temptation, hard work, appreciation, relief

Last summer was magical.  It was stark contrast to my life in Doha- the people, the hills, the air, the water, the lack of traffic, the music. The peace.  Coming back was hard, but then a job posting came up that seemed to offer an opportunity to bring us back to that area year-round. It was work I could surely do well and was qualified for, a chance to move somewhere that wasn’t entirely new for a change, to be the one with the anchor job, to stop trailing once and for all. 

I applied.  I got an interview.  You can’t interview for a job without wanting it completely and convincing yourself that you would be the best possible match for the position.  You have to tell yourself that it’s better to go than stay, find reasons to justify that the move will be worthwhile.

Hope is ridiculous and wonderful. We keep doing it despite overwhelming evidence that life is hard and often unfair. I know that it would have made more sense to let go of all hope the instant the interview was over –and then it would be that much more exciting if I was chosen, that much less painful if I didn’t get it. I didn’t let go entirely but I did work hard on keeping it in check.

It’s been a strange week, full of rich conversations with friends and lots of thought about what it would mean to go, what it would mean to stay.  I’ve been able to see, for a moment, what I gain from  living in a place that is hard, that contradicts so many of my values and that deprives me of so many of the things I thought I needed in order to be happy.  My search for beauty here has made me more appreciative of my surroundings, and having shared it with others they now encourage me to keep up the practice even when I’m wishing I were elsewhere. 

I’ve also thought deeply about how wonderful it would be to move someplace where I already have friends, where I know my way around, where there are seasons and mountains to climb.  It seems worth the stresses of looking for a new house, figuring out schools for the kids and easing them through the many layers of their transition.

Today, checking my e-mail before I even got out of bed, I received an impersonal note thanking me for my efforts and informing me that someone else had been chosen.  I got up, made a sandwich, and walked out into the cool air of the Doha winter dawn, surprised to be more relieved than sad.  

I’m sure that over the next few days and weeks there will be moments that I will be more sad than relieved, wishing that the next time I get on a plane to leave Qatar I will know I don’t have to return. I don’t have a lot of time for internet lists that tell me how to behave and feel, but I came across one the other day that had a point that has carried me through the suspense of this application process, and continues to comfort: 1. Know that you’re not seeing every option. This is not new news to you or me but still a good reminder when I thought my heart was set on one particular way that my life could play out.

NOT trailing for one hot minute. Heaven.

The kids and I are in Vermont, where I am working at a day camp, my first full-time job in 13 years.   Two of my kids are campers here and the oldest is at an overnight camp a few minutes up the road.

I've shed my trailing spouse label for two whole months and it’s every bit as sweet as I had imagined it would be.

Our first week here was bewildering and wonderful. I felt lost between worlds. The tree-covered hills were impossibly beautiful to my eyes that were still half-expecting Doha’s drab flatness. It took three weeks for my dreams to catch up with me and place me here. I kept waking up from city scenes in which I was trying to find an elevator, flag a taxi, or spot familiar skyscrapers to guide me home.

We considered spending the summer making shorter trips out of Doha to explore countries closer by. We’d narrowed it down to Turkey, Croatia, Gibraltar, or maybe France when this opportunity to work at a summer camp at which I had grown up, and that the kids would all finally be old enough to attend, came up.  There was no contest.  While I want to show my kids as much of the world as possible, they will be still able to choose their own expeditions when they get older.  My job is to provide a good base from which they can safely launch.  Summers of living outdoors in this community full of kids and young adults and music and silliness and hard work and play will go a long way towards making them ready for the rest of the world.

Working again is hard. I’m not used to having to stay organized in this way.  After thirteen years of having my priorities be focused on home now it’s hard to shift them to another system that I did not design myself.  Up until now the details of my days are those I have helped arrange.  Keeping track of my family and home doesn’t really compare to a camp with 50-90 kids and 40 staff people. The challenge of learning routines and names and keeping track of tasks and priorities that shift from one moment to the next is humbling. I’m appreciating certain ways that the last 13 years have better prepared me to handle all this but also realizing that it’s harder to be here than I was expecting. Sixteen summers and a couple of springs here between age 9 and 27 mean I’m mostly familiar with the culture but institutions change over the years, as have I, and there has been some adjusting to do. 

