It Gets Better

The last month or so since I've written have been... not entirely horrible. P came to visit for a few weeks. It was great to see him, and we had a really nice time. The kids were off of school nearly the whole time he was here, so we took lots of long walks on the beach with them scootering along ahead, spent many an evening with C and her husband at a fancy poolside bar drinking far too many beer towers (100 ounce of beer! In a giant test tube with a tap! With a massive icicle in the middle!), and just enjoyed doing a lot of nothing. P's aversion to sight-seeing, which would irritate me if we went to, say, Paris, worked out quite well on this trip.

Then we flew back home with P for a week to see my mom and stepfather. It was incredible, and exhausting, and I'm glad we did it. I got some invaluable time with P, my sister, and a few dear friends, cheered up my mom (and I hope, helped her a bit), and got to enjoy some of the best weather Washington DC can serve up, along with a lovely side of cherry blossoms. Lulu and Boo saw their friends and teachers and spent tons of time with exH and L. It was good for them to go. I wish I had a picture of Boo walking into his old K class to overwhelming shouts and applause from his classmates and teachers. For a kid who usually HATES being the center of attention, he couldn't have been more thrilled.

Most important, my stepfather, M, is doing well. He has now gone through a round of radiation and another round of chemo and is really improving, at least physically. We're not sure yet what the cancer itself is doing, but he went from not being able to walk when we were there to being able to get himself into and out of a wheelchair, and now can use a walker pretty well. He is in such amazing spirits. My mom was more of a worry for me. She seemed overwhelmed and exhausted. I tried to help out, organizing grocery and other deliveries and buying and setting up a new computer when hers died, but even though I know our visit helped, it's nothing compared to being there all the time.

ExH and L continue to help out. I am really stunned at his continued generosity and kindness to my mom and M, even while L's own mother struggles with breast cancer. It's really amazing. I wonder if I would do the same for his mother, and I think I probably wouldn't.

It was very hard to leave. The night before we flew out, P got the news that his father had died a few days before, alone, and he may never know what happened. P was in shock and we stayed up all night as he tortured himself over not being there enough, not knowing how his dad had died. To lose two parents in three months, even as an adult, is unimaginable. I wanted so much to do something for him, anything. I offered to stay but he said no, there was nothing to do.

So now we're back, and settled into something of a routine. I am trying to make the best of it, I really am. I decided that I might as well start on all those self-improvement projects I've been putting off. I drag myself to yoga three or four days a week and try not to eat too many carbs. I started actually writing the novel I've had in the back of my mind for a few years and wrote an essay for a magazine contest. I got a haircut and am contemplating bangs for the first time since I grew mine out at age 13. We spend Tuesdays at my friend M's house and Wednesdays are ice cream days. It's the little things. On weekends, we do at least one fun thing, and a few weeks ago we flew to Sydney for three days. Gazing at the Opera House and the famous Harbour Bridge almost made the last four months worthwhile.

I still want to go home. I miss my little house and my big bed and my cats. I miss kid-free nights out with P and having someone to sleep next to. I miss driving on the right side of the road and American accents and Starbucks on every corner. I miss Lulu and Boo's happy little classrooms and great teachers. But if I can focus on writing and getting in shape and maybe if P comes back for a couple months and nothing horrible happens with my mom and stepdad, and maybe if I can get back to Sydney at least one more time, then maybe I can stick it out until December. Maybe. I'll keep you posted.

I Take It All Back

I take back all the whining and complaining and general dourness over the past few months. I'll gladly go back to just being homesick and tired and overwhelmed. Cause that now seems like a dream compared to where I am now.

Just when I thought things were looking brighter -- a tough work project was a huge success, I was starting to feel like I had some friends, P is on his way to visit -- I got some pretty terrible news. My beloved stepdad, M, devoted (and only) grandfather to Lulu and Boo, and possibly the real-life Most Interesting Man in the World, is very, very sick. Like maybe only months to live sick, maybe a year or two if we're very, very fortunate.

I was so scared something like this would happen when I decided to come to Australia. M is 82, albeit in very good health, especially considering he had quadruple bypass surgery 18 months ago. But 82 is 82 and I was worried something would happen to him and I wouldn't be there. And it has. After some nagging back pain, he went to the doctor and was told the back pain is caused by tumors in his spinal column. They are also in his ribs and lungs.

