home(?) stretch

When I wake up in the morning, it’s always the same check. What room am I in? What does it look like, feel like? Does it offer a clue as to what city I’m in? Once I narrow that down, I wonder what day might it be and what implications are there for my getting up at this particular time? We have stayed in 9 different places these last 19 days, and my brain long-ago gave up remembering which one I’m in at any given 6am moment.

Today I woke up in Boston, at JW’s apartment. This wake-up was marked by the cool summer breeze coming in the window and the cacophony of sounds. In no other city has it been cool enough to sleep with the windows open, so this is our first recall of serious city noise (and here in a place that wouldn’t be the loudest in the city, in a city that isn't the loudest in the country!). People calling to each other, trucks backing up, carts full of things being pulled over brick sidewalks. Sirens, shouting, screeching breaks. Even the birds here are unexpectedly loud as though to be heard above the din. And this is in the hours before construction begins on the apartment downstairs, or down the block (which has just begun, at 7:38, the workday announced by the buzzing of a circular saw).

This is the final leg of the journey for all of us but me. My family heads home from here on Thursday (and I stay on to the end of the month to teach). I am very worried about Michael and the kids for the two weeks between their return and mine. I fear that now at last the children have begun to understand that we live on the other side of the world from all of our family and long-time friends. Aidan discovered this on Sunday evening as we were getting into a car to the airport hotel where we stayed before our plane yesterday. Kissing my brother and mother goodbye, he began to cry a cry I’ve almost never seen from him before. Generally, Aidan is quick to rage and anguish—and just as quick to recover. His crying tends to be loud and expressive. These tears, though, are tears of deep sadness, tears that come quietly and without bidding or fanfare. “I can’t believe I’m not going to see my uncle for a YEAR!” he says, weeping. “Why do we have to live all the way around the world from all of our family? Why can’t we move back to America?” This is the new refrain of the trip, begun Sunday night and continuing, so far.

Aidan is fine most of the time, and then something will remind him, and suddenly he’s in misery. “My body is going to make me cry again any minute now,” he’ll warn, and then the tears come—not angry, not insulted, not frustrated, just sad sad sad.

Naomi’s sadness seems mostly connected to the thought of a plane ride across the sea and to two weeks (and three soccer games) without me. She wants me to change my plans and she knows I can’t change my plans, so she is a bundle of quiet wanting. So Aidan will begin to cry, “Why can’t we move back to America!” and Naomi’s voice will go quiet and quivery, “I really really really want you to come home with us, Mommy.” And there are two sad children who need hugs.

So we give them hugs and talk about sadness and healing and the unexpectedly-fast passing of time. And we recognize that their pain is totally legitimate, and we feel sad at their sadness as we hold them. And most of the time they’re cheerful and sweet, but each sad wandering makes me worry more about Michael and his return to a winter-cold, heat-free house, without a decent support-system for the last two weeks of the month.

It has been a remarkably good, if exhausting, trip. I’m really glad we were all able to come here and form the memories and connections we’ve made. AND I worry that it was all a terrible mistake, that now the children will have a harder time with re-entry, that now they’ll find themselves unhappy in our new land, just as we’ve mostly finished waiting for the other shoe to drop on their transition (and just as we own not one but two houses in NZ). So, that’s a cheery thought at the end of a holiday. There are many many more thoughts ahead, much processing to do of everything we’ve found here. But now the children are up and eating US breakfast cereal (“Oh how I missed these!” they’ll say), so I’ll go and spend this time with them.