June 23, 2018
I am cleaning up my blog in the same way I am going through old files and picking and choosing what to keep. My mother, when I talked to her on the phone, would always say, "I'm going through files." I never knew what that meant and I couldn't imagine what files she had kept, but now I am doing just that. Going through files, remembering and reclaiming my own past. Sometimes letting go.

March 20, 2013
Early in my parenting life I remember reading that the desire for things to get "back to normal" after having a child or children was not only a futile desire, but misplaced. There is no going back, but there is definitely going forward into a "new normal." In fact, years later normal seems much more changeable than I'd ever imagined. I am more inclined to think now that when things work out then that is normal; a new plateau, a new direction, a new configuration all have the potential to be normal.

So today I finally acted on something I knew was inevitable, I gave up my membership at the Cornell Club Fitness Center. I realized that it has been much too long, several quarters too long, since I've been to the gym for exercise. Actually, by that definition it's even longer because I know that many of my last visits were less for exercise than motivated by the thought of a nice shower in an empty locker room after walking the treadmill and a browse, all fresh and clean, at the nearby Barnes and Noble. For many years the visits to the gym were normal for Greg and me. We joined when he was still working in Brooklyn, considering Fifth Avenue and 44th Street a midway point in his commute back to the Bronx and a quick drive down from the Upper East Side after work for me. It was a good place to meet, exercise and have some time together in the city before heading home. Chicken pot pie at the grill was also enticing.

I realized recently that it hasn't been like that for a long time. With both of us working in Riverdale we hardly ever got downtown after work. I never got around to hiring a trainer to learn to use more equipment than the treadmill and the rowing machine and many more women joined the club. Good news for Cornell, but it meant sharing the locker room. Something I didn't have to do often. The membership grew, but it also got younger and as the age went down the energy in the workout area went up. Times were changing.

I liked having a stopping place in Manhattan. I liked being recognized at the desk in the gym and having a locker so I didn't have to plan to bring clothes with me. I liked owning two pairs of sneakers and having one pair "for the gym." I liked meeting Greg in NYC to go home from work together. It was a nice normal for a while, but we're on to a new normal and new possibilities.