Together again in .......

 I was 12 years old when I saw the Disney movie Anastasia on TV in India. The movie is a fictional-disney-fied account of Anastasia, the last Romanov princess and her "journey" from Russia to Paris. The fact that Rasputin is portrayed as an evil sorcerer & the Romanovs as beloved czars should provide sufficient insight into how close to history the movie actually is. 

Most people who have watched the movie would remember it as another Disney romance or heroine's journey at best. My pre-teenage mind, however attached itself to the arc of Anastasia and her grandmother. In the movie, Anastasia's grandmother(the dowager empress) gives Anastasia a music box with a promise of being "Together again in Paris". Somehow, this theme of being "Together again" at some location in the future just stuck with me..

Fast forward 15 years, my husband and I got engaged after being in a long distance relationship for more than 3 years. Given that my work was in Baltimore and he was going to B-school in Austin, we were readying ourselves for a long distance marriage, when I received a job offer from Dell, to work in Austin. I moved to Austin in December 2010 & we got married in February 2011. Given student VISA restrictions, Saurabh wasn't able to come to the US until July 2011, which meant I moved into our student housing apartment alone with my sparse furniture, waiting to start our lives together. On a particularly gloomy afternoon, likely in the throes of missing my new husband, my thoughts wandered back to Anastasia and her grandmother's promise of being together again in Paris. I grabbed a yellow post-it and wrote "Together again in Austin", drew 2 hearts next to the words and stuck it on the fridge. That Post-it stayed stuck to our refrigerator door for the next 14 years, the refrigerators changed as we changed houses 5 times, but the Post-it was a constant. During a particularly heated argument, in which I claimed that Saurabh's heart was "black", I drove home the point by coloring one of the hearts on the post-it black. Over the years, the Post-it got surrounded by magnets from our travels to all parts of the world as well as tiny hand-prints & art work from the kids' day cares and schools. My Post-it which started with a promise of Saurabh & I being together again, now included 2 kids and the lives we had built together.

Ever since, we made the decision to move to California and leave our home and friends in Austin behind, I have been thinking about my Post-it and its promise of being together in Austin. In 2010, Austin stood for a place for Saurabh & I to be together again, in 2013, when we bought our first home, it became the place where we first laid claim to a piece of land in America, when our kids were born, it became the city that welcomed their first steps and laughter, when we became US citizens in 2022, we went from being, Austinites & Texans to being Americans. As we leave this beautiful city in our rear view mirror, I take my Post-it and all it has meant to us, with me to California, praying that CA is as kind to us, that we are always together and are surrounded by all that means the most to us. Here's to being TOGETHER.....