Train video and weekend update

It’s cold and blustery tonight, but these videos were taken on Friday, the magical and lovely day in Wellington. Here is a video of a little piece of the commute that I’m always blathering on about. Perhaps you’ll see the reason for the blather.

It’s a wild and windy night tonight—cold and howling and often pouring. We walked on the beach this afternoon when the rain cleared and bits of blue sky showed amongst the thick clouds. It was a lovely break on a weekend devoted to the beginnings of yet another house sale. Geeze. We’ve got this packing and cleaning and staging thing down to a science, we think, and the kids are nicely on board, Naomi colour-coding her books and Aidan organising his legos. This house goes on the market in two weeks, and will be sold at auction in mid-November (it’s hard not to have hellish flashbacks of the house that sold last November). The idea of the auction (apparently a good way to sell homes here) makes me nauseous. Looks like a queasy six weeks.

Other than the house selling and the tenure-portfolio producing, things are lovely this spring break. The apple tree behind our new house is still just in bud, but trees elsewhere are surrounded by flowers raining down like snowdrifts. We nearly had a four-kid night last night, but Aidan’s friend decided to go home at about 11, ending Aidan’s hopes for his first New Zealand sleepover. And while it’s cold enough to need a fire these nights, it’s also lovely to walk on the beach, and it’s perfect weather for going through bins in the kids’ rooms and deciding what to keep and what to throw away. It's not exactly Daytona Beach here. but yesterday there were two girls in togs (=bathing suits) having a water fight on our front porch, and my kids taught their friends how to play baseball in the front yard. Spring break is wonderful everywhere.

Day on the town

Today we had one of those magic spring days that we used to get in New England. Clear crisp cold and magnificent. Still spring break for the kids, so I bundled us all together for the trip into town for an appointment I had there. Naomi, seeing that we were late for leaving the house, made us jog to the train station—which was the right move, as we arrived, breathless, to board the train just pulling in to the station.

Then the sparkling train ride in past water so blue that it almost hurts the eyes to look at it (videos of that forthcoming). Michael met us at the station to take the kids out to lunch while I went to my meeting. Afterwards, I ate lunch with a friend at the café on top of the library, while the kids played and read downstairs in the kids’ section and Michael had a work meeting six tables away. Then the kids I and were off to Te Papa.

I’ve written about Te Papa before—about the Egyptian exhibit which moved me so much in its tri-cultural nature—Egyptian, Western-European, and Māori. Today I was blown away by two different exhibits.

First, we went to the Immigrants section. We were there to see R’s partner (also R) who had a painting on display and a short 3 minute video about him next to the painting. We watched the video—about his journey from Scotland to New Zealand, and what it felt like for him to be a foreigner and how it had changed his art. I was moved by pictures of his family in Scotland, and by hearing the love for New Zealand so clear and strong in his lilting brogue.

Wandering out of that exhibit—just focused on the Scottish folks who have come to NZ—I was in the general immigrant exhibit. There are pictures of people arriving by ship and snippets of letters home. And, because Te Papa is run by some seriously good museum designers, there are questions all over the walls to pull in visitors and make them think. These were questions like: “What would it be like to leave all of your family thousands of miles away and come to an unknown land?” or “What would it take to make you want to leave everything you know and start again?” or the interactive exhibit which asked: “Would you be allowed in under the immigration reforms?” I was reminded of all the other immigration exhibits I’d seen—in Boston, in DC. In the past, I've always been moved by these exhibits, because my people are immigrants. My grandmother used to tell stories, in her Irish brogue, about life in a far away land of green hills dotted with sheep. This time, though, I was moved in an entirely different way. All of a sudden, this exhibit is talking about ME, not my people, not my family, but ME. When there is a quote on the wall about how someone came to New Zealand because it was safe and lovely and welcoming, suddenly I can peer at the fine print and see if that was me saying those things. And the questions on the walls are not hypotheticals but blog-fodder. This whole blog seeks to answer the question “What would it be like to leave all of your family thousands of miles away and come to an unknown land?” Read the last 150 entries. And the next 150. Right there in the exhibit I had an identity crisis: was I the American progeny of Irish immigrants or was I the American immigrant who had brought one of the family lines to New Zealand. Am I the granddaughter of immigrants or the mother of immigrants? This seems like a question you should be able to answer.

