Growing Family

My Nahville Top Ten

Per your requests:

1. Cheekwood Botanical Gardens
2. Bates Nursery (for greens, not kids)
3. The courtyard at the Downtown Library
4. The showers at Essential Therapy Spa (thanks Lil!)
5. "You're So Nashville" in the Nashville Scene
6. The Aspen Fruit Crepes at Le Peep
7. Green Hills theater and the films that don't show anywhere else
8. Fidos and Hillsboro Village (Pangea, Posh, Fire Finch)
9. Centennial Park, and
10. Calypso Cafe's black bean nachos and black bean salad...and don't forget the fruit tea and boija muffins, mmmmmmmm.

All of you Nashvegas peeps, when you partake of these things, smile for me.

24 hours till check-in.

Musings on Exiting the Plane

I've got this idea that I'll step off of the plane suntanned and 10 pounds lighter.

I know the whole pitfall of unrealistically thinking that a change of place will make you a new person. I don't think I'm expecting that, but I am expecting something. How could I not? We've been talking, dreaming, and anticipating this move for four years. Of course it must be larger than life in my mind.

At the same time, I don't feel like I have any big expectations. I'm assuming that we'll have a house and car within the realms of what we have here. I expect I'll be lonely for awhile. I expect we'll look around for churches and then once we find one, we'll take awhile to make friends. The same could be said for playgroup/mommy connections.

I know from my experience moving to Holland, that the little things you don't think about as culture differences are the things that stick you the most. The slightly different way the post operates, the time the shops open and close, the way you pay and bag at the grocery store, and tipping etiquette. Moving there, I assumed that since I was familiar with the culture, the transition would be simple. It wasn't. It was so hard.

So, I feel like my expectations of this move are realistic (which is often my downfall and the thing that limits me in life - my steady grasp on realism, and my tendency to bend a situation towards practicality of it seems to be growing toward the extraordinary). At the same time there is something in my heart that sings when I think about the plane lifting off from this city. Like a hot air balloon rising, coming to the full length of its tethers and then rising higher, breaking free of restraint.

If I can leave the rich life I have here and not become mired in benefits, then I think I will have wings to take me anywhere. I don't want to ever believe that things can't get any better. They can always get better. Which is why I'm trying not to smash my inner belief that even after 25 hours of travel, I just might step on to Australian soil suntanned and lighter, certainly in spirit and dreamingly, in body as well.

Wowzers

We're having a going away party today, out at my parents house in the country. We sent the invite to lots of people, expecting that we'd have a good turn out but that not everyone would want to drive the 45+ minutes out here.

16 people can't make it.

130+ people are coming.

Um, dang.

Have I already stated that this event is happening at MY PARENT'S HOUSE? On a winding, one lane driveway with limited parking?

I'm directing all my energy to focus on how loved we are, instead of on freaking out about the logistics. Man, that's a lot of people! Man, that's a lot of love!

Two Weeks and Counting

Two weeks from today is when we'll be leaving. In fact, right about this time of day is when we'll be at the airport checking in. We stop off in L.A. and Fiji before landing in Sydney.

Small Sun has been playing "move to Sydney" with airplanes. He's got it down pretty well. We go to L.A. and have a snack and walk around. Then we get on a really big plane and fly for a long, long, long, long time. We get to watch movies and eat dinner. (And Sleep, I hope!) Then, before we get to Fiji we get to eat breakfast on the plane and he's going to have cereal and Pappa is going to have eggs (go figure, he never eats eggs). Then in Fiji we'll run around and play before flying a short airplane ride to Sydney (length of flight becomes completely relative when you're flying across the world). He says that Pappa will go get our car (rental) and we'll go to our (temporary) house. Right away we'll go to the market to get some food and especially his milk. That's how it is going to go down, according to Small Sun. It's the script we've been carefully teaching him.

On Saturday we're having a going-away shindig (which everyone is welcome to attend) and we have about 80 rsvps, so far. I sometimes think about all the stuff I should be doing to get ready for that...

Staying at my parent's is going well. We're getting out to see people pretty much every day but also getting some rest. We had a glorious snow and got to sled, and now we're wearing short sleeves and playing in the sand box.

In the car this week, the Captain asked me if I was ready to go. We agreed that you can't really know whether or not you're ready when you're doing something completely new and you don't really know what to expect. We also agreed that moving, with two small children, across the world, with no job, no house, and no car might rattle a lot of cages. We are really the plan-for-all-contingencies types so it's a stretch even for us. Really though, I think it's simpler than it sounds. We're moving to an English-speaking, developed nation. The basic systems will be navigable for outsiders. And it really helps that we have saved for this move and have a buffer for the unknowns. I don't think I'd be this calm if we were moving to, say, India. But hey, Sydney has Craigslist, it has eBay, Ikea, and stores like Target.

