I haven’t really been back in New York City since I’ve been back in New York. My parents had this incredibly old, racist lady pick me up in her green “limo” (a.k.a. van) on Saturday night and while we drove out to Lawn Guylind she told me about her husband’s sudden death from a surgical procedure four months ago. When you’re heading “home” to your grandfather’s funeral, death is not really the thing you want to talk about, but still I tried to listen and ignore the burning red sensation my eyes were producing as a result of hours of heavy crying on the plane.

I drove back into New York on Sunday night to literally drop some crap off at my apartment, and then I was off once again. I feel like I haven’t been able to catch up on sleep or anything of minor importance since returning to the home I spent my most of my “Growing Pain” years at, so tonight, tonight when I head back into the city I am looking forward to the unwind.

I’ve been shopping for things for my sublet since I got it. I just bought this faux fur comforter which will look rather smashing in my one room apartment, because I believe that a sex educator should have a bed lined in faux fur. Now I just need a bed, even though the air mattress I’ve been sleeping on isn’t as bad as one might think. Still, there’s something unsettling about your comforter not only touching the floor but actually sweeping up the dust that accumulates on the school-style tile that makes me think a bed is my new number one priority.

I’m looking for some rugs to cover the floor, and then I’m going to get a bookshelf and a couch or a bench or something that people can sit on when they come to visit me in the projects. I really like the Lower East Chinatown area that I’m living in, and if you’ve never had a view of the river from your apartment window, I can honestly say you don’t know what you’re missing.

You don’t know what you’re missing.

Okay, there I said it. Now, I’m going back to the home without the view of the river, ironically, it’s in a town that calls itself Plainview. I’ve had to come to the library in aforementioned town to obsessively update my blog. See, my parents don’t have cable, their excuse once being that we watched too much TV, now that “we” (the three children) are out of the house, I’m not sure what their excuse it, but for whatever reason my parents don’t only not have cable, but they have a dial up connection to the Internet (which I find is so 80s). So I’m here at the library I once used as more of a social gathering space than a research lab, typing up a storm, and heading back to the home where strangers can literally open the door and come in, cause that’s what you do at a shiva call.

My family is doing fine, in case you were wondering. See, there’s two trains of thought on my grandfather’s death. Since he was sick, it was for the best in some ways. His Alzheimer’s never progessed to the point where he had to go into a nursing home, or where he couldn’t feed himself. But still, it’s hard, and I want him here - which is the second train of thought, in case it’s not clear. Gone or here. Which is better?

Not here, at the library, but here in the flesh. It doesn’t really matter, here or gone, because my grandfather’s memory will always live, here, in my heart.