Growing Family

Holding Two Places

Holding two places in my mind-frame and consciousness has never been my strength. When I went to Europe for the summer as a teenager, I only contacted my parents a handful of times. I was so busy seeing the Colosseum, and listening to music in Irish pubs, I just couldn't picture my poor mother at home, having no idea where I was, or what I was doing.

Approaching two years in Houston, this morning I realized that my life in Sydney that was so crisp, and real is becoming fuzzy, and less real. My life here seems quite true. What I pay seems to be what things should cost. What I do seems normal, and reasonable. I shrug off things that used to jar me. This life has become comfortable, and familiar, when it used to be foreign and unfamiliar.

It's okay for this life to be familiar. I won't fight that today. It is a relief that some of the strained newness and angularity has worn off.

Finding that my ability to instantly transport myself to Sydney in my mind has slowed, left me feeling sad. I'm thinking in North American seasons. Measuring in inches and feet. Calculating in U.S. dollars. And when I look for a rhythm for what's coming next, I think back to this time last year - which took place here, in Houston, and gives me the clues I need to move forward.

With such a massive time difference, the connection between the U.S. and Sydney has always been hard to maintain. This is partially the reason for us being here for this season. If we had felt fulfilled in our connection to family back in the States, we might not have felt the need to return. But we didn't. And now, an ocean away from my dear friends, I don't.

Today I spent some time chatting on line with a dear friend I made in Sydney. She lives in Switzerland at the moment. I also spent some time talking to another dear friend about possible school options back in Sydney. Being able to have a back-and-forth real time chat, even over the internet, was so life-giving. 

I watched two Aussie shows, and then spent time looking at schools online. Street and neighborhood names that I had forgotten sprang to life. Zeroing in on one school option, I looked at houses nearby, and understood precisely where we could attend church, and what our life would look like. Through the lens of the real estate ads, I settled into the comfort of yellow pine floors, and all white bathrooms, Aussie style interiors that are all about simplicity and sunshine.

Before I knew it, I'd found it. That feeling of knowing the place, the people, and country, was sparked. 

What a relief. I felt so untethered when I thought I'd forgotten. One of the most vulnerable places in my heart is that I won't be able to go back, or that upon returning, I won't be able to find my place in Australia again. 

Proud to be Australian

I received Australian citizenship as an adult. In my mind, pursuing a new citizenship as an adult is like the difference between being baptized as an infant, and baptized as an older individual, making a personal choice. I was born American, and I still am, but I chose to become Australian.

As the ongoing hostage crisis in Sydney is splashed around the front page of international newspapers, with words like TERROR emblazoned, Australia keeps her footing. The details of the number of hostages is not being released to the public. The gunman's demands are not being released. Multiple contacts have been made to media in effort for the gunman's demands to be broadcast to the world, but they have refused.

The police remain calm, and dedicated to bringing the hostages out safely. 

For Australia, this is not the time to spark a media frenzy. This is not a time to launch a fear campaign.

Instead, there is a movement on social media in support of Australia's Muslim population. The hashtag #illridewithyou was tweeted 22,000 times as evening fell on Sydney. To quote the story in the Sydney Morning Herald, the tweet started when one woman, Rachael Jacobs, noticed another woman on public transport removing her hijab, and encouraged her to keep it on, and that she would walk with her if she felt unsafe. That's the Australia I know and love. 

"I'll walk with you." "I'll ride with you." The world may be telling us we are a threat to each other, yet I'll walk with you.

What a stirring example of using whatever privilege we have on behalf of others. 

I'm proud to be Australian.

A Hole in the Back Door

I don't know the details, no one really does at the moment, but we are hearing that there is a hostage situation happening in Sydney right now. From what we've heard, gunmen are holding people hostage in the Lindt chocolate cafe in Martin Place. Read the BBC account here.

My husband worked in Martin Place for years, and many of our friends still do. I'm texting with my bestie to confirm that her husband is okay. The Lindt cafe is one of my girlfriends' favorite spots to take their kids for a treat in the city.

As the dynamics surrounding Ferguson seethe and boil in America, Australia is always the "grass is greener", the escape hatch, the back door exit to freedom and a better life.

Here, every day another incident of police brutality against Black males is broadcast, another report about the widest income divide between Black and white households in years, statistics about biased discipline of Black girls in schools - the darker the skin, the harsher the punishment...shaky handheld videos of police shooting unarmed men and boys in real time, pictures of undercover police officers pointing their weapons on protesters, my feed chokes and gags on story after story of the wrongs suffered here. 

In all this, Australia has seemed a constant, a safety, an assurance.

