Is that it?

Is it really over? Did we really close the deal?

Yes. The boxes were packed and schlepped, the place was cleaned and the keys left behind. I gave into a moment of sentimental drivel as I passed over the spot where Max was first set down on hospital homecoming day; two seconds later my ass was evading the slamming door as I ran out. Without looking back, lest I be turned into a pillar of salt, its onward and upward. Seeing as how we are living in a basement, the upward part ought not too be terribly difficult.

Our Chinese mortgage overlords have been paid off with enough left over for a few scraps to be thrown to our beleaguered savings. The family is underway. We have pushed off the dock and thrown the heaviest lines ashore. We now drift, for a few short months of our lives, in the relatively calm waters of a semi-suburban outpost on the side of a hill at the foot of the city. We wait in this appropriately named neighborhood of West Portal until we can step through to the East Coast and put down some real roots. Roots that are now packed in boxes and bags containing pictures and books and warm weather clothes. We have a little seed (that we nurture attentively most waking hours of the day and night) which we intend to plant in the fields of Brooklyn. He will be fertilized with cultural diversity, strengthened by challenge, tempered by heat and cold.... for our efforts now he will grow to be the astronaut hero elected mayor of NYC. Or at least he will visit his crazy father in the asylum.