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...

vulnerability

Why all this thinking and writing I've been doing about relocating, since I started this blog, is suddenly getting more practical and less philosophical:

In the past 12 years that my husband and I have been moving together around the world, his has always been the job that anchored us abroad and almost always when we've been in the US.  I have worked and volunteered in the various places that we've lived but it's his employment that covers our health insurance, pays our rent, buys our groceries, etc.   

I’m not happy with the terms trailing spouse or housewife- they create pictures in my mind of me stumbling along, tethered to my husband, or staying home peering fearfully at the impossibly complex world outside my tidy little house.  Neither of these images bear any relation to my real life.  Like all of the other friends I’ve talked to about this subject, my husband and I work together to decide where we will go next and how to make the transition.  I could never stay home all the time and my house is rarely tidy, unless I have a housekeeper.

I can’t deny that it’s a privileged position to not have to be the one who provides financially for my family.  I may be busy with the responsibilities of my life but I have no supervisor or manager, my days are mine to design around our routines.  I make dinner and pick up the kids every day, make them their breakfasts and lunches, grocery shop, take them on hikes or to the park.  I also get to fit in time to paint murals, talk to friends across the country and around the world, go for walks, even take the very occasional nap.

There are sacrifices to this lifestyle, though.  My dreams of having a career beyond family have been put on hold indefinitely, as we get further and further from my graduation from grad school and any semi-relevant work and volunteering that I’ve done.  We also don’t have the security of having a back-up income in case one of our jobs should end unexpectedly, and several have. The international humanitarian development/emergency employment world is ever changing: money goes where the crises are. Our stint in Kosovo in 2001-2 was cut short when funding went to aid refugees from the war in Afghanistan, and the story was similar in 2002-2003 when we left Sierra Leone and Guinea because resources were shifting to help victims of the war in Iraq.  Out of his past seven jobs, only twice has he gone seamlessly from one job to the next, and several have ended in layoffs.  The layoffs are getting harder to manage as our family grows and the kids have their own routines and friends.  The end of health insurance coverage is scarier than it used to be. 

We moved to San Francisco a year ago for my husband to work at a small and relatively new organization.  It seemed like a great opportunity, and worth the effort to try to make a home here.  At that point he had been out of work for several months since the last layoff.  The months of unemployment combined with moving expenses had not been good for our finances, but we were hopeful that eventually we would catch up and begin to be able to save again.  We were stunned when, two weeks ago, they informed him that his job would be terminated. 

He has been applying for new positions ever since we got the news.  Some might require us to relocate our family, and while I have my issues with the expat lifestyle (see here and here, for example, from posts in October), the idea of moving within the US again just collapses me inside.  Moving internationally, it's an easier landing- the expat community is usually filled with other families with similarly transient lifestyles.  It's more obvious which neighborhood, medical clinic, school we should choose.  I would not mind at all handing over the housecleaning duties to someone else.  

At the same time I wonder if this isn't a chance for me to escape from the 'trailing housewife' system once and for all.  In my own fantasy world I imagine finding the anchor job myself and then somehow keeping track of that and home and kids while my husband consults internationally or works from home.  I imagine it being an opportunity for me to creatively use all the skills I have acquired through education and life, and work with a witty, intelligent, and diverse group of people to make the world a better place.  This is probably as ridiculous as calling myself a trailing housewife in the first place. I know there are plenty of people who have been steadily employed over the past ten years who are now looking for work and I can't pretend that my spotty employment experience over that same period qualifies me for my imaginary brilliant career.  

In any case, my first responsibility is doing what I can to make sure this complicated period rattles my kids as gently as necessary.  And I will remain quietly vigilant for any way that I can make myself better qualified for positions resembling the one I have created for myself in my head.