Eye of a Storm

It seems absurd to be watching personal i-reports (or whatever CNN's brand of firsthand accounts are called) about the place in the world I love most, being washed away, burned and smashed by Sandy's violent gusts of wind, while I make rice crispy treat eyeballs for my sons' Halloween buffets tomorrow morning.

Not for the first time, I feel torn between where I wish I could absorb my thoughts and energy  and what real life, that everyday thing, is forcing me back to face.  An eye on home, a foot somewhere else.

Isn't that what life for the expatriate, the immigrant, whatever one calls us, is all about?  Or am I confusing the insanity of life at a certain age, in which one finds one self lamenting over a failed marriage yet must contemplate whether raspberry gelatin ice cube molds will look like bloodied eyeballs to second graders?

My stomach churns at the thought of my cousins in New Jersey, my aunts in Queens, New York, my loved ones in Brooklyn and Manhattan, and I have just put Rocky Mountain Marshmallows, for the love of god, into a saucepan, in a kitchen, in an apartment, I no longer share with my German husband.  The reason I thought I was here is no longer, yet my half German children expect costumes and trick-o-treating and sweets in the morning.

New York appears to have taken a beating again.  And, like the last great shock to my beautiful city, I have watched it from here.  I have mourned from afar.

At least the rice crispy treats turned out well.  Thanks to exports, the artificial things still taste the same, no matter where I am.