Questions, questions.

How can you tell if a place just isn’t right for you?

When do you decide you’ve had enough?

At what point do you tell yourself, I’ve given this a fair shake, and I don’t like it, and at least now I know?

We don’t like it here. We just don’t. It’s not the house. We love the house. It’s everything else.

We’re terrible homeowners. The constant deterioration of one’s home and the resulting need for regular maintenance fills us with panic. We resent the weekends being used up by trips to Home Depot or the nursery.

We’re farther from both our families. Our days of getting free babysitting from the grandparents are over. Henry misses them.

I never realized how much I would hate not being able to walk to something.

There’s so much else. But in the end what it comes down to is: it’s not Brooklyn. Which I knew, moving in! Didn’t I know that? Why am I so surprised? I suppose because I lived in the suburbs growing up, and thought I knew what I was getting myself into.

We’re thinking of returning to Brooklyn and renting. Finding a place we can afford in a good school district may actually be impossible for us, but we’re looking into it.

I feel like a failure. We will undoubtedly take a loss on this place. All I can think is, why did we move? Why did we listen to everyone else telling us we had to leave the city, and not to ourselves?

Or are we being premature? Should we tough it out? When do you really know something isn’t right?

There’s too many cars round here

When we moved I was worried about Henry’s transition to the new neighborhood. I was so sure he would miss Brooklyn like crazy. What sane child wouldn’t? When he has friends in his building and delicious muffins available for purchase at every corner? Not to mention Frompy? But everyone said I was being silly. “He’s going to forget all about Brooklyn like that,” they said, and snapped their elegant, manicured fingers. (I only solicit opinions from the manicured. For obvious reasons.) My mom, and I’m not exaggerating when I say this, took my head and plunged it into an enormous bowl of rice pudding, while shrieking, “He’ll be fine! Listen to me!” I don’t know why she carries around the rice pudding. I’ve begged her not to.

It turned out this was a lie. Not about the rice pudding because THAT PART IS TRUE—about him not missing his old hometown. During those first few weeks, every time he enjoyed a contemplative moment, his lower lip would quiver and he would turn to me and sob, “I miss Brooklyn.” And the tears, they would flow like the stinky Gowanus, if the Gowanus flowed, which if you ask me it does not. What did he miss? I asked, which was a mistake, because he inevitably replied, “My friends,” and then I would start in and we’d be clutching each other and weeping until my husband got home, six hours later.

But the weeping fits began to afflict him in a less regular fashion, and he started to accumulate lots of happy mornings and afternoons. He remembered how that friend he really missed bit him that one time and also he was kind of a jerk (I added that part, about him being a jerk, because I know he was only four but still, kind of a jerk), and we talked about how nice it is to have a backyard (okay, I talked about it, but he agreed) and when, back in Brooklyn, did he ever spend an afternoon splashing around a neighbor's kiddy pool in his Incredible Hulk underpants? Almost never, that’s when!

Still, though, the ennui, it lingers. The other day “Cars and Parties” made its appearance in the iPod shuffle, and he looked at me with his brimming eyes and whispered, “You have to turn this off. My heart is closing down.” (And someone hit this child? you’re thinking. It's unbearable, yet true.) My own heart broken into teeny tiny shards and flew out through my eye sockets, blinding me as I ran for the stereo and shut it all down. I held him for a while and he was better, but then, damn it, it’s a catchy song, and I kept singing it! All night! And he would look at me with these enormous saucer eyes (which I could only sense because I was blind) and he would say, “What do you think you’re doing?” Or maybe he just screamed and threw an X-wing at me. Either way, I got the message.

Yesterday--when all my troubles seemed right in my lap.

Remember when I was all depressed, that day? Boy, good thing I didn’t post to my blog, because really, who wants to read my pathetic, self-involved whining? It would be like watching a kitten with a wounded paw trying to climb some stairs. Am I right, about the kitten? Not even a cute kitten, let me add. One of those hairless types. With a bad eye.

(I just wrote “bad idea” instead of “eye,” which amused me. I like very much the image of a kitten with a bad idea. “I think I’ll mash up some Dexedrine and mix it with a Coke!” thought the kitten with the bad idea. “Kitties need uppers!”)

Yesterday I thought I was feeling better, and then I went to the supermarket. The suburban supermarket is a terrible place. I was so tired of the tiny, cramped supermarkets of Brooklyn, in which all of the aisles are designed to be exactly two inches narrower than the average stroller. Many a supermarket clerk heard the grunts and curses of a disheveled mom trying to hoist her stroller over boxes of yams and Depends in Aisle 6. And oh, I would think, how I would like a car! A car that one could load up with the many groceries, instead of hanging one’s grocery bags from one’s bodily parts and then attempting to drag one’s bag-laden self and one’s ornery child homeward!

But it turns out I was stupid to think these things, because the supermarkets here, they drive me even nutsier. First off, they’re way too big to find anything. You’re looking for some arugula and there are 57 arugula aisles, and the organic arugula is in one of them but you’ll never know which, and then you think SCREW THIS I’ll just grab some romaine hearts and the romaine hearts are 300 miles away, in the Romaine Wing (Hearts Aisle). So even if you’re going to the store for three items, it will still take you a day and a half. Pack a lunch.

And also during the day, the only other people in the supermarket are senior citizens. Not just senior citizens—ultra-seniors. The over-90 set wanders the many aisles all day long, looking for the bus back to their assisted living facility. They like to amble in front of your cart and demand that you help them located the roasted cashews.

Finally, starving and exhausted, I staggered to the cashier, who asked for my Super Value Savings Saver Plus Card, and I had to tell her I didn’t have one. She looked at me like I had just confided that all these groceries were for my satanic baby-eating feast. "I don’t understand," she said, and I said, “I—I just don’t have one“ and she said “You have to have one,” Shop-Rite must have your personal information before you can partake in the savings, which of course isn’t true, strictly speaking, but is true for these exceedingly concerned cashiers who just want you to get the savings! The sweet savings! So finally she got the special Newcomer Courtesy Card or whatever that enabled me to save 38 cents, and she let me go. But it still took me 45 minutes to get to my car because of all the old people who died on their way to the exits.

I finally got to my car, where I cried into my steering wheel, because I still couldn’t see the humor in any of it. Luckily it’s hitting me today. A little late, but it’s coming to me.

Today.

I’m so, so sad, and all I do is cry. I miss Brooklyn. I miss everything about it. I want my friends here. I miss my mom being able to come over for the afternoon and drive me nuts. I miss the noise. I miss sitting outside on my stoop with Henry when there was nothing to do and Henry calling out “Good evening, madam” at everyone who walked by. I miss walking across the street to buy my groceries and the store manager shouting “My friend!” when Henry came into his sight. I miss walking down the street for an iced coffee. I miss not feeling lonely and pathetic; I miss my life. I want this to get better, but I don’t know how. I don’t know how to make it any better. I just want to feel better.