I love living in Silicon Valley, and I highly doubt we'll ever live anywhere else full-time. The energy of the place is infectious, and it seems like smart people are everywhere. Beautiful climate + positive energy + smart people = as close to heaven as I'm going to get until I die. I could wax poetically about the palm trees, about sitting next to Steve Jobs at Fraiche as we both enjoyed our oatmeal with blueberries, and, most of all, how the latter has come to be no big deal -- for while there is only one Steve Jobs, somewhere around me is his heir apparent. Somewhere nearby is the next nobody with the little idea that -- overnight! -- is going to be the next Somebody with the next Big Idea to sweep the world. Entrepreneurship is alive and well in Silicon Valley. I've bandied about many a business idea with people over wine and pizza, knowing that we might make them happen; we're in the right place, we know the right people, and it could be huge. (Everyone actually believing that about their own idea is what makes the place great.)
BUT...
You knew that "but" was coming, right?
It's. Always. On. Life, that is, in Silicon Valley, doesn't take a vacation. There is no rest. There are always places to be and people to see ... breakfasts and coffees and lunches and coffees and dinners and yogurts and plugging people in and connections and new apps and new ventures and this event and that fundraiser and this party and that awareness-raiser and OMG-did-you-hear-the-latest-buzz and new investments and new opportunities and new friends... and that's on top of Girl Scouts, PTA, soccer, basketball, t-ball, softball, playdates, book club, life.
And every single bit of that is absolutely, positively, unquestionably wonderful... but it is exhausting.
I feel like my life was good in New Jersey, but, in Silicon Valley, it's nearly-perfect. I have girlfriends, and a book club, and, for God's sake, a wood-fired pizza oven and a convertible in the family. I got my dog, my kids are athletic and happy and friend-rich, and the Guv and I actually spend a lot of time together. We didn't have as many of those those things in New Jersey. We made some exceptional friends in quality but not in quantity; getting to know each other didn't come easily when it felt like everyone was from there already and hung with the crowd with whom they were raised. Plus, the Guv's commute to work was 1+ hours each way, and that cut way into our time together. The four-minute bike ride that replaced that time in the car is a real blessing. (Biking anywhere in CA feels like a blessing!)
In any event, back to the "BUT": my kids don't know how to shut down. Rephrased, my kids need to remember how "off" is okay. For God's sake, they're only children. I work hard in CA to make sure they have time for "free play," and I try hard not to overschedule them ... but we do require participation in a sport (for health, not competitive, reasons), and softball and t-ball season took five days per week. Squeeze in playdates right and left (I'm not great at saying "no" to those), and, suddenly, my kids are busy. And I get really mad at myself for that, because you know what? I don't think kids should be busy. I think they should be bored. I think my boredom led me to read more books than many, which contributed to my intellectual growth and spurred my fantastic imagination, which has made me a lot of who I am. (Some people might think that's good... some not -- lol.) I want my kids to have to fill their time with whatever they choose (within limits, mostly when it comes to anything electronic), especially because they end up making pretty good choices after the "nothingness" stops overwhelming them. It's kind of like my favorite "anti-coloring book" -- if all kids are given are pictures with lines in which they color, well, they never learn to color outside of the lines. And, darn it, I want my kids to paint whole landscapes of their own creation. So...
We leave Silicon Valley for a while each summer, clinging to a cottage in Vermont that we bought in our New Jersey days to escape the miserable central-inland NJ summers. I hated New Jersey in the summer, and I don't ever say "hated." So we came to Vermont, where it was cooler and crisper and a little less crowded but not a lot different from New Jersey -- friendly but distant, things to do but not too much. We came a lot -- every long weekend, sometimes even for a quick overnight. We lived in two places. Now, we're back in Vermont after a ten-month absence in which we rented our house a few times. After getting over the weirdness of someone else having been in my space, it's so nice to be settling back in to ... nothing.
Oh, how the kids have repeated that word: "Moommmmmmm, we have nothing to do..." ... "Mommmmm, there's nothing I want to eat in the cupboard" (side note: in a vacation house, mom stocks NO junk food) ... "Mommmmm, I want nothing to do with my brother/sister/dog right now..." ... "Mooooommmmmm, if I have nothing to do, I'm just going to sleep."
To all of the above, I say: GOOD.
After getting over their initial misery, they're back to what they did last summer, minus the vernal pool (there wasn't enough snow this year to fill it, so our little extra-special chunk of nature is MIA): they are traipsing through the forest, making light sabers out of sticks; they are taking walks with each other and with the dog; they are playing wiffleball, trying to figure out how to set up the badminton net, stalking chipmunks, and watching and waiting to catch the first firefly. They're building with Legos, playing with trains, and playing loads of board and card games. They've built Roxaboxen and lived there intermittently. They're reading books together, reading books alone, taking naps and making breakfast in bed for me. Sometimes we go to the pool or to the lake. Sometimes we call friends to join us, but, mostly, we enjoy time together as a family. Sometimes we're hermits, staying in our PJs past noon and going back to bed after lunch.
In other words, most of the time we're doing all the kid stuff that I did as a kid in the summertime ... and that we seldom have time to do during our real life back in Silicon Valley. Like I did last year (and failed, but I'll try harder this year, I swear!), I vow once again to try harder to find that time on BOTH coasts, even when given the added complication of school. Sadly, though, it's not as much their fault that they don't have as much of that precious kid-time, because, back in Cali, I have a to-do list that sometimes competes with theirs. Here, the house is littler and cleaner and emptier, and all of us have few commitments.
So... this next school year is the one in which I underpromise and undercommit and, hopefully, overdeliver. If only I could return to CA, empty out my house so that there's not as much to keep clean, keep the fun with friends and just slow it all down to where it's only wine and pizza and the really important stuff. I have to find the midpoint between "everything" and "nothing." It's my bicoastal balance, I guess, and I love it... once I readjust each time.
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