Disoriented

When I woke up this morning, I didn’t have any idea where I was. This was not just the existential confusion I seem to be experiencing most of the time lately. I was totally disoriented. I checked for basics. Michael sleeping next to me? Yes. Kids somewhere in the room? No. That meant I was in a place with two rooms. I got pretty quickly that we were in the US, but my mind traveled over the possible states. Still at Aunt P’s house? Good possibility. Not at a hotel—this looked more like a private house. Finally I got it—we’re in Bethesda, staying at the guest suite rental unit at my mother’s apartment. But boy was I disoriented for the 90 seconds or so that it took me to figure that out.

That confusion is not limited to the first few minutes of waking. I’m disoriented here in the US, and I have been floating on that disorientation, feeling the currents of the water here, easing into the familiar and unfamiliar flow of life in this big and busy country. I have been so deeply present in the moment that I’ve been intentionally pushing away any thoughts about the future. I know that this could be an example of sophisticated living in the moment which people study for years to achieve, or it could be an example of denial of those things which scare me. I’m actually guessing it’s the second.

After finishing up my gig on Friday, P (who was over from Australia), JA (from Kenning), my dad, and my family all walked up to Central Park. The kids climbed the big boulders, found parks with lovely slides, and the adults ooh’ed and ahh’ed about the magnificent weather. Central Park is fantastic: deeply green and lush, with lovely landscaping of myriad tree colors and patterns, rolling hills, little streams with sweet bridges over them, etc. And it was crawling with people. People sunning themselves on the grass, actors practicing their stage-fighting techniques, three people training tiny dogs to leap through the air on command. There were Indian families, women in saris, men in loose white pants. Black, white, latino couples, families, babies, old people. There were more people in view at any one time than live in my village, more people than I have seen in any one place in ages.

P and Dad and my family took Saturday and braved the crowds to take a bus tour of the Big Apple. We took the Staten Island Ferry across and back to get a glimpse of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island (without waiting in the horrifically long lines to take the ferry that actually stops on either of those islands). We saw Ground Zero and walked through the church next to

it and read the memorials, saw the missing persons posters, and were reminded again of the horror and waste of that tragedy, a horror and waste which began the Iraq war and the even bigger tragedy there. There are essays to be written about each of these moments, about the peaceful cemetery behind St. Peter’s with the gravestone of someone who died September 11, 1763, about the people taking pictures of the Statue of Liberty and the comments about how ironic such a statue is in the US at this time, about Times Square and stores that only sell Hershey’s, or only M&Ms. But, like New York itself, there are more stories than time, and there is less reflection than there is action.

Here, in fact, I am sprung back into the barely-managed chaos of my former life. Here is the life of a consultant. I got to hang out with my Kenning partners, eat delicious food, stay in swank hotels, drink cosmopolitans (which I only do with them). I got to stand at the front of a room of leaders and try to get them to laugh—and to learn—from what we were saying. I got to do work I love with people I love in magnificent conference rooms that cost more than my entire wedding.

Here is the life as a cousin in a big family. I got to stay at my Aunt P’s house, got to hang with my favorite cousin T, hear about weddings to come and babies just born. I got to have dinner with J and J and breakfast with little L and K. My kids got to play with their cousins, paddle in their grand aunt’s kayak, laugh with their grandfather.

Here is the life of an upper-middle class white woman in the US. I ride on the subway in whatever city I happen to be in, eat in restaurants of any nationality I desire (ahh, Mexican food again!), travel constantly on planes, trains, and automobiles.

Then it was back into full-on family time. And I get to use two cell phones, a laptop, and two palm pilots to manage my schedule, have to pencil in dinner dates and playdates with the many many people who want to see us, finish book proposals while xeroxing expense receipts. This is a full-on, all-out country, and stepping back into it brings me racing along—alive and happy and overwhelmed and exhausted. And the most beautiful thing I’ve seen in a week is the 10 minute stretch of river and wetlands on the train from New York to DC. No wonder I’m disoriented. This is the calm week, the week of no paid work. Let’s see if I can get oriented again.