Then there was another exhibit to check out—this one called The Poiseners (to read about it, click here ) . The impressive thing about this exhibit wasn’t that it messed with my identity (I don’t think of myself as a poisoner nor as a poisoned) but that I could go and visit an exhibit of this quality for free in this lovely place. It was the best designed museum exhibit I’ve ever seen—a series of rooms that represented the work rooms of characters who were suspects in the poisoning death of an ecologist. We were given worksheets and pencils and were told to follow the clues in the rooms to find the murderer. And everyone did it—small children just learning write, slumping teenagers I’d have thought were too cool to play, sweet grandmother types counting the alphabet backwards on their fingers and peering into glass cases with snakes or berries or a platypus. It was “New Zealand crowded” which meant there were people in each room—after all, it is school holidays. But where the Sargent exhibit in Boston or the Vermeer exhibit in DC had rooms so thick with people you had to stand on line to glimpse a painting, here it was rarely the case that we had to look at the same thing anyone else was looking at, and sometimes we’d find ourselves in rooms alone. And, also unlike the DC or Boston museums, here Aidan called us into a hallway to show us out the huge picture window, which looked down at ducklings paddling in the water below, and looked across the harbour at snow capped mountains far in the distance. Astonishing.

Then we met up with Michael again and all headed up the cable car to the top of the Botanic Gardens, where we meandered in the evening light past trees dripping with flowers and patchwork quilt stretches of blooming tulips. Magnificent! We were last there as a family on our first day in this new country, 10 full moons ago. Fresh from the airplane, guided by K and T who seemed to be so at home in this beautiful and foreign place, last December I was bleary and overwhelmed. What had we done, I kept wondering, then. Could I ever feel at home here? Today we were wandering familiar territory. We could pick out our office buildings from the overlook. I could show the family where I had run the seminar two weeks ago. We had lunch with friends we didn’t know when we arrived; over the course of the day the kids bumped into school mates to a chorus of “Hi Naomi! Hi Aidan!” We had great coffee and simple but lovely lunch and dinner at a couple of Wellington’s billions of cafes, many of which we've sampled. I may not know whether I’m an immigrant or not, but I seem to be sure that at least for now, that museum and garden, those cafes and buildings are all familiar and that it might, one day, feel like home.

Isolation and Engagement

Michael here -- Over the past number of weeks, I’ve been able to witness the shift Jennifer has made relative to living in NZ, so far away from friends, family, and people who really know her. Her feeling more known, being valued for her work and her engagement with people (versus assumptions and reputation) has been key to feeling like this is a place where she can live, a place that she can call home.

Through all of this, I’ve had to find ways to stay positive (not that hard) and remember what I came here for, which was a great deal. The flip side of that, however, was what I left behind. Last week were the Jewish Holidays, something that I have found both grounding and a little unsettling at the same time. I’ve complained for years that I feel a bit out of place with my family from time to time. It’s a familiar out of place-ness, which gets repeated two or three times a year, year in and year out. However, it has served as one of the anchor points for me. I know that I’ll see many of my blood relatives on both sides of my family, I’ll get to see my sister and niece & nephew, my parents, aunts, uncles, etc. It’s also a chance for my kids to be with the family, something that’s been important to me since their births.

This year’s Rosh Hashana was an interesting one for me. I drove with the kids into Wellington to a liberal, progressive congregation – one of only two synagogues in the capital city of the country! A couple I met at the service flew in from Nelson, a city in the north of the South Island (about a 35 min flight) because it’s the closest temple they can go to. The service was led by an American rabbi (a woman) who was actually born in Dupont Circle (where we lived in DC) and grew up in Howard County, where my sister lives in suburban DC. Familiar. The people there were of all ages – very old, very young, and everything in between. It was the most diverse congregation, agewise, that I’ve ever seen. Mostly Kiwis, and feeling a little unfamiliar. The synagogue was in what was clearly once a house in a neighbourhood, unfamiliar. There was an iron gate with an electric door and a video camera to see who’s trying to get in and to provide protection, all too familiar.

And when the service started and the blessings were sung, they were the same that I’ve heard in Silver Spring, MD, in Boston MA, in Augusta GA, and probably everywhere else. I was talking to a client of mine in the US talking about this service the other day, and he thinks about the millions of Jews living on the East Coast of the US, all in shul at Rosh Hashana morning service, singing the prayers at potentially the exact same time.