After a hard day of parenting, a hard day of life, a day when I have struggled to find my balance, a day when I have wrestled with my young son over the injustice of Michael Brown's death, and the pain of the decision not to indict the officer who killed him, a day battling with fear, I am presented with this.

The city I love, a very dear friend in lock down in his office building, and a best friend waiting anxiously for her husband.

Lord, have mercy. 

 

Felt Seasons

For years in Sydney the weather and the seasons just didn't seem to sink up. Hot Christmas! So wrong, until the beach on Boxing day with a box of hot chips and a bag of fresh cherries just seemed like the most perfect thing. 

The weather here in Houston has finally transitioned from steam room to sweaters. Instinctively, I begin to anticipate the Easter holidays, and dream of hot cross buns, only to remember that the onset of autumn here in North America does not coincide with Easter. 

With the arrival of November, I look around for the magical Jacaranda blooms, and readjust to meager autumn foliage instead.

The approach to Christmas in Australia indicates a final frenzy of school activities and end of school year performances that should bottom out into the long summer and Christmas holidays, except that here in North America it doesn't. Instead, we wave the flag at the halfway point of the school year, pat each other on the back and say "we're going to make it."

Christmas has exploded like a ticker tape parade in all the local shops. Heck, Hobby Lobby has had Christmas going strong for months now. Halloween has passed and Thanksgiving is around the corner. This year we won't be up north with sawhorse board tables supporting the plates of 50+ cousins. Nor will we gather under twinkle lights in my friend's Sydney backyard, drinking wine with a table of friends that hail from all over the globe.

This year our little family will be gathered around our little table doing something new.

This is the life of a person straddling two continents, or hop scotching back and forth between them. The jarring disconnect fades into a new normal, and then that normal changes again. The weather doesn't match the seasons, doesn't match the holidays, doesn't match the school schedule...

But it's okay. November is the promise of summer and stone fruit in Sydney. Here in Houston persimmons hang like heavy jewels on my neighbors' trees. Here it is hot cider and cinnamon doughnuts. I've circled the day after Thanksgiving on the calendar, the date that I allow myself to get our Christmas tree. I practice delayed gratification in Houston and Australia. Some things stay the same, no matter where I am.

 

 

Springtime in New South Wales

Blogging is really feast or famine for me, and I apologize for that. My hubs arrived home today after a ten day business trip. With him comfortably situated on the couch, my brain suddenly finds the room to sit down and write, that eluded me while he was gone and I was occupied with making sure I didn't drop anything important.

What I want to stop in and say today is not polished, but just a thought I want to record as part of my expat/repatriate/dual nationality experience.

When people find out that we have moved to Houston from Sydney, their reaction is inevitably the same. "That must have been a work transfer." "Why would you do that?" "How's that working out for you?" The theme of peoples' responses is that Sydney must be infinitely better, and we must be struggling to find anything enjoyable in Houston.

For the last year my answer has been the same every time. I explain that we're here to be closer to family for a season. I describe our approach to life - that we can make a beautiful and full life wherever we are. These things are true, and I believe them. 

Recently springtime arrived in Sydney, and school dismissed for the holidays. Suddenly my Facebook stream was filled with blue skies, beaming faces, sparkling seas, and gorgeous plates of food. All the loveliest places, the best of friends, the tastiest of treats, and the most beloved holiday locations scrolled under my thumb, as if on promenade.

There are moments when I want to throw my phone, and throw myself sobbing into a pillow. There are moments when I want to answer people's inquiries with questions of my own. "Why did we leave what is, to me, the most beautiful place on earth, to be here, in the heat and mosquitoes?" 

That's the tricky thing about this move. All the above are true. We are here to be closer to family for a season. We already have stacks of memorial proof that it has been a good decision, a good move. We have seen my family more in the last year, than in the last 5+ years in Sydney combined. It has been good, and worth it.

We have built a pretty decent life here. We've found beautiful places. We've made friends. We've carved out a cozy place.

It is also true that our hearts murmur Australia with every beat. Sounds melodramatic? Sure. But it's true. In Australia my Dutch husband and I found a place that felt home down to our bones, and we created a family there. We miss it, deeply. And even though I am pathetically inept at making and keeping Skype calls, and most of my Aussie friends aren't active on Facebook, my heart is completely tied up with friends there, one in particular who is the Diana to my Anne (or am I the Anne to her Diana?).

Five years from now maybe Houston could be that for me? It's possible. This isn't my first rodeo though, I've lived abroad and moved back twice before. I've never felt as at home anywhere in the world as I felt in Sydney, after I'd truly found my stride.