And it’s all entirely worth it.  Even when I’m grouchy and tired I look up to the hills and feel relieved that I’m here.  Doha has been hard and though we’ve each found ways enjoy aspects of it and make it home, it can never satisfy our craving for green nature.  This time here in the clear light and mountains of one of my favorite and first homes, among new and old friends with whom I’m having rich, challenging, and sometimes hilarious conversations, is filling me up, hopefully enough that I will be ready for another ten months of Doha when it’s time to go back home.  

baggage worth carrying

This moving thing may be a great source for learning about ourselves and our relationships, but it's so exhausting that all those lessons are not available immediately.  This time around, the ones I’m aware of so far are about the kids (future post on that, probably) and what I need to keep hold on even while I’m delighting in ridding myself of my possessions.

Lately I’ve been talking about how getting rid of my belongings is dangerously wonderful.  We’re moving to a furnished residence and deliberately aren't keeping much storage in the US, so we’re disposing of as many of our possessions as we can.  Books that have trailed us around the world for a decade and furniture passed down from family are being given away.  It’s such a freeing feeling that I’m nearly tempted to extend that into every aspect of my life- just be in the moment for everything, don't let possessions and attachments drag me down! There are exceptions- the kids are stuck with me until they head out into their own explorations of the world.  Certain documents- titles, deeds, birth certificates, etc- are safely encased in plastic folders and will be closely guarded.  Instruments, art, kids' books, costumes and camping equipment are all being shipped or stored.    

This time, for the first time, I've even considered stopping trailing.  We discussed the possibility of him heading off solo and me staying in the US with the kids.  In this post I worked on convincing myself that going together as a family to Doha was the right thing.  I still know that it is, but I needed something more to remind me why I wanted to keep trailing.   The word "trailing" itself sounds so passive and the hardest times to feel positive about it are when I've gotten caught up in thinking that's true, that he's forging ahead working long hours while we just dangle off him ending up any old where.  I've asked myself if cutting that rope would be the best way to take an active role in my life.

Trailing spousehood, for me, requires that I occasionally check with myself to see if this is still the path I want.  I’m not just along for the ride, just to see new places and have domestic staff. I truly would rather explore the world with my family, but marriage is hard enough even when you're not picking up and moving to an entirely other country every few years. On many of the moves my husband either goes ahead or stays on longer and I end up being responsible for making the transition with the kids on my own.  It can take a year of living in a new place before our experiences of it begin to match up.  He adjusts to his office and is oriented by his colleagues, both local and international.  I navigate the neighborhood, school, market, meet expats on the street and get my first orientation from our housekeeper and parents at the schoolbus stop.  He learns the streets near the office but can still get lost in our own neighborhood for months after we move.

Despite my zeal for lightening our load, some pictures and papers still manage to follow me around the world- there’s always one last bin or three that I am too packing-weary to go through before handing over to the shippers or stowing in the storage unit.  This time while we were sorting through a few of these,  I found photos from the year he lived in Liberia and I lived in Northern Ireland, before moving together to Kosovo.  He found old letters I had written, and journals, including the one from when I came to visit him in Liberia. It had a picture taped in that I had drawn of a pangolin I had seen on a walk outside the town where he was working. He came downstairs from sorting through his chest of old papers and photos and said, “I’m smitten with you all over again.” And just like that, so was I, with him.  

It was perfect timing for a reminder of our relationship before we had kids and I became a “trailing spouse,” how hard we worked to stay in touch via e-mail, satellite phones, and occasional meet-ups in Paris, Spain, Liberia and Vermont before we started living together.  Since then we've been a good team through a handful of countries and three states, three children, two layoffs and many camping trips. When he's far away we do our best to talk nightly.  I trust him to choose a home we will love before the kids and I even get there.  It can be easy for us to lose track of our shared history when it seems like we're always settling into a new place and having such different orientation to it.  I’m realizing that I can only continue to do this if I keep in mind the basic things we love about each other and remember why we decided to take on this lifestyle together. 

and here we go again

(Background for those who haven't read the story so far: my husband was laid off in December and has been applying for jobs near and far ever since.  We were trying to stay where we are as the kids are thriving and the schools have been good, but he has been applying to international jobs as well)

No, we haven't gone, yet.  And nothing's certain until we're driving to the airport, tickets in hand, but...  Last night we made a decision about where we're going to go.  It finally came down to two organizations, in two different countries, two different regions of the world.  Neither choice was perfect. Neither is in a place we've ever lived before.  It was like choosing between two imaginary worlds for me.  My husband could have more idea of the job he was going to do, thanks to the hiring process, but I could only guess how my life would be in each place.  