So here I was, feeling utterly alone in some ways, so far from things and people I’m used to seeing at this time of the year, but also feeling a strange connection that I carry around, the connection through blood and tradition. And we were all eating apples and honey, although my apples were the last of the season, holdovers from a Fall, nearly two seasons ago (it’s now Spring in NZ, after all!) and dipped in Manuka Honey, a specialty of NZ.

Not being with my sister and family is definitely hard sometimes. Not being around for the preparations for the retirement party my sister is pulling together for my dad, retiring from dentistry after 43 years, is hard. Not being around for this period of time that my 93 year old grandfather is facing some huge declines in his physical and mental states is really hard. All part of the choice of moving to NZ, part of the tradeoffs of the beauty and peace that we’ve found here. I’m quite certain that I made a good choice to come here, but I also know that every choice brings wonderful things and hard things. Feeling so comfortable and present. Feeling so alone and far away.

Reciprocity

On Sunday, I could hear the laughing of children swimming in the cold sea from my new garden, the sun beating warmly on us as we dug in the sandy soil. Today, the sea is steely grey and the winter coats are back out. My feet are hugging the heater on this train, and my hands—which just emerged from their possum and merino gloves—are stiff with cold. I think this micro pattern of weather is part of the macro pattern of the weather here—which is part of the macro pattern of life. The weather comes and goes, delight comes and goes, sadness comes and goes.

Today I’m puzzling about the question R, my boss (and friend), asked on the way out of the door yesterday at work. There are a series of “performance review documents” that get filled out and signed and form the basis of a kind of contract for the next year. I’ve talked with lots of executives about documents like this and about how to put them together, but here I am going through the process myself. R and I had decided what to put in it—a list of the work I was doing or was likely to do over the next year. And she typed it all up and got it ready for us both to sign. And as I bent over to sign the document, she picked it up and flipped through it again. “No, it’s not ready,” she told me. “There isn’t enough in here about what we can do for you—it’s all about what you can do for us. This is a two-way street, you know.” So I’ve been given the homework to go out and figure out what they can do for me.

This turns out to be an entirely new question for me. What can my place of employment do for me? It’s not that I’m so totally selfless; I’ve only ever kept jobs that are rewarding and interesting, that feed me in all kinds of important ways: intellectually, personally, relationally. I like to laugh at work, like to think hard, like to interact with people who are interesting. And the work I do, if I’m going to continue doing it, is always filled with learning and interest for me. Otherwise it’s just a paycheck. But I haven’t given much thought to the shared responsibility that the job might have for my well-being. At NZCER, shared responsibility is really important. We have unlimited sick days, for example, because as a collective, that’s what really matters. You don’t get sick in the 10-a-year doses that most jobs offer: you get sick and then you’re sick. People with catastrophic illness need way more than 10 days; others who are quite healthy often need far less than 10 days. Unlimited sick leave means that people get what they need, and as long as no one abuses the system, it works out for everyone. Why make the collective pay for the abuses of the 1% of people who are likely to abuse things? In a system like this one, that 1% is dealt with as aberrant and the rules are made for the other 99%.

Michael and I were talking over dinner about why on earth the question: “what can we do for you here?” would be so strange and unexpected—much like unlimited sick leave. Why don’t we ask that question at work more often? What would it do for us if we did? There was a piece in the London Times about the connection between love and learning (to read it click here)—wouldn’t there be a connection between love and working, too? If there is such a connection (and surely there is), than my love for NZCER grew today as I pondered a job where they wanted it to be a two-way street.

Ok, so that’s me. And here at the end of the day, after having that conversation with R, I’m feeling content about my job. And, after a date with Michael at a restaurant in town, I’m feeling content about the food choice options here, too. Rob, when he lived here, gave me a gift certificate to this place for my birthday, and tonight we ate there. Perhaps there will be more about that tomorrow. If not, you’ll just know that I had the most magical crepes for dessert—with a caramel Grand Marnier sauce that made me moan out loud—if love is connected with learning, I learnt a whole lot tonight about something or another. Thanks, Rob.

ps for those of you keeping track, the plans from the architect--complete with the Keith room upstairs--came back yesterday and they're GREAT! YEA!

