days with extended family.

We also finally, finally got to return to one of the cities we previously lived in and still deeply love for the first time since before our First Child was born.  We started with a big family celebration for a loved one's birthday.  We then took the kids to a legendary museum where they got to see all sorts of animals (including dinosaur bones!!) and shiny rocks, then to the luscious, grand park at the city's center, and then out to yet another beach, all while enjoying the company of some beloved friends.

It's such a relief to finally bring these people and places back into our lives, and to finally begin to introduce our kids to the world more fully.  Yes, it's effortful to pack up our car and make the shlep, but I'm just so grateful that we finally can do that.  We've been waiting for so long.

It's also so thrilling that First Child is at an age where he really can engage with and understand these experiences more deeply than he could when he was littler.  It makes my heart feel so happy that he's talking about our trips and the people we shared them with days or weeks later, because he's capable of forming memories and thoughts of his own about those things more than he could before.  

I'm so excited for the experiences ahead of us as we return to these places and relationships over and over again from now onward.  After being so heartbroken that we couldn't do these things and see these people as a family because of the pandemic, perhaps we're at long last stepping into an era where they're actually, recurrently, possible.

I'm glad to share little snippets of these experiences, and I'm so grateful that I can look forward to sharing more in the not-distant future.

{Heart}

PS: It has not remotely escaped my attention that, within a few days of publishing my post about "Stutz" (2022), news broke of allegations of emotional abuse by Jonah Hill against one of his previous romantic partners.  I'm hoping to write a coherent part two to my original post that processes that news shortly.