How a place welcomes me

I remember my first day in Los Angeles; I was stuck on the 10, sitting in traffic and shivering with impatience. That’s a classic Los Angeles afternoon that I got so accustomed to over the years.

Now, I just experienced my first day in New Jersey. I got out of bed at 5am and saw snow, coming down hard. In the morning, I realized that our temporary apartment is situated in front of a frozen lake. From the apartment heated nicely at 70 degrees, I looked outside and wonder if I’m every going to step out…. All I saw were other buildings with white roof, cars buried in white snow, continuing snow, and the big frozen lake. We don’t have any food because we haven’t gone shopping yet. Our white rental car is somewhere in the snow and we don’t have a shovel. Neither of us know how to drive in this kind of condition. I am so hungry but we are totally stuck.

We haven’t been set up with a proper internet connection yet but we tap into an available signal of some unknown neighbor. I console myself by googling “how to remove car from snow”.

I crawled back into bed and dreamt about our old place in Los Angeles. Terran and I spent so much time outside in the playground, surrounded by palm trees, and embraced by sunlight. When I needed to pick up some groceries, we would walk to Vons, just 5 minutes away. How am I going to take Terran outside in this kind of weather? The whole place seems lonely, with very few cars, and very few people. I think I will just stay inside and look out the windows….