Paradise, with lamb

It has been a really wonderful week. Two days of work with a group that was tricky, but very grateful, a day at NZCER, and then a Friday that was so beautiful it makes my heart ache to remember it. It has been full spring this week. Tuesday in the Botanic Gardens (where the workshop was held), I walked through stands of tulips and under flowering fruit trees. Friday I walked along the beach and felt the sun hot on my face and I was moved to tears at my delight and good fortune.

And then today, there were more lambs. We went to the house of a colleague of Michael’s. They have a lovely cabin about 20 minutes away, on a plot of land that stretches three paddocks from the road to the river. There are flowering trees, lovely green lawns, a big outdoor table, and dozens of sheep and brand new lambs. I fed a newborn lamb—born last night, weak and unsteady and wearing a woolen sweater for warmth. And the kids fed a bigger orphan called James (all pictures of us holding a lamb are of James). James’s owner, in the next paddock over, is the animal trainer who trained all the creatures in Babe. James has some of that star quality.

Around the lovely outdoor table, Michael’s colleague J and her partner—along with their friend S who had come along—talked about life here, about Dupont Circle (where S used to go each year on work), about coaching and adventure and transformation. There were threads that pulled each of us together, these strangers sitting in the sunshine, sheep calling all around us. How do we like living in New Zealand, they asked us, as everyone here asks us. This week, we feel that we have moved to paradise.

Moving out of the neutral zone

About eight months ago, I wrote about the neutral zone, Bill Bridges’s name for the sometimes very long period between endings and beginnings. I wrote about moving furniture into the neutral zone, settling in for a good long stay. And it has been a good long stay. But I wasn’t going to stay there forever. There is a part of me that feels, just in these last couple of weeks, like I am packing my bags to move away from the neutral zone. I am beginning.

Today I finished a very hard stint—tenure deadline, stomach flu that got everyone in the family, tricky two-day teambuilding work (my first in this new country) that went really well. Waiting for the train to take me home just now, I realised that things are now in motion; other than on the train platform, I’m mostly not waiting around anymore. The tenure process is well underway. The work at NZCER is now familiar enough that I’m involved in projects and committees, where my work is getting to the presentation and publication stage, and where I’m exploring new ideas and building on old ones. I have a clear idea about what my new house will look like—and the architects have the same image. I’ve begun the work of Kenning New Zealand, have had my first GrowthEdge in this new world, have done my first management team facilitation. There are fewer firsts ahead of me than behind me, fewer utterly unknowns in this new land. The questions have been: Will I translate here? Will I find work and friends that I like? Will I find a place to live that I love? The answers, tentative but growing in security, are Yes yes yes. I’m not sure I’ve ever really known so well the difference between the neutral zone and the new beginnings, never known what a huge step into comfort the new beginnings place could be. Somehow I’m moving with the unfamiliar seasons here, and am beginning to bud. I don’t know how long we’ll be here in this land, still can’t answer the questions everyone always asks about that, but for now, my new lemon tree and I will put roots in the rich soft sandy soil and see how lush we can grow.

[The first two pictures are from my walk home from the train: a perfect curling wave--ah the light behind it!--and the sunset. It was a walk where the most dangerous thing that can happen, did: an exuberant--and, sadly for me, wet--puppy shook all over my work clothes. The last picture is on the beach by our house 20 minutes later, kids playing soccer, Perry chasing the ball--and the same puppy, shaking off on my jeans (not pictured!).]

Option 3

There is movement on the house front. We have been stuck about which direction to take and the architects have been blowing us off—which didn’t even matter so much because we didn’t know what guidance to offer. We have been dealing with what looked like an imperfect choice: to go upstairs or not. Option 1: Do we go up and put all the bedrooms upstairs and change the roofline and pour heaps of money in the house? This has the advantage of getting us all the rooms we need (plus some, actually) and the double disadvantage of being totally expensive and, quite possibly, being quite ugly to look at from the outside (because the roof would have to get very lumpy with dormers and altered rooflines to make space). Option 2: Do we keep all the bedrooms downstairs and not change the roofline? Advantages are that we keep the line of the house and we save the bucks—and it’s way way faster because we don’t need any permissions from neighbors or others to deal with the sunlight encroachment issues. Disadvantages are that we don't have enough space and maybe I go back to having dreams of extra rooms each night as I used to in Cambridge. Michael and I have been frustrated and stuck, with no help from the architects, who keep insisting the ugly roof line is fine once you get used to it.