I just wanted to write it down, because maybe in a year from now it will feel different. Maybe this is a predictable point on the arc of the expat experience. Maybe I'll fall out of love with Australia over time.

But today, these weeks, I'm thankful no one has asked me "how's that working out?" when they hear about our move, because I'm having trouble delivering the answer that is true, in light of all the gorgeous holiday moments that are pulling my mind and imagination back towards my own Australian memories. 

 

Longing

This weekend I had a Skype call with a dear friend. The way we met continues to be one of the best stories I have about making a new friend.

We had been in Sydney about two weeks, and one morning I was desperate to get out of the house with the kids. I stepped over the clutter in nearly every room (who knew the contents of suitcases could explode on such a massive scale when you didn't have furniture yet to contain it!), put Sprout in the stroller, and managed to cross the busy road between our house and the adjacent waterfront park. Small Sun was 2 (almost 3) and Sprout was 18 months. 

To reach the play equipment, you had to run down a steep embankment of long, green grass. The cove sparkled and undulated in a different way moment by moment. It was living there, on that cove, that I learned how responsive water is to wind, and how they play together in a never tiring interaction.

Sprout couldn't yet climb the ladder on her own, and once up, I had to hover beneath to make sure she didn't step out of the play structure into thin air. 

In those early days, before we knew anyone, we haunted the playgrounds along the cove walk. Happening upon playmates, and snatching a few moments of conversation with another mum made our day.

That day, while we were playing, another mum rolled up with a Graco pram (stroller). Her daughter had on shoes from American Target, I knew because Sprout had those same shoes scattered on the floor of our semi (duplex). The blond mother's American southern accent rang out across the playground as she spoke to her companion. Her brilliant diamond ring threw flashes of light as dazzling as the light off the wavelets in the cove. I didn't want an American friend, I wanted Aussie friends, but I went over to say hi anyway.

"S" had been in Sydney just about as long as we had. She was also haunting the playgrounds along the cove walk, from her neighborhood a brisk ten minutes walk down the cove. She knew no one, and her house was also an empty shell, waiting for belongings to fill it.

She came back by my house with me, to borrow a power adapter, because she didn't have one, and didn't know where to buy one, and I had extra. I invited her in, past our monstrous mess, convinced that helping her with her need was more important than shame over my clutter. I wrote my number on a piece of paper and told her to call me if she wanted to get together sometime. I was completely shocked when she did.

That was over six years ago. S and I became fast friends. Our daughters were nearly the same age, and looked very similar as babies. So much so that at her daughter's birthday party, when both the girls were in diapers, splashing in the kiddie pool, her husband picked up Sprout to go sing happy birthday, only to realize he had the wrong girl. We did book club together, we fell pregnant at the same time and delivered our boys within weeks of each other. My Finch and her little M were the best of friends, inseparable in preschool, and always carrying on a conversation about dinosaurs (a passion only matched in each other's enthusiasm). 

I talked them into joining our school, and our daughters went to school together, attending the same playdates and parties in a tightly knit happy circle.

We went on holidays together. We watched each other's children. When S had to fly to the States for a family emergency, I helped to step in to make sure her house and her children had what they needed. We cooked for each other when one was sick. We helped each other move. We co-hosted Thanksgiving for a diverse crowd each year. We shared Christmas.

Then we moved back to America. We even stayed in our friend's house for a week while they were overseas, between selling our house and flying to Fiji. 

Being here, in America, I am so far from my friends and the country that I love. The two places are so different from each other, it is hard to hold both in my mind, in the same space.

Last week I had a Skype call with S. They are in North Carolina. They have moved back "home." She looked bewildered. Her voice faltered. She is hung over that chasm that is having left a life you love, and not yet having built a new life. She doesn't know where they'll live, or if they will ever find a new church where they feel they can uplift their hearts to God, or if they will ever find a school as lovely as our dear Sydney school. She is in the between place. I know it well.

Seeing S brought everything Australia rushing back. The light. The sky. The wind. The gum trees. Both of our families moved to Australia for a bit of adventure, only to fall deeply and madly in love with the place. They have citizenship there, as do we. Her children still carry their strong Aussie accents. Accents my children lost months ago. 

I wish I could cross the road, and stumble down the hill to meet her at the playground. I want to tell her "you're going to be okay. You will find joy here too." I want to brew her a good cup of tea, give her a piece of cake, and sit in the sunlit afternoon together. That is how we set everything right again.

 

 

*Our Thanksgiving table, outside in springtime, Aussie style.

Throwing out the anchor

We've done these big moves a couple times. Nashville to Holland. Holland to Nashville. Nashville to Sydney. Sydney to Houston. I've come to recognize a certain pattern of disconnection that enters when I travel for a holiday and it's coming time to return home.

