More Than A House

On a Friday last September, I signed the papers to buy a house. The following Monday, I boarded a flight with my daughter and my dogs and flew to Japan. That’s normal right?

Seven months later we returned, all together, to this house that we own. This old, interesting house that had been loved but not cared for. A house that had been lived in but not updated. And we started the project. Which consisted of many projects. A list of projects, plus all the other projects that were hidden under the layers of the initial projects.

From when we landed back on this continent we had a ticking clock of four months. Four months to tackle these projects, decompress from life abroad, reconnect with friends and family, travel. All of it. And suddenly these projects seemed to be taking more than their fair share of that time. More time and more money and more effort that we wanted to spend in such a short span. And suddenly this house, this project, which was supposed to make us freer was making us feel captive.

The truth is, when we sat down, breathed, talked and thought, this kind of dilemma is so obviously a problem only in our minds. We have a house. A home. Safe, warm, place that we have carved out of the world for our family. In a beautiful, peaceful town in a country where plenty is an understatement.

We have projects, sure, and not a hope of finishing them all. Not this summer. Maybe not next. But we have what we have. Which is so much. So, so much.

We have friends.

We have books.

We have space.

And new perspective.

We make new memories, with Dad.

And with soon-to-be new uncle.

We have art.

And so much beauty.

We work well with others.

And things have started to grow.

She has bounce.

And more balance than I could hope for.We have it all.

My Sister’s Sisterhood

I spent the weekend in Las Vegas for my sister’s Bachelorette Party. And by the weekend, I mean 24 hours. And for a person like me who defines the perfect Saturday night as watching Quantum Leap reruns in my pajamas with a pot of tea and a bowl of chocolate, a wild night out in Vegas with girls 5-10 years younger and so much cooler is a daunting task. But I wore lipstick. And (sensible) heels. And it was fun. Yay me.

The weekend was, however, an amazing eye opener for me. I was with my sister and 10 of her friends, most of whom I had met before, some of whom I have known since they were in elementary school, all of whom have played an important role in her life. And I saw them in a different light. I saw them not as just ‘my sister’s friends’ but as the women who surround my sister when she needs them. They were there to have fun, sure, but in reality they were all there for her. To celebrate her. To celebrate their friendship and the happiness they had for her. This didn’t surprise me, my sister is a wonderful woman who has always been wise enough to nourish her female bonds, but it was a new perspective. I saw them as a group, I saw them as a network, I saw them symbolically.

I would never hesitate to say that my sister is my best friend, but the truth is that a sisterly relationship, or at least our sisterly relationship, has a certain limit to it’s infinite nature. There is almost nothing I wouldn’t do for her (I went to Magic Mike IN THE THEATER you guys, for real) and I know she feels the same way about me. But there is also an element of fire to our relationship that I don’t have in my friendships with other women. We have high hopes, expectations and standards for each other and we are very hard on each other. And sometimes quite harsh towards each other. And once in a while downright mean. And though I’m not proud of that, I know it’s exceptional because any other friendship would not survive such heat. But ours does. And it grows. Stronger and stronger.

The intense, historical, familial relationship I have with my sister is just one part of my sisterhood. I have more than my share of truly exceptional women around me, who understand me in different ways than my sister does, who forgive me more quickly or hold me accountable more consistently. No woman on earth could ever replace my sister, but these other sisters complete my life in a way that just one woman, not even a sister, could ever do.

My time in Vegas with my sister’s friends led me to the should-have-been-obvious conclusion that my sister has her own sisterhood. She completes her need for female connection with other women, just like I do. When it comes the women in her life, I am not her everything, and letting myself realize that gave me the freedom to stop feeling guilty for the fact that she is not my everything. My sister’s sisterhood gives me relief when I might be worried that she is lonely. My sister’s sisterhood makes sure she has someone to talk to about the things she doesn’t want to tell me. Strong, wild and wonderful, my sister’s sisterhood.

On The Road (again)

I spent the day in the car, in a blizzard, my 2 year old (who behaved like an angel), my sister (who slept with her mouth open, allowing us to discuss the whiteness of her teeth), my mother (who wouldn’t let anyone else drive, ever, at all) and my mother’s friend (who kept the visor down in the passenger seat so she could keep an eye on us in the mirror). 

I spent the night in a Holiday Inn Express, one of the most beautiful, fascinating, joyous places on earth according to my daughter. I slept with earplugs in my ears. And a pillow on my head. And the KindleFire on top of that pillow with the white noise app blasting. Because the snoring. My god the snoring.

One Million Hours of Travel

SURPRISE! We’re not in Nikko anymore. We’re on North American soil, where the salsa flows like water and licorice is plentiful. Pardon my six week blogging absence but things went nuts for a while there and I felt kind of bleh and I’ve just now started to get my wits about me. So HI. I’m back.