I have such a range of emotions, I don't even know where to start. Of course there is the grief and sadness that we may soon lose M. He has been so kind and loving to me and my kids, and most important, my mom, who desperately needed and deserved a good marriage. Then, there's the parental anxiety of knowing that my kids are going to be very sad and wanting to both prepare and protect them. There's anger at being so far away and so helpless. Gratefulness for ex-H and L, who I emailed for help and who rose to the challenge splendidly -- staying with my mom and M through a very scary few days of roller-coaster medical opinions and decisions. They are family, however odd or unconventional.

Finally, panic at the flood of emotions this all brings back. I was only 8 when my father died and the aftermath was traumatic, to say the least. My mom was depressed and angry and scared, and as much as she loved my sister and I, and as hard as she tried, I never really felt she was OK. It was terrifying to think she might not make it through. I don't know how close she came to that -- probably not as close as I feared -- but there were days she just disappeared and I was so scared I wouldn't see her again. I don't have many childhood memories, but those days I remember like they were yesterday. I feel like I have a bit of PTSD... and I don't want to go through that again.

For now, I have to sit and wait. Depending on the news, we will go back for a visit as soon as we reasonably can, and we may even go back for good. If M only has a short time left, I want to be there for him and my mom as much as possible.

Friends

"Doing it tough" in Australia means something akin to "having a hard time." That pretty much sums up the past few weeks. But if you've been following along, that probably comes as no surprise. So I thought I'd ruminate on another topic today: friendship.

This is not one of my favorite topics. Of course, I love my friends and value them more than I ever remember to tell them. I just don't have very many of them because I am really, really bad at friendship. I make friends well enough, albeit with massive effort to avoid my introverted tendencies. But I don't always put in the effort to keep them. Or I try, usually reaching out after much too long, and they grow tired of waiting. So they drift away, sometimes almost immediately, sometimes over years, even decades. And I am left with the few friends who have accepted this colossal character flaw of mine and made the effort for both of us. A, you know who you are.

So that's my fatal friendship flaw number one. There's another, sadly, and possibly worse. I am horribly inept at first impressions. I don't know what's worse -- how wrong I've been about people or that I never seem to improve. Some of the dearest people in my life are ones I either dismissed or hated at first sight. I won't name names (other than P, but you already know that story) because I would like to keep these friends. But what if I had never had the chance to correct those impressions? It's tragic the wonderful people I might have never known.

Moving to a country where you literally know no one forces you to make friends or else hide out alone in your apartment for days on end, depressed and staring out at the ocean while pretending to work. I tried that option the first few months. It was not a success.

My first friend here was my boss's wife, L. From a few pre-move Skype talks with her, I was sure we wouldn't really hit it off -- she is as outgoing as I am not, a bit pushy, and very opinionated. And while we are very different and ultimately not destined to be besties, she couldn't have been kinder and more welcoming to me and my children. I can't count the number of times she has fed us, babysat them, answered questions, introduced us to other moms and kids, and just generally served as cruise director on this little adventure of ours.

Thanks to her, I now have the beginnings of other friends. E is the mother of four gorgeous blond boys, and got the first impression of her spot on. She's smart and funny and hilariously OCD. How does a mom (of 4) (BOYS) have the time or energy to iron sheets? But she does and when the other moms teased her about it, she held her ground instead of backtracking with a "oh, well, I don't do it all the time" disclaimer like other women might. She irons sheets and she's proud of it. I like that. She and I go to the same yoga studio and giggle over the speedo-wearing (male) students and commiserate over how we have not lost weight despite 3-4 hot yoga classes per week.

M is another mom I met through L. Her daughter ended up in the same class as Boo and we bonded a bit over our mutual skepticism over their teacher and our kids' ranking at the bottom of the readers in the class. We took to chatting after school every few days while the kids ran around and one day while we were killing time before Boo's gymnastics class, she invited us over for tea (this can but does not always actually involve tea, my American friends -- we would call it afternoon snack). Now this is one of those times when all my inclinations pointed to declining politely. There was only half an hour before class and I didn't know where she lived. But I liked M and was charmed by her little twin boys, and I couldn't really think of a decent reason not to go. We had tea and were late for gymnastics, but now I have another friend.