I feel a bit lost and disconnected, trying to remember "home" - where it is, what it looks like, and who my people are. 

This listlessness set in several days ago, when we were closer to the end of the holiday than the beginning. When my thoughts started to turn to home, they immediately flicked to Australia, and I had to stop and remind myself that now going home means going to Texas. My mind began to bring up images of the things I love - our sun room, the view of trees from our bedroom window...my garden and the pool. 

In reality, the house is all boxed up. Only minimal furnishings remain to make the house livable for the person looking after it while we are gone. The plants are dug out of the garden and waiting in an army of plastic pots. That life, in that house has already been wrapped up, it only needs moving. 

Over the years I have discovered a way to mitigate this lost feeling. Towards the end of a trip I think about my routine "back home". I think about my friends and what they are doing. I send some texts and emails, planning some play dates or some coffee meetups for as soon as the jet lag wears off. I've found that if I get back "home" and end up having a lonely week, it can lead to me feeling entirely disconnected and wondering "do I even belong here?" when I really do.

This week rather than coffee dates and play dates, I have moving plans, and am so thankful to have friends to call on for help.

"Can I leave my kids at your house for a couple hours while the movers are emptying the house?" I ask a friend. I marvel at the rapidity of her response, an unchecked "YES" to my three jet lagged offspring. 

The babysitter can't come the morning we need to sign our contracts, but her mother agrees to come instead. I am so thankful for our sweet babysitter and her family who have made our lives so much easier this year.

I am not doing this alone. I have people to go home to. I have things to do. I won't drift off into the stratosphere. I am so thankful.

 

In Between

It is in the in between spaces that our family feels the most solid and secure. Sitting in an airport lounge, we know the drill. We have done this so many times.

In the place where we live, we don't fit in 100%, and in the place we are going to, we will stand out. Intercultural marriage, transracial adoption, and multiple citizenships mean that we fit in everywhere, and nowhere at all.

I walk to the airport bathroom holding Sprout's hand. "I feel the most solid and connected as a family when we travel, do you feel that?" "No" is her simple seven year old response.

Do they feel these cracks? Do they feel this third culture straddle we are always doing? Maybe not.

The rules of travel are clear and straightforward. Take off your shoes, belt, and jewelry, and be exposed down to your bones. Once you remove the exterior embellishments, the bones are all the same. Sprout sends her doll through the x-ray machine, "I saw her, she didn't have any hair!" she exclaims. Only the frame shows, the rest is erased.

In the in between spaces I let my diction flow into what feels comfortable and "me" at this point. Jacket becomes jumper, and trash can becomes bin. I feel my voice lift and lilt in ways that set me out as different and potentially try hard in my new life, but simply sound like my voice to me. I stop censoring myself for what I "should be" and just am.

We watch novice travellers, full size pillows brought in hopes of comfortable sleep. My children pull their entertainment out of backpacks, and Sprout dances in the lounge aisles, knowing how confined she will soon be.

I remember the time I brought jump ropes, and we passed the time in Kuala Lumpur skipping.

We tally up the flight times, the layovers, and imagine, many hours from now, falling exhausted into foreign beds, our rental car being our new home away from home, the one thing that will be constant in three weeks of travel. Maybe that's just me, needing something secure?

"Remember this is a night flight. You can eat dinner, then watch one movie, and then it's bedtime." we remind them. Yea, yea, they know, they've done this all before.

This is somewhere we belong - in the in between spaces. I am happy here.

Rise

Today wasn't a "Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day", but it wasn't a prize winner either. Half an hour past when bedtime should have been, I dragged myself out to walk the dog, with a crying child in the doorway calling down the street after me. My feelings were neither warm nor fuzzy.

As I walked, I mulled the day over. Where did I go wrong? Why did so many moments go awry? I wanted to be gentle, but I was stern. I wanted to give space, but I pinched moments. I wanted to stay calm, but my nerves frayed. I failed to be the woman I wanted to be.

I spoke these things out loud, letting my confessions fall amongst my footsteps. Then, the Still Small Voice spoke to me.

"When you feel that you are sinking, you grab hold of heavy things. It's better to hold onto something that floats."

 

 

Wanting-Having-Living

Why is consumerism a slippery slope that tastes like chocolate?

