Pieces

My worlds are colliding. This makes good sense as my trip comes to an end and I cross over the liminal space between the life I used to have and the life I will have. Notice I am still not quite sure about the life I actually have now. Today I went to the New Zealand embassy, in my role as a member of NZCER, and I talked about NZCER and, in case the New Zealand side was taking too much sway at that moment, about the connections George Mason University might have with New Zealand educational ideas. I am two parts, trying to figure out how the pieces fit together. “We don’t get many kiwi visitors!” MW said, in a lovely kiwi accent. “I don’t usually get to think of myself as a kiwi visitor,” I said, in clear US accented tones. We laughed at the incongruity of it.

Then the walk to meet Mom at a restaurant I’ve been going to since I was 9, the restaurant where Michael and the kids and I had dinner on our first night in DC. The walk was through neighbourhoods where Perry and I have meandered on beautiful days like today, near the strip of Rock Creek Park where Michael and I almost got mugged on our last week in the US. A trip down memory lane doesn’t begin to describe a walk down Belmont Road on a lovely summer’s day.

I am well reminded of all that I love here. Yesterday I had the privilege to teach about bias (especially around issues of race) with my IET students. I adore that work. This bunch of students is spectacular, and I love spending time with them, love the openness with which they approach their teaching and their learning—even about difficult subjects like the ones we’ve covered in the last couple of days. My colleagues and I have had the sense from their first week with us that we could offer them just about any piece of curriculum and that they would look at us hopefully and ask for more. Last night at dinner, MH wanted to know my plans, wanted me to get my tenure and come back and teach together again. We laughed and laughed and talked about his parents and my kids and the world of the single man and the married woman. And I miss talking with him, miss learning from him, miss it all. Lunch with my mom underlines that. What a delight to get the chance to just connect with her in the middle of an ordinary day. There are relational pleasures unfolding all around me.

And I am well reminded of what I dislike here. As I write, I’m sitting at metro center, waiting the 10 minutes for my train to come. It’s busy here, even at this non-rush hour time, people pushing their way up escalators and into trains that are too crowded.. The stations are lovely in their own way, and they are also, in many ways, fundamentally ugly. The best part of the orange line is when it runs down a median strip in the middle of the highway. That is high scenery for me these days, because there are trees on either side of the highway, and I like the green. I miss a commute that leaves me breathless, not because of the crowds, but because of the hills and sea. I miss my friends in NZ. I miss D, who came for breakfast just before we left, and F and H, who were too busy to make it work.

And maybe the weirdest thing of all, is that I’m watching who I am in these different places. What does this context here enable? What does it curtail? I have loved hanging out with the folks I hang out with here, loved the doing I’ve been doing. But why is it that I’ve been working on this blog entry for four days, that I can’t seem to find anything new to write about, that I’m going in circles again and again? When we walked through the garden of our new house for the first time, B (the then owner) said, “What do you do?” I sat on a bench in a hidden grove in the backyard and, without thinking about it, said, “I’m a writer.” And more than a writer, I’m a be-er there. I know how to do less and be more. This is a novel skill for me, and it’s no effortless action to let go all of the energy that has tended to go into production and have it go into something I can’t even name as reflection. It isn’t anything with a name. It’s just be-ing.

Here folks want answers about what I’m going to do and for how long and under what circumstances. They want me to be doing all the time—which isn’t so odd, since I’ve come here to do a variety of things. But I know this emphasis on doing isn’t because I’m in town for the tiny stretch of 40 days; it’s because that’s the currency here. Busy busy busy. I am busy busy busy. And when I say I am busy, I’m not sure I mean that as a particular state. I think here in this DC metro area, I = busy. I wasn’t sure that I would be able to equal something else, was really worried about that when we first moved. Turns out that I don’t only have the capacity do just be—I actually quite like it.

So, I’ll teach my last three days at Mason. Tomorrow, on my last night, I’ll go to the state dinner for education at the New Zealand embassy, and I’ll watch the two worlds crash into one another as people there try to figure out whether I’m fish or fowl—in the US, of the US, in the NZ space, moving towards NZ. And then in three days I’ll pack up my existential crisis (wouldn’t want to forget it under my brother’s bed), get on a plane, pull out the Harry Potter book that awaits me, and I’ll read my way to the west coast. And then, I’m guessing, I’ll be mostly done with the book, and I’ll be my way to New Zealand, where I’ll hug my children, kiss my husband, roll around on the floor with my dog, and then head to my new house to sit in my new living room/ lounge and watch the waves.