It took a third party, mulling it over, to think of option 3. Last week K had an idea: we could take the best parts of Option 1 and 2. We could up into the roof for only part of the way, drop the ceilings over the kitchen and bathroom (to get the height we’d need for the second floor without bumping out the roofline) and build an upstairs room over the back of the house. That biggish attic room will have views to the sea from the skylights, lovely views to the hills out the back, and a small bathroom. The roofline stays untouched, the plan is way less expensive, and we get everything we want from the house (including the room we call “Rob’s room” to answer the question one or another of us always asks: “Where will Rob stay when he comes back?”). Once I understood it, I loved the plan. Michael loved the plan. Even the kids loved the plan. The question was: could we get the architects (who say “No, because…” to everything we come up with) to understand and draw us the plan?

Yesterday, on a day when I mostly stayed in bed recovering from this flu thing, we had the fateful afternoon meeting. We met at the house, and, because I was supposed to be at work, Michael asked K to be there for back up (and because it is his idea and he could explain it more clearly than anyone). The architects began with “no, because…” and explained that the ugly roofline was fine. After firm clarity from Michael and gentle questions from K, the architects finally understood what Option 3 was all about. And they even got the "option-3-ness" about it. "This will be HEAPS cheaper than the other plan!" one said. "This gives you all the room you need!" said the other. Bingo.

There was a shift in the emotional feel of the room that was so palpable I bet everyone in the village could feel it. We began to all work on this new plan together, the architect saying (about the loft idea I had for the kids’ rooms) “Yeah—I did one of these last year in Parametta,” and the draftsman telling us about his ill father, who goes for surgery today. So they’re off drawing and Michael and I are feeling totally thrilled to have things moving again. We could be celebrating the new year there after all and have all of summer at the new house. I didn't know how much tension Michael and I were carrying about this until it began to drain away. We've been more cheerful ever since K came up with the idea, but once we met with the architects we were positively giddy about the whole thing. It's possible, it's possible, it's possible! we sang to each other.

Today I'm less giddy and more anxious. I'm writing on a packed early morning train on my way to a workshop—the first real (ie., paid) workshop of Kenning Associates in New Zealand. I’m anxious about it for any number of reasons—because it’s the first, because I’m flying solo which I sometimes but not often do at Kenning, because I’m an American out of context and I worry about the cultural differences. And this is a quirky group that has already had some resistors to the idea of the workshop. So there’s lots to be nervous about. But perhaps this day will be the beginning of a new world for me in the same way that the house meeting yesterday could be the beginning of a new era in the house plans. Funny how many new beginnings there are in beginning a thing. Haven't I begun enough? But no, beginnings cycle around. There's the getting to the new place, the settling in, the beginning new pieces inside the new context. I guess that's seasonal everywhere, isn't it? There are winter winds and then, each year, the sun warms the earth. Yesterday in my new backyard, I saw that my apple tree is covered with pink buds. It’s a time for new ideas and new beginnings. September spring.

PS Home now and buggered. The workshop day went really well, the fruit trees are blooming in the botanical gardens, and the tulips are in full flower. New beginnings, in addition to being exhausting, can be amazingly beautiful.

Cycles

There’s dirt under my fingernails now as I type, and the children are fighting in the lounge. These are both good signs, actually—a huge step up from yesterday at this time. I’ve just come back from time at the new house, where Michael and I went painstakingly over our current hopes in preparation for his meeting with the dreaded architect tomorrow while I’m at work. After getting the plans settled, measuring and climbing and drawing on the walls, we went out to the back yard and weeded. It’s not a huge backyard, but it’s lush and tropical and grows weeds at an amazing rate. The children picked bouquets of little tiny wildflower weeds and searched for four-leafed clovers in the grass. I smelled a freesia—picked from my very own garden!—and sat in the sun.

It was a good week. The kids brought home spectacular report cards, and there was much celebration (Naomi wants you to know she got straight As, and Aidan wants you to know that his reading age is 7.6 years). And MG and her daughter over for Rosh Hashanah—our first in the new land. Michael and the kids found a lovely synagogue (while I stayed home and worked on my tenure stuff) and I braided and curled challah into the new year’s spiral. We all talked about years past and looked backwards and forwards, thinking about Michael’s family all gathered together without us, wondering when we’d sit around Laurie’s table at the holidays again. And, since MG is a US Jew, we talked about what it was like to have the harvest celebrations here in the spring, to be so far away from the things that we’ve known before. It wasn’t somber or unhappy, though—it was lovely, lots of good food and laughing and kids watching High School Musical 2 in the other room.