- Austin Fitzpatrick

Living in America as a privileged white woman, I feel as if I can have just about anything I want. Materially speaking, that it. I like clothes. I buy them often. I still love shopping thrift stores, and the sale rack at Target, but I could easily drive to the nearby high priced boutiques and shop there. I shop at the mediocre local grocery store but I could shop at the nearby fancy organic fair trade store. I can shop on etsy, or online. I can get anything I want, nearly immediately, at rock bottom prices...materially speaking. And if I'm unahappy in any way, I can return the goods, with or without a receipt. "The customer is always right" means I can make demands, and watch prices drop, or pitch a fit and get things for free.

I met an Aussie mum at the ballet school recently, and quickly found a kindred spirit. She spoke tentatively, trying to gauge where I stood on the American consumer spectrum, "Houston isn't so bad...you can live here very comfortably...but I miss the beauty of Australia." I cut to the chase and said "Houston is fantastic, if you want to accumulate alot of nice stuff." We then connected over memories of village cafes, walkable neighborhoods, and a quality of life that you can't order with a credit card (although, if I could order a skyfull of NSW blue, I would swipe for it in a minute!). 

Several years ago, I remember standing and talking to one of my parent's friends, trying to explain the freedom I felt, raising my children in a culture less obsessed with consumerism than America. I felt like I was speaking a different language. I felt almost disloyal for expressing something so embedded in the American cultural mesh.

This week I read The Great Tampon Debate on Kristy Rice's brilliant expat blog. One of the comments carried this addiction to consumerism home for me. An Aussie girl asked an American if the plastic applicators on American tampons were biodegradable or recyclable (they must be either or, right?). She was horrified to discover that American women throw away or flush tons of plastic for something that in her opinion, was completely unnecessary. Wasteful. In Australia, I never found plastic applicator tampons.

 I have heard it said that here in Houston there are more restaurants per capita that most anywhere else in the U.S. Food is cheap and we have eaten out more frequently than ever before in our lives. I can count on one hand the number of times I felt truly nourished, and like I've had a good meal. All this quantity does not equate quality, and even the quality does not bring happiness.

I don't know how to manage the myriad ethical dilemmas living in this culture presents. The clothes we buy are made by workers in poor (dangerous? illegal?) conditions. The food we eat contains unknown contaminants, pesticides, and gmos. The waste we produce is massive and piles up in landfills. For every fair/free/organic choice we make, there seem to be 10,000 others we are failing to make. Our soap is poisoning the Great Lakes, the vegetable plants we buy from the big box garden stores are killing the bees we are trying to save, and everywhere there are people begging on the street corners. 

How do I explain that when I went to Australia and began to understand that there wasn't anything frightening in the milk, that in general people cared about the environment, that the poor were less poor because as a society there was a different value placed on all human life, and that there was a thoughtfulness surrounding what we buy and what we do with it, it was like I could breathe more freely? 

It is too simplistic to say that America is full of gluttons and Australia is filled with conscientious consumers. I have no facts or data to present. What I have is memories of conversations with friends about milk. "Do you buy organic milk? I ask. "Why?" my friend asks. "Well, so that you don't have hormones or antibiotics in your milk." I reply. My friend looks at me, the answer comes slowly. "We just have the one kind, and it doesn't have hormones or antibiotics." 

In Australia, life is very expensive. All choices make a big impact on the wallet. I consider the choices more carefully when a children's tshirt can easily cost $20+.

Several weeks ago I went to WalMart for the first time in about a decade. I wanted to buy a bike ramp for Small Sun for his birthday, and they had them there. The box took up the massive trolley, but while I was there I bought more. I bought 12 pool noodles for Finch's pool party. At $1.20 they were a fun party favor. Then there was an enormous plastic tub to put the pool gear in. Next I came across a patio side table, perfect for all the times we just hold our drinks in our hands because there is no place to set them down. Onto the stack it went. I strained to get the cart, piled high with made-in-China treasures, waving pool noodle tentacles in every direction. I couldn't see over the pyramid of cheap goods I was getting. I started to wonder if I could fit it in the car?

I payed what seemed a pittance when you considered the time, resource, and effort invested in manufacturing and shipping these goods. I loaded them up in the cavernous boot of my minivan. I needn't have worried about space, there's always room for more.

I drove home thoughtful.

I don't know how to live here. That is, I don't know how to live here with an engaged conscience. Every choice seems wrong, a violation of someone else's rights, a failure on some level.

I cook from scratch most nights. I grow some of our own food. I buy second hand. I do the things that I know to do, but there are so many, many ways I feel we are falling short.

I don't know how to explain how a clear conscience is part of the lightness I feel living in Australia. In America we are not bad people. We are not trying to take advantage of others. We are not trying to poison the planet. It's more like we're stuck in a web, or that "consumerism is a slippery slope, and it tastes like chocolate."