Our trip was long. So, so long. But safe and relatively uneventful. I started packing up our apartment about two weeks before our flight and on the same day the suitcases came out of storage Falcor started boycotting breakfast and losing fur in clumps. That exact moment is when the trip started for me.

Our itinerary was like this: 3 hour drive to the airport, 10 hour flight to LAX, 11 hour layover in LA, 4.5 hour flight to DTW, 2.5 hour layover in Detroit, 1 hour flight to Marquette.We arrived to the airport in Tokyo 3 hours early, thinking we might have overdone it, then used every spare minute only to walk up to our gate as the flight was boarding. The profuse sweating started before we even got through security. And this is my travel hell.

You know when you have 8 pieces of luggage, 2 dogs in crates and a toddler and you get assigned to the desk with the agent in training? Perfect. Really perfect. To be fair, this was probably a great case to train her with, they had the binder full of instructions out and called a manager several times and tagged our luggage in incorrectly before finally fixing the situation. While we endured the longest check-in process ever in the history of commercial aviation, I ask you to imagine the sound of Enid is shrieking like her leg is in a bear trap echoing through the terminal. Envision Vesper running around like a toddler five hours past her bedtime (there is no metaphor for that phenomenon that describes it better than just that) adding the second layer of sweat as I chased her then Dave chased her then she threw the contents of my purse on the floor then ran for it once again. At that point, she was still the cute foreign child acting like a crazy, adorable foreigner and the Japanese love of all things cute combined with their politeness meant that they just smiled and laughed and cooed ‘kawaii kawaii kawaii.’ I thought to myself ‘enjoy this now…because when we step off that plane in LA you are just another unruly American child with a dirty face running through an airport.’

The packing, planning, and coordinating of travel for two adults, a child and 2 child-like dogs combined with the stress of that check-in process led to a situation where getting into our almost painfully uncomfortable seats on an old Delta plane for a 10 hour flight actually seemed like a relief. The initial turbulence was disarming, the controls on our TVs were faulty, the food was how it is, and yet I felt so (relatively) relaxed. I was thankful to the airline that they (FOR ONCE) actually provided our special meal request, I was thankful for the extra seats for V to stretch our on, I was thankful to the Sikh man next to us who was so gracious when V she loudly inquired “What’s on that man’s head mommy?” We were full and relaxed, V was an angel, I stopped sweating for a brief moment. But we had to land eventually.

We landed in LA and, in an attempt to pre-comfort myself in case anything went majorly wrong, I said “We are on US soil. We could rent a U-Haul and drive home. We could walk. I could call my mom for a ride. We are going to get home.” Whenever I travel, no matter how many frequent flier miles I’ve accrued, I get anxiety. When my dogs are flying too, that anxiety is multiplied. I had nerves about going through immigration, nerves about collecting the dogs, nerves about finding our airport shuttle, nerves about our next two flights being cancelled due to weather.

Our 11-hour layover was spent eating American pizza in an American sized hotel room that was, no joke, nearly as big as our entire apartment in Japan. We watched TV in English while Vesper investigated (“Mommy! I found a book in this drawer! Mommy! Tiny bottles! Mommy! A bathtub!”) and had a nap for a couple of hours. Dave politely suggested I change to a clean shirt for our LA to Detroit to Marquette segment, but I shrugged. Seriously, what would be the point?

Quick sidenote: Air travel is the worst, but there were some pretty awesome individuals along this trip that made things way easier. Shout out to the immigration officer who literally asked no questions (a first for us), to the LAX employee who got us an industrial cart for our luggage and fast-tracked us through customs, the customs officer who didn’t even peek into the dog crates, and, shockingly, basically every single Delta employee we came across, particularly the agent who re-checked the dogs at the special services desk in LAX. Seriously friendly, efficient service. Several layers of sweat were spared by these heroic actions.

We nervously ate bagels in Detroit, fretting over threats of bad weather and worrying about our dogs as we watched snow blow all over the tarmac. Our girl ran around like a chicken out the coop, and we chased her down moving walkways sort of just constantly chanting ‘sorry, sorry, pardon us, sorry’ to anyone who might get in the way. Confession: I’m not sorry, I just have Midwestern manners. This is an airport and she is 2 so just deal with the chaos, can’t you see how sweaty I am!?

It’s been a long, long time since I felt the kind of relief I felt when the wheels of our plane landed in my hometown. This season was an amazing adventure, as they all have been. But it was tiring by the end. It was lonely at points. Our families felt further away than usual. Japan is beautiful and the Japanese are lovely but living there  can be so dang hard.