Finally, there is C, who I have known for a few years. We worked together in the US a bit -- she worked for P before he left -- and we were friendly, but never beyond a wave in the hall or the occasional happy hour chat. I was always jealous of her because she's smart and witty and P likes her so much and she has great style. Now she is here as well and in her I have found a solid ally against all the strange and unsettling things about living here and being so far from home. Her life is very different from mine -- she is married and has no kids -- but we are the only ones who understand the challenges of the work we do, our colleagues, and our mutual homesickness.

I imagine in time some or all of these friends will drift away -- it will be harder to keep in touch once we go back home, after all, and the things that draw us together now may turn out to be based more on our situations -- jobs, kids -- than on a real bond. But maybe that is OK. I have come to think that people come into your life at times that you need them or they need you, and sometimes that is only temporary. But whether or not I still keep up with all the friends I've had through childhood, high school, college, various jobs, they all have contributed a part (sometimes small, sometimes extraordinary) in who I am now, and I am grateful to them all. Even if I only ever see them on Facebook.

The Longest 43,300 Minutes Ever... Part 3

So it's been about a month since our story left off (about two weeks into our journey). And that month has been, well, not so much fun, as you may have guessed from the title of our little series.

Now that we've adjusted to our new apartment, gotten Lulu and Boo settled in their new school, and generally found our way into a semblance of a normal life, it turns out that my life in Australia is a lot like my life at home... only without family, friends, bagels, or decent Mexican food.

Sure, there are good things... Boo, always a little monkey at heart, has started gymnastics and is already quite the star, outdoing even some of the instructors in pull-ups. The weather here, while in the middle of the"wet season", still affords me the ability to wear flip-flops and tank tops every day. There are at least five kinds of mangoes available at even the most prosaic of grocery stores. All important things.

But mostly, I am stretched thin trying to be a good mother and a decent employee while occasionally making time to exercise, run errands, and sleep. As at home, I never feel I am doing very well at any of these things, and there I have the benefits of a co-parent, a school bus stop a block from my house, after-school care, and a boyfriend who drags me to the gym several times a week. Oh, and margaritas. Also all important things.

What that all boils down to is simply: I'm not having any fun. I have, I think, succeeded in helping Lulu and Boo make the transition relatively smoothly, but I vastly underestimated the toll that would take on me.

So I've been neglecting work and hauling myself to hot yoga several times a week, where I attempt to sweat out all the stress. Of course, then I don't get enough work done, which causes more stress. Back to not having any fun. And now I'm sore and dehydrated too.

Yes, yes, I know I will survive, and it may all in some way be worthwhile eventually. For one thing, everyone should live as a stranger in a strange land at some point in their lives. It does wonders for one's patience and tolerance for others when you know what it's like to have no idea how anything works. I certainly have more appreciation for my family and friends, especially ex-H. He makes me crazy at times, but I really miss his contribution to the kids' lives for better and worse. And I have some insights about myself that I will share at some future, less exhausted time. 

For now, sleep.

The Longest 43,300 Minutes Ever... Part 2

I realize I have failed to provide an answer to the very important question I posed in a previous post: Can just anyone hold a koala?

Yes, pretty much. Lulu's birthday fell a week after we arrived here, so I wanted to make it memorable. I found a Groupon for a wildlife reserve not to far from where we were staying and we lucked in to a relatively tolerable day, heat-wise (it's summer here, and quite hot, a welcome contrast to the freezing winter we left behind). We went immediately to the koala area, where we got to hold a very cute, slightly smelly, and entirely disinterested koala for a few seconds each and have photos taken to prove it. It's one of those things you must do in Australia, because where else will you get the chance?

After wandering through the park, watching a bird show, and having a snack, we stumbled onto the kangaroo area. I had pictured a regular zoo sort of habitat, where we would watch them behind a gate and take lots of pictures. But to our delight, it was a massive enclosure where you could walk freely among the kangaroos, pet them, and feed them from a little cup of food. We spent at least an hour there, fascinated and thrilled. There were lots of joeys (both in and out of the pouch). There was a strict rule against touching the babies in the pouch, but those already out were fair game and very sweet and soft. Periodically a little train would come by to take visitors to another area of the park, and as it approached the kangaroos would all pop up and start hopping around. Quite charming.

Afterward, the heat and the walking had gotten to us so we headed toward the cafe and gift shop for lunch and then to pick out Lulu's birthday gift, a giant stuffed sheep with curled horns like we had seen in the reserve. ("Sheepie" is so large that I doubt he will fit into any suitcase we have and may have to have one specially bought to transport him home.)

