I admit, I have purposely stayed away from this blog site since Marie-Laure's first post about Berkeley Bowl. For one thing, I'm kind of lazy and it takes me a long time to get around to doing stuff sometimes. But also, I was worried it would be too painful for me to revisit some of those treasured Berkeley memories. We've been living in Delaware for about a year and a half now, and during that first year away from Berkeley I've was all too eager to tell anyone with ears about just how terrible Delaware was and just how unhappy I was, and about just how much I missed Berkelely. Well, in the past few months I feel as though I've finally been able to turn a corner and accept and even enjoy my life here, as different as it now is. Then several weeks ago as Adam and I were flipping channels one weekend night we came across the Cal/USC game being broadcast on network tv. It was a home game (in Berkeley, that is), and suddenly just seeing those hills behind the stadium, seeing the Cal field, seeing the bear statue onPiedmont, and shots of the moon over Strawberry Canyon, it was all too much for me. And after only a few minutes I made Adam change the channel. It's not that I'm a big Cal football fan....in fact, we went to only one game in the 7 years we were there. It was that I knew exactly what Berkeley is like on game day, I knew what the weather felt like and what the eucalyptus trees smelled like, and what it was like to see that moon, and I could imagine all too well what we would be doing there on a weekend night like a big game night. And now, there we were sitting at home on a Saturday night, alone, on the same striped sofa we had in Berkeley. It made me envious of the time when we might have been with any number of you at any one of your apartments eating Cheeseboard or Zachary's, playing games, out in the firelane for a bbq discussing politics, religion & culture, watching a movie on the "big screen" at the Barratt's sorority, meeting for gelato on Shattuck, meeting for a girls' night out in Emeryville, having an 80s party at Florian and Meghan's, or even just Adam and I going out on a date because we didn't have to pay a sitter $40 to listen to our kids sleep.
So I intentionally stayed away from this blog because I realized that I hadn't yet completely found a way to embrace my memories and experiences of life in Berkeley and move on and accept my new life without it being tremendously painful. There are hundreds of time in a month when I remember something about my Berkeley life: when I'm doing Yoga in front of my tv instead of with Liesl and it's a bit strange to be so warm instead of in the cold of the community center; when Adam took Max to serve at the local food shelter here in Wilmington and we talked about missing our first-Friday-of-the-month-nights with the Failors, with the Siebers and with Rebecca's chocolate chip cookies; when I feel awkward calling people in the ward to watch my children during the day when I know I could have called any one of you without hesitation; when the ward's play groups are in someone's basement instead of at fabulous parks like Totland or Thousand Oaks; when I have to drive to a local park instead of walking to Willard; when we need a good outdoor spot for Max's birthday party and there's nothing as ideal as The Little Train in Tilden, when the "fanciest" cheese and best crusty bread I can find is at Costco; when our Ward's Christmas party is, frankly, pretty lame and Adam is the one dressing up as Santa (now that's just wrong!); when our ward's book group is reading stuff that you might find being sold in a supermarket's book aisle; and on and on and on.
I'm sure that we all could make dozens of posts about what I miss and what has shaped me from my life in Berkeley.
I realized, as I read your posts today, that more than anything in Berkeley I miss you all. Thanks, Marie-Laure, for keeping us together and keeping this wonderful connection of Berkeley alive for us. But also, I want to keep getting to know you, and I want to know how you are now and what shapes your life today. And I want to see pictures of your children and how they've grown. Thanks to you all for these posts as well.
Long live Berkeley and long live our friendships!