I know that I have substantial work to do in order to have a more positive attitude towards this move.  While we were in the process of choosing,  I wanted to think I could instantly orient happily towards whichever place we chose, but that is not proving to be the case.  Still, I don’t want to feel sorry for myself for having to go where we will have a place to live and all the kids’ school fees and our medical bills will be paid, and we will probably save enough to start to wipe out the debts we have gathered during the last few leaner years.  We've done this before and it seems like it shouldn't be so hard to get our heads around it, but somehow it is this time.  Have we lived in the US for too long of a stretch now?  The last time we made an international move, our oldest was in first grade- now he's going into middle school.  

It's funny to me that I started this blog mostly about my experiences as a trailing spouse, back in the fall.  At the time, I thought I was staying in one home, one city, one country for awhile and even that this was possibly the place where I would stop trailing and find a broader purpose for myself. I've written about making home in different places, my discomfort with certain situations from my experiences abroad.  Now, about to trail off to a new country, I'm almost embarrassed at what I wrote, how it all seemed so clear and relatively simple in hindsight.  I'll keep this blog updated with how the move plays out and we'll see how my point of view may be different in the moment than it was looking back at years-old experiences.  

I will share where we're going and more about the process of choosing, once I am sure our plans will not change.  

imaginary choices and my slippery slope

update, five weeks post-layoff:

So now the shock and anxiety about our situation have eased and my husband’s job application efforts have produced interviews for positions around the world.  Part of effectively interviewing is being convinced, and convincing others, that this will be the perfect job/person match anyone has ever imagined.   This requires us to live in multiple worlds of enthusiasm- oh sure, we’d love to have him commuting several hours every day if it meant that international work travel would be nonexistent and we could stay in this neighborhood we’ve grown to love, or yes, we’d be overjoyed to pick up and move our entire family to the Middle East /Northern Europe/a Pacific island/Washington DC and lots of work travel would be great too! 

We have to be able to imagine the possibilities at the same time that we can’t get too excited about them because they may not even happen at all.  Of course I have already broken my rule of not looking at expat reviews of a potential home city before he has a second interview.  For the first time, I'm not sure I'm ready to leave where we live.  I’d like to be able to say I can think critically and realistically about these prospective jobs and simultaneously practice graceful un-attachment.  Nope, I catch myself imagining that he'll be offered jobs in three different places and wondering how we'll pick, or whether we would choose a not quite ideal job with more pay over a perfect one that requires me to work too, to make up the difference.

Yes, I know this is his job we’re talking about, not mine.  But his excitement or concern is contagious and as his job is our anchor, it affects the rest of us entirely.   The part about me having to work is exciting and terrifying at the same time.   I never intended to be supported by someone else’s income, or not have a job relevant to my education for at least the first 12 years after grad school.  We fell into it almost accidentally- he had more experience so he has always been the one to land the job that would support us all.  With each job, his experience and skill set grow and with each year since grad school, the gap in my resume grows, too.

This would seem like a great opportunity for me to look for paying work for myself as well, but at this moment I have no idea where we'll be in six to seven months. I don't want to risk finding a job that I would have to walk away from soon after I've begun.  I feel like Scuffy the toy tugboat: "I was made for bigger things!" he keeps tooting, until the river gets too big and rough for him and he wishes he was back in his nice safe bathtub.  I've been telling myself for years that any month now I'll slide sideways into a brilliant outside-the-household job of my own, but I'm more than a little terrified at the prospect in case I just don't have it in me. Has it been too long?  I've about decided to let go of the old dreams that propelled me off to grad school, and put together new ones that fit together better with my life experience and family constraints.  Or will I have the luxury of a choice at all? The longer this unemployment thing lasts, the more likely I will have to find any job that will help us keep financially afloat.

to be continued...