Queen Money

But back to the story. We made it through the 14-hour flight surprisingly well (we loved Virgin Australia and its free movies and delicious meals) and arrived, a bit sleep-deprived, a 7 am in Brisbane. We sailed through customs, and managed to steer two luggage carts piled with our hoard of suitcases to the Hertz counter, stopping only to get some Australian money from the ATM. We were all fascinated by multicolored bills, which Boo has deemed "Queen Money" because of the ubiquity of Elizabeth II on it. (Did you know Australia isn't even entirely a free country? Its head of state is still the British monarch. Sounds like someone needs a revolution!)

After a shockingly fast stop at the rental counter, we had our car loaded with suitcases (literally every free spot was stuffed with a bag or a kid) and were ready to make the 60-minute drive to our hotel in Broadbeach.

That drive, and every one for a week or so after, took a few years off my life. I held my breath, insisted on total silence from the kids, and tried my best to follow the car in front of me. I don't know how, but we made it without incident and collapsed in the hotel lobby, where we discovered we would have to wait five hours for our room.

It was a very long five hours. We had breakfast, walked down to the beach, sat around the lobby, had lunch, and tried to avoid a total nervous breakdown (with limited success). Once we made it to the room, we collapsed. I raided the 7-11 downstairs for dinner food and we were all out cold by 6 pm.

That was the first day.

Swedish Meatballs and a Side of Pressed Wood

It got a little better after that. We visited my boss on day 2 and Lulu and Boo instantly made friends with his three children. We still fell asleep by 6:30 most evenings, and woke up around 3 am. It took at least a week to get on anything like a normal schedule. Since school wouldn't start until three weeks after we arrived, we had a lot of quality time together. Dragging the kids on nearly daily apartment-hunting ventures in the 90-degree heat were tough on all of us, but daily trips to the pool were more fun. Somewhere in there we accompanied my boss and his family to a surfing lesson (more fun than I expected) and a horseback riding lesson, and we found an apartment that we all liked and whose smell did not offend Boo's over-sensitive nose.

It was exhausting but we managed to have a good few weeks, marveling at the strange accents and new words, blanching at the cost of familiar items like a small bottle of Coke ($4!) and Krispy Kreme donuts ($3 each!), and relishing the delectable tropical produce. Lulu cried for ex-H nearly every afternoon for a couple of weeks, and P's mother died not long after we left, both of which tore at my heart for not being home. But mostly, I was too tired to think or feel anything much.

Once we got moved into our new furnished apartment, it began to sink in that we were here for a long time. One day shortly after we moved, we headed to Ikea to buy a desk for the new place. We were all giddy with excitement over being somewhere so familiar. We wandered the aisles buying things with funny names, ate swedish meatballs, and stocked up on frozen swedish food. It was maybe the best day we'd had so far.

Part 3 coming up next...

The Longest 43,300 Minutes Ever

How long is a month? 30 days? 720 hours? 43,200 minutes? Sure, by the strictest of calculations. But a month in which you fly halfway around the world, alone with your two tired, scared young children, to a country you've never set foot in before, where you are to make a life of some sort for an entire year?

That's a month that expands to fill more squares on the calendar than are generally allotted.

I think this expansion and contraction of time is the greatest mystery I've encountered in my 38 years. I've seen a lot of things that are hard to explain in my lifetime... love that comes and goes, without rhyme or reason; tragic deaths of good people; illness that strikes out of nowhere; people who show up, like angels, when you least expect them but most need them. I'm not religious, but I've come to accept that there are things you simply cannot begin to explain.

But time? Time you can measure, on a watch, a clock, a calendar. It's there, ticking away second by second on every electronic device I own. Everyone else can see it, too, and give or take a moment or two, we are all united in this reassuring structure of minutes and hours and days.

So how to make sense of the last days before we locked up our beloved home and boarded the plane? They sped by like a NASA countdown and suddenly there was no more time to say goodbye to friends and family or to comfort the poor sweet cats, who knew something was terribly wrong but could not understand what.

Or what of the four-hour layover that stretched on for what must have been a week, me trying frantically to calm an exhausted and teary Lulu and a restless but equally exhausted Boo. I kept looking at my watch, my phone, my laptop, thinking, there must be something wrong with all these clocks because time cannot possibly move this slowly.

Somehow we got through it and on to the plane that would take us from the edge of all that was familiar (well, LA) to the edge of another place entirely.

