Vol. 39 - Forty

On reaching a milestone and finding balance.

Living a bi-coastal life is a dream Emily and I have shared for some time. Except in our version of the dream, the two coasts are Chapel Hill, where we live now, and New York City, where we lived for so many years.

When we left New York, it was for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was how we wanted to start and raise a family someplace a bit quieter, a bit greener, and a bit more kind. We also set out to make going back to New York a regular part of our life routine, which, until the pandemic fucked everything up, it was.

But we knew that someday, in some fashion, we’d come back to the City. And we knew that someday, in our older age, when our kids grow up and leave the house, a return to New York was all but inevitable.

We dreamed of what neighborhoods we might live in, our evening walks as old farts, and the things we would do and see, once again, as New Yorkers. We mapped out plans of traveling up during the kids’ school breaks and how we’d spend a month there in the summer while the kids went up to the Catskills for sleepaway camp for a week or two (in case you needed a reminder that I married a Jewish woman).

For the first few years since we left New York, those dreams were just that; dreams. They were talks of “somedays” and “maybes,” always about some indeterminate time in a nebulous future.

But lately, those dreams have become a bit more real. What was just talk of a someday dream four or five years ago is slowly becoming talk about how we make that dream a reality.

Not that we’re anywhere near pulling a trigger on a New York apartment. Because there’s no way in hell we could afford the absurdity of buying a New York apartment right now. But we’re planting seeds now so that in five, six, seven years, we might buy a little apartment in a neighborhood we’ve always loved and make it our second place in the city that will always be our home.

As of today, I’m forty years old. I’m as close to sixty as I am to twenty. And though I feel much closer to the latter, I know now is the time to start making plans that may manifest when I reach the former.

I know that now is the time to stop dreaming things and to start doing them, because over the last few years, I’ve stopped dreaming and starting doing more than I ever have before.

I dreamed of being in a band that toured around the country, that put out records on a label, that made records in real studios with real recordmen, and I did all of that. I dreamed of being a successful writer and I’m well on that path. I dreamed of owning my own record label. I dreamed of having kids, of being a father. And, with the help and ceaseless support of my wife, I’ve achieved all of those things.

But now, one of our main focuses in life is the facilitation of our kids’ dreams; at least to arm them with the necessary tools to go out into the world someday soon and chase those dreams themselves.

So the question becomes, “How can we do both?”

Even, “Can we do both?”

Can we balance our own dreams with that of our children’s? Can we somehow give our kids the life we want them to have down here while also living the life we want to up there?

One of the best pieces of parenting advice I ever got was from my father, who once told me that the easiest thing in the world is to put your kids’ needs in front of your own. And in the few short years I’ve been a father, I’ve seen firsthand exactly what he meant by that.

I no longer care about my own comfort if my kids are uncomfortable, my own happiness if my kids are unhappy, my own hunger if my kids are hungry. My prime directive now, and for the foreseeable future, is my children’s happiness and wellbeing.

But I still want things. I still need to fill my own cup. I still desperately want to live part of my life in New York City, perhaps the only place that’s ever truly felt like home to me.

Is it possible to have both?

I don’t know.

But I do know that I’ve built the foundations of a successful career in writing and started that record label I’ve always wanted to start, all while putting my kids’ needs before my own.

So why can’t it be?