But it has been a truly horrible weekend. You know about the tenure deadline, and about Michael and Naomi getting this horrific stomach flu which had me in Naomi’s room at least once an hour for all of Friday night. We cancelled the dinner guests, dropped off the cake I had baked for MG’s birthday brunch, and I took care of all the sickies. Then, on Saturday afternoon, just as I was getting ready to give them their first solid food (plain pasta I was about to pour into boiling water), the wave hit me, and I stumbled to bed, hoping that Michael was well enough to take care of things now that I clearly wasn’t. Twelve hours of alternately sweating and freezing, feeling so sick that I thought death would be a big step up, and my sky began to clear, too.

So, walking the whole block away to the new house (which left me winded) and walking slowly through rooms I will come to know and love, looking out at the sea I’ll never know and always love, was a rather large improvement. It is foreign like mad here—I don’t recognize half of the plants in the overgrown garden, and I still think it’s bizarre that the walls are made of wood rather than plaster and lathe. But it’s also familiar and fantastic. I love to sit on the porch and hear the pounding of the sea, love to sit in the backyard and feel so sheltered and hidden. I can’t believe how fully surrounded I am by beauty, and in that house, there is beauty in every single direction. So, the tide comes and goes, the clouds race overhead, and sickness finds us and then passes away. Like the seasons, like the holidays, like life. L’shanah tovah to you all.

Not writing

I’m actually stressed. And not just a little stressed, but a lot stressed. This is what my body used to feel like much more often. I remember it and I don’t like it.

I had a major tenure deadline yesterday (well, actually the deadline hit NZ 34 minutes ago, but I sent it several hours early at 1am NZ time). And, while I was putting the final polish on the documents, a plague came unto our house (in the week from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur—that can’t be good luck) and Michael and Naomi spent the entire night throwing up. So, if it’s been quiet on the blog from me this week, you’ll know it’s the combination of tenure deadline, three days at NZCER this week, a two-day workshop I’m leading next week (with its own sad saga), and the plague.

I hope that you’re all well out there, and I’ll write more when the clouds have blown over.

Tenure

Several of you have asked about tenure—what it is, why I’m doing it, etc. Some of you have filled out a survey of former students or written me a letter of support. Others of you have just been generally encouraging. I have a big deadline on Friday, and so my head is swimming in all the miseries of this process—the asking for favours, the soliciting of feedback, the trying to figure out how to say self-aggrandising things about myself without feeling totally absurd. I thought maybe I’d try here and see if I could connect to the lovely parts of the tenure process—and to the reason I’m doing it in the first place.

The job at GMU is the best job I’ve ever had (although this one at NZCER is pretty good, too). I have a combination of doing deep and important work with the teacher-students, being able to be as creative as I want in that work, and doing it with colleagues I like and admire. I get to have students who are interesting and smart and who are doing the most important job anyone can do—raising the next generation of thinkers and citizens, and making the world a better place. I get to support them to be better at this amazing thing they do. And I get paid to do writing and research about things that are interesting to me. To top it off I have a set of leaders who are supportive and thoughtful, who keep the entire organisation in mind but encourage me to dream and to have new ways of being in the world. I have made deep friendships there, have done the best teaching I’ve ever done anywhere, have been able to do interesting research and writing—and have done a little bit of changing the world along the way. So those are some of the reasons it’s a job worth holding on to.

Of course, it’s also true that I never wanted a tenure track job, because I’ve never particularly liked the values behind the tenure track. Hundreds of years ago, tenure began to protect intellectual freedom—to let people prove themselves as scholars and thinkers, assure them they’d have a job for life, and then they can be as creative or as clear-spoken as they want for the rest of their long and scholarly careers. It’s a good concept to support the freedom of thinkers in a free society. In practice, the tenure track means that people go flat out for six years (or five or ten or however many the particular university requires). And then they put together lots of materials arguing that they’re fantastic, and committees decide whether the case is convincing or not, and they get a job for life—or they get a one-year contract as a parting gift as they try to find another job.