Across the ocean

So here we are, a month after that flight. I wish I could say that I am thrilled with the decision to come, that it was absolutely the right thing, but I'm not there yet. What I am is constantly exhausted. If moving is one of the most stressful life events, then moving to another country is exponentially so. Yes, we have held koalas and fed kangaroos, which is pretty damn cool, but everything else has been hard.

From driving on the opposite site of the road on the opposite side of the car, to finding an apartment with two kids in tow, to buying a car that is not a total lemon, to trying to maintain a not-entirely-shameful level of professional productivity, to getting internet service, to helping the kids adjust to a new school, new friends, and wearing uniforms, nothing here is easy, inexpensive, or quite like home. And I am tired.

All that, and I haven't even talked about P yet.

Mostly because I don't even know where to start. Even though he is there and I am here, we are still together, after much hand-wringing and debating. Ultimately, he simply couldn't or wouldn't make the trip for reasons that I don't fully understand, and I struggled to believe that wasn't a reflection of how he felt about me. It was not an easy month or two while those talks were going. And I still don't know how I feel about it, but he said he wanted us to stay together and since I had no plans to even consider adding dating to my overseas adventure, I decided it couldn't hurt to try and see where we end up. It turned out, in a terrible way, to be a good thing he didn't buy a ticket. His mother was diagnosed with cancer in December, and sadly passed away a few weeks after I left. So it is a good thing he wasn't here, because he really needed to be there. But I wasn't there for him and that was hard, too.

Fortunately, since I am so completely drained by everything else, I haven't had much time or energy to put into thinking too much about the relationship, or even miss him on any significant level. We talk almost every day, so I feel as connected to him as I can be this far away, and it's not that I don't miss him, because I do. It's just a quiet feeling that lurks in the background instead of a monster feeling that claws away at me. So that's either a bad thing or a completely healthy one, and I don't have enough experience of "completely healthy" to sort it out.

So what's it actually like here? That will have to wait until later in the day. Stay tuned!

Are We There Yet?

Moving halfway around the world is somewhat exhausting, in case you're considering it. And I haven't even gotten there yet!

There are the arrangements to be made... packing up enough of our stuff to make the house rentable (in progress and neverending)... finding someone to rent said house (TBD), figuring out what to do with our two beloved cats (they are going to my mom's).

There are endless negotiations... with work over what they will and will not pay for (ongoing, but getting better)... with P over whether or not he will be coming as planned (ongoing, not getting better)... and how many stuffed animals each child is permitted to bring with him or her (ongoing and neverending).

I want to be excited. I really do. I mean, this is pretty much the most exciting thing to happen in my life since I rode in an elevator with JFK, Jr. And I'm trying. I bought new luggage -- huge rolling bags that Lulu and Boo can actually fit into -- and a new computer (way nicer than I could afford thanks to my company, which is reimbursing me for it). But it's hard, because with P likely not going, I am frequently hit with panic attacks about getting myself, two children, and at least 7 bags to Australia, as well as actually being so far away all alone.

And what does that mean for me and P? He says it doesn't mean we're breaking up, that he will visit, maybe even for a long time. It sounds good in theory, but a year is a long time to be apart. I don't know what to think. I can't make him do something he doesn't want to do, and I don't want him to be miserable. But I don't want to go alone either. If I think about it too much it makes me cry.

The only way out is through

Fortunately, there's plenty to do to keep busy. Thanksgiving is next week and I have 7 people coming, plus me, Lulu, and Boo. I realized last night that I don't have enough plates, silverware, or cloth napkins -- the most I've ever had for dinner at one time was 8! Thanksgiving Day is also P's birthday, so I need to add a cake to my cooking plans. Then two weeks later is Boo's birthday. He and Lulu are having a joint bowling party since she won't be here to celebrate her January birthday with her friends. Then Christmas. Then Lulu & Boo's big Christmas gift, a trip to Harry Potter World the day after Christmas (while the timing isn't ideal right before we move, I really am happy about this trip. The kids will be thrilled. In addition to HP World, we're also swimming with dolphins at Discovery Cove and visiting one or two Disney parks, which are gorgeous during the holidays.) Then we're home for a week before heading to Australia. It's a lot. I need a nap just reading over it all. But there's nothing to do except keep moving forward.

Stay tuned

Given the infrequency with which I seem to be able to keep this blog updated, I'm guessing we'll be Down Under next time you hear from me. Wish me luck!