Bay Area Diaries - Month 1

It has been over a month now in the Bay. The life is going crazy. We are trying to get settled amidst too many unknowns and uncertainties, and at least for me, dealing with too many emotions at the same time.
We moved to the temp housing - Xander's and Tanya's Home. I met them to get the keys, the night before our move it. I could sense how they felt, as life was taking them away from their home sweet home just like it took us away from ours. I assured them that we will try to take good care of their home while we are there. The house is very beautifully furnished and is very conveniently located in the Rivermark community, where it takes 3 minutes to walk to Avi's school, park, library or swimming pool. My office is less than 10 minutes drive and Gaurav's shuttle to google comes right outside the doors. Although he has to spend anywhere between 1-1.5 hours to come back home in the evening from Mountain View to Santa Clara.

We managed to keep up with the festive traditions, getting lots of Diwali sweets and snacks from Rangoli shop in the Bay Area, inviting friends over to join and wearing new dresses. But definitely I was missing my Hillsboro home, VAO community and friends on the occasion. Just like I had missed celebrating Diwali at Jaipur, when I had first moved out of my parents home. But after a few years, once we had moved into our own home at Hillsboro, the things were different. I had sort of established my own family traditions - decorating the home with lights and rangolis, making diwali sweets and snacks myself for my family, inviting friends for sweets and snacks, and doing pooja at home in new clothes. This year was different, I couldn't relate to the new place, I missed my traditions, but I didn't want to look unhappy, for I wanted to celebrate the togetherness of our family, and cherish the blessings that the Lord has in store for us. I wanted to still make beautiful memories for my kids. I was feeling grateful to my parents, who came here to support us in this tough time, leaving their home and their people behind in India, and never complained even for a fraction of second, on their loneliness. I wish I could become such dedicated parent to my kids as my parents have been to us.
With the support of the parents, and a little management to focus on the priorities, along with immense balancing from my dear husband on the emotional side, we were able to establish necessities like health insurance, address change, finding pediatricians, urgent cares, etc. I was able to start focussing back on work with my full potential, and felt some satisfaction of doing good work.
I visited Hillsboro, and fell once again in love with the beautiful place, seeing the colorful Fall as soon as I landed there. Oh I missed this place!! The roads, the new Ronler Acres 4 Building that I had spent almost 4 years at, my team at Intel, my office cube which wasn't mine any more!! My team threw a friendly meetup lunch, I enjoyed thoroughly. My friends spared their entire evening to spend time with me, Reshma picking me up after work, Alpa and Shruti driving me to the dinner place and Saloni driving me home to spend a night at their place.
Loved meeting all of the lovely friends and seeing my neighbors, Rushit and Kairavi, who accompanied me to visit my home, sweet home!! As I got inside and looked at every corner, the scenes of our life, our setup, our time spent there were filling into my eyes. I just wanted to absorb every bit of it, again the feelings that I couldn't get enough time in this home were coming to me. Home, the place where I felt peaceful, where I felt like I was in a resort, where I relished my garden fresh veggies, where I felt that the weekend was best spent here, this is truly that place. The Sun and the opportunities in California are abundant, but wish the home could still be this one!! I know I have to be practical, I have to use my brains, but I am like that, in some things, I just want to notice, feel and go with my emotions, not suppress them, even if I cannot do anything about them.
I got some cherry tomatoes and green tomatoes from my backyard for Pari and my family. They all relished them. I felt satisfied to see that the house was still beautiful and well kept, I returned back to my family. Avi wrote his first quarterly test and scored 25 out of 26!! A great score given he just started at the school where other students were studying for past 2 months.
Then came the night before Halloween, when I tried to get some ideas for a quick DIY costume for Avi to wear as our stuff was still in storage and so were the Halloween costumes. The parental regrets when he came back home next day telling me that the kids in his class made fun of his costume, the opportunity to teach him a delicate lesson of life, to understand other persons position and not mock them, but still feeling bad in heart about what he may have dealt with, wishing that the pirate costume could have come a day before from our early out boxes.

At least felt slightly better when the kids beamed up looking at their toys in early out boxes, pari happy to see her horse ride and Avi exulted to see his bike. I see a ray of hope, that slowly our entire home will return to us. I am tired of not returning home for so long, I want to go back home on day, at present after a whole day at work, I just feel like I am returning to a hotel/ like I am on a long business trip where my entire family has accompanied me, but I don't feel like I am returning home yet!!