I have this dream of being the kind of true vagabond that feels at home anywhere, that adapts easily and laughs (instead of sweats) during travel mishaps. But not-very-deep down I’m a homebody with  control issues and the sweet sight of home warmed my heart. Despite the snow.

Four months to re-fuel until we reverse this trip and do it all again.

For The Japanese Women’s Ice Hockey Team :: Sochi 2014

Below are pictures I took at the Dydo Arena in Higashi-Fushimi, Tokyo. The hockey player denotes the men’s restroom, the figure skater the women’s.

The implications of signs like this are’t subtle. Sports that are faster, harder and meaner are for boys. Sports that involve more grace, agility and sequins are for girls. The reality of this annoying and damaging trope is being chipped away at gradually. Very gradually. Because even when a woman is strong and powerful and athletic, commercial images of her still have to assure us that she is pretty and sexy and feminine. And men can try more artistic, expressive pursuits if they dare, but only if they have the fortitude to be the potential target of homophobia. So. Progress.

And anyone who argues that seemingly small things like this aren’t part of the larger picture of our culture’s limited scope of gender roles probably fits quite nicely into their assigned slot and doesn’t ever feel the friction of trying to be yourself in a world where your options are limited. It’s so ingrained in our minds it almost hurts to start questioning it, but once you do I bet you will never be able to stop.

An important note, though, for those in charge of signage a this arena in Tokyo: on Sunday the Japanese Women’s National Ice Hockey Team qualified for the Winter Olympics in Sochi in 2014, while the Men’s National Team lost out several months ago and won’t be playing in the Sochi games. I can already hear some misogynist blabber about the competitiveness of the pools and the level of play in men’s versus women’s hockey at the international level, but this victory is sweet and these signs are bullshit.

What Are Your Interests? :: An Inclusive Introduction

A few years ago I was walking home from a book club meeting in Oslo with a new friend, Victoria, discussing our experiences as expats, as travelers, and sometimes-trailing spouses. As we left the bus stop and walked underground to the T-Bane station, we talked about the tendency of our cultures (she is English, I’m American) to focus on career the most crucial part of identity, this tendency shown most obviously and most commonly by the fact that when you meet someone new it is almost guaranteed that after exchanging names the next question will be “What do you do?” What do you do…for work. For a living. What do you DO?

As a trailing spouse in a foreign country, this line of questioning can make for a quick turn into awkward territory. Depending on my mood, I would answer  differently. On days when I felt bitter or stressed or annoyed, I’d just say ‘Nothing. I do nothing of value to the misogynist capitalist machine’ and this would lead to a silence followed by the other person backing away slowly. Or quickly. If I felt like being very literal, I would say ‘I’m a social worker by trade, but right now that is on hold since it is impossible to do while Dave plays hockey’ and this left the conversation a little more open, though most people would grab onto the bone I threw and ask more about social work, what I used to do, what I’d like to do later. I’d indulge this, for polite conversational purposes, but the truth is I don’t identify as a social worker in a professional sense anymore and I don’t know if I will in the future. If I was feeling very honest and open I’d say ‘It’s really complicated. But at the moment, I don’t work.’

When I became a mother, my answer to this line of questioning became simpler and more complicated. On the one hand, I could always just answer ‘I’m a mom’ and people kind of accept that as a valid exception to the define-yourself-by-your-paid-work rule of life. But it isn’t actually an answer to to the intended meaning of this question. If I had a full-time job, I’d still be a mother. When V is grown and gone, I’ll still be a mother. And anyway, even if I use this as an answer there’s about a 62% chance the other person will follow-up with ‘But what did you DO…before that.’ Sigh.

As Victoria and I talked, I realized that this question was probably frustrating to more than just partners of professional hockey players and trailing spouses of expats. This question would be annoying to many stay-at-home parents. To anyone unable to work physical or mental reasons. Anyone unemployed or underemployed. Anyone who has a job but doesn’t like that job or consider it to be an accurate indicator regarding their identity. If life is good to us, we get to experience the adventure of meeting new people often, and this fixation on employment as self can be a hindrance to these encounters from the start. And that’s no good.

Victoria had solved this problem before we even finished the conversation. A wiser woman than I, she said simply:

Wouldn’t it be great, wouldn’t it be more interesting, wouldn’t it be more encompassing if we started conversations with ‘what are you INTERESTED in?’ instead of ‘what do you DO?’

Yes, it would be great. This question doesn’t exclude anyone who isn’t in the paid workforce, voluntarily or involuntarily, and doesn’t lead to anyone giving complex explanations with personal information about their employment status. This question includes everyone, and leaves an opening for those who are so lucky that they would answer the question ‘what are your interests?’ with a description of their job or career. Brilliant, Victoria.

Get you answers ready, because when we meet I’m bound to ask you ‘What are your interests?’

On A Walk

Some sunshine on a gray day.