About a month ago I asked Lily what she would like to do with her week off from school in March. I thought she'd do the usual for a kid her age, ask to go to Disney or some other theme park or some really extravagant and far reaching place that we couldn't manage to get to, properly enjoy, and then get her back to school without extreme jetlag the following Monday.
But Lily is full of surprises. A couple of days after I asked her about it, she told me that she wanted to go back to New York. She wants to stay in our old apartment, eat in her favorite restaurant, go see the Atlantic Ocean and her swing in the park a few blocks from our place. At first, I thought of telling her no, not really wanting to stir up the memories of what we had in Manhattan and leaving her upset when the time came to come back here, but I changed my mind.
New York is home. It's where I was raised, where Lily spent the first six years of her life. She's only seven, but that city is in her blood just like it's in mine and trying to pretend it isn't is absurd. So we're going to drop Yoshi off with my parents tomorrow night and hop on a plane for NYC Friday morning.