This move is definitely really different from when my parents moved us to Russia. We are plugged into the global culture (if you can call it that) structured through the Internet. Flickr, blogs, shopping online for houses, cars and jobs, weboards, online services, playgroup forums, weather. It's all a mouse click away (and then a twenty minute wait on my parent's dial-up). I mean, I've spent the last months watch YouTube videos from Sydney, TV shows from Australia, surfing Craigslist, and reading the Sydney Morning Herald online. My mom definitely didn't have all that when she packed our two suitcases each and we flew into the great unknown on an airline that still permitted smoking.

So, no real news to report. Just that it's two more weeks...

What's On My Mind

You might think that THE MOVE is working every corner of my brain space but I'm actually thinking a lot about something else. I just finished reading No Disrespect by Sister Souljah. I've mentioned that stories are what move me and her story acted as bait to get me interested in really digging down into the evidence of racism in our current culture.

People often ask me, in fact, someone asking me tonight is what fired me up to come drop a line after driving to Atlanta and back today, and only having dial-up at my disposal: people ask me if I still experience racism against Small Sun. Basically they are asking "come on, are people still really doing all that crazy racist stuff?" When I tell them that no, I don't often experience direct racism against my son, they relax, assured that the real bad stuff happened in the past and our country is pretty much cool right now.

We are not cool. And that's where you all come in. I'm looking for what to read next. I proceed to tell people that while my adorable, charismatic two year old does not experience much overt racism, that our country is riddled with systematic inequality and oppression as evidenced in education, job opportunities, wages, lending practices, incarceration rates, etc, etc, etc. 

I'm really ready to do another round of reading to educate myself on what is going on for African Americans in our country. What can you recommend? What should I be reading? What are must-reads for Black people in America?

Sister Souljah (or is it Sista? The book is in the room of my sleeping children or I'd go check) presents the opinion that Africans in America (her descriptor) have been so pillaged, spiritually, morally, and physically, that they are barely functioning as a people group. She holds that many of the African American people who are achieving success in America today (I should check when the book was published, it may be a couple years old) are people that have been emasculated in an education system invested in preserving white power.

Anyway, you can see it is an interesting topic and one I need to read more on instead of trying to talk about it when I'm exhausted.

So, let me know if you have anything I should read. I'll have to run out and stock up on books as I might not get them so easily from Sydney.

I miss writing and I miss reading blogs. Just a couple more weeks till we fly (April 1st) and then I'll have lots to write about.

Thanks to everybody for your comments and support. I'll do my best to catch up when I have REAL Internet!

Goodbye to a House

Tonight is the last night we'll spend in this house. It will be a circle story of sorts, with the Captain and I here alone together, sans children. Of course, our large and loving dog came with us to this house, and is gone from us now, but in other ways our leaving will be much like our coming.

It is late winter and we've just had several measly (but impressive for our latitude) snows. We moved here in a snowstorm in January. I remember being here alone, painting and putting up curtain rods, looking out between the blinds at a white world. The house was still and the whole city was blanketed with a natural sound dampener. That and nobody drives here when it actually snows.

The house was bare then, like it is bare now. Clean stretches of shiny hardwoods belying the actual square footage. Slowly we filled this house up with furnishings and children and slowly we packed it up, lastly sending the children to their grandparent's.

So much has happened here. We finished college. We tried to have a baby. We got pregnant and got excited, and then lost the baby and grieved. We prepared to adopt, and brought home Small Sun. We tried to get pregnant again and I swelled up with The Sprout. I vomited in every open container on the premises. After I gave her birth I stayed in bed for two weeks to recover. From the couch and my bed I have spent countless hours communing with my favorite trees, enjoying them from any angle. I discovered the tall pines that I can see, only in winter, from my bathroom window. We found that the sun sets like fire behind the gas station down the street from us. I took a plot of city yard and landscaped the whole thing with trees, stone, vegetable, herb and flower gardens and changed it again and again.

I've made friends here. I've started to understand who I am while living here. I've faced my greatest crisis of faith and now I feel like I'm a bullet piercing the clouds and flashing out into the sunlight above. I've grown something of a backbone and I'm learning how to speak my mind.

What a wonderful thing, to leave behind something you love. It is so much better than leaving something you hate, or something you're afraid of, or something that has gotten the better of you. In leaving this house, this city, these friends, and this life, I am leaving dear, dear things - treasures in my heart.

More than anything I am thankful. Lately I've found myself literally welling up with tears, crying up my thanks. I am well cared for. I am beloved. I am so pleased to have lived in this little house and had my life explode out the doors and windows until we're blowing clear across the world.