So, there’s the tension. If I don’t apply for tenure, I have to resign. If I do apply for tenure and don’t get it, I get fired. If I do apply for tenure and do get it, I have until September 2009 to go back to Mason and be a professor again (an “associate professor” this time).

If I get tenure and then decide not to work at GMU anymore but to work elsewhere in the US, having gotten tenure at GMU will be a help, although I’ll likely have to go through the process all over again. If I try to teach in a university in other parts of the world, the US tenure system is not applicable and people won’t be all that interested that I have that particular ticket punched. (As I write this, I’m beginning to jot notes to help me hold on to all the pieces I have yet to finish for the deadline this Friday—I can’t do anything about them here on the train, but I can feel my anxiety mount.)

So, getting tenure at GMU means I can hold on to a job I love for a wee while longer (or forever) as we decide whether to live in New Zealand more than a couple of years. (“Are you still deciding whether you’ve emigrated?” someone asked me yesterday. Seems like an odd thing to be still deciding, but yes, I suppose it’s true.) So tenure at GMU is an escape hatch, a way to say, “Nope, sorry—we’ve had a great time living here, but we’re ready to go back to our old lives.” Similarly, if I don’t get tenure, that’s a clear message that the door which I’ve kept open is closed to me. No thinking about that one anymore.

I have discovered one last hidden delight about applying for tenure and asking people to evaluate me: they write letters and fill out surveys that say nice things. I am amazingly lucky to have done work I love with people I love, and it’s beautiful to have their recollections about that work, too. So, wish me luck as I plod forward this week and the rest of the month, and we’ll all have to assume that whatever happens is for the best. Life’s like that.

House worries

The beautiful sunsets here are starting to annoy me. Nearly every night, someone will look out the window and gasp—the sky is fuchsia again. The sun is sinking down into the sea, the clouds have been set on fire, and it’s so beautiful it doesn’t look real—I swear I can see the brushstrokes in the paint, and I want to cluck my teeth and talk to the artist about how over-the-top it is—I mean, who would ever believe there were those colors in nature.. Doesn’t sound annoying? But it is all a matter of timing. The baby’s laughter that comes in the middle of the day brings you great joy; at 3am, not so much. Here the sunsets come as I’m finishing the dinner preparation—at that point when you can’t actually pause in your actions or things will burn. And each day, stuck in front of a stove while the sky puts on a lightshow, I’m frustrated about owning—but not living in—a house where I could be at the stove and see the sunset at the same time (or at least, I will be able to do this once the wall between kitchen and diningroom is knocked down).

Some of you have been curious about the plans for the new house. I’m curious too. T this point, I’m just about ready to chuck the whole plan thing, do a little face lift and move in, but it’s not so simple to know what’s what in a house renovation in a new country. Our first query to the architect—in June—was to ask for two plans: one with bedrooms left where they are now—on the only developed floor of this bungalow house. The other plan was for us to break up into the attic space that everyone describes as “huge” and put the three bedrooms up there. It’s all a matter of costs vs benefits, you see. I need to have some idea of what it’ll look like and how much it’ll cost to go up into the attic—how much will the roofline have to change? How expensive will it be? How small will the rooms be? If we don’t put the bedrooms upstairs, we can always put two rooms upstairs—a lovely guest room/study, and a family room/den. Lots of options.

Only, making decisions about these options means that I need information, and no one is giving us information. The architect has been working only on the first floor of the plan with the bedrooms upstairs, and we’ve spent all these months going back and forth about what the ground floor should look like with all of the bedroom space removed. I say, there’s no need to get the ground floor perfectly laid out until we know that we can move all the bedrooms upstairs. He says, “No worries—there is plenty of room up there.” Then, at my insistence, a quick sketch of what the house would look like with the three bedrooms upstairs—and it was totally hideous. The architect laughed and said we don’t spend most of our time looking at the house—no worries about that, either. Ah, that’s a lovely perspective for an architect to take, eh? So I’ve said the roof has to be beautiful, he’s said OK, and still we wait. We’ve asked the difference between putting three rooms and a bath (and changing the roofline, etc) and putting two rooms and not changing the roofline. What’s the cost difference? The time difference? Seems like it must be a lot. But we keep getting told it’s practically the same (an impossibility, because we know that it’ll take at least a month more in the permissions stage if we mess with the rooflines).

So I ask for information, people smile and shrug. “No worries,” they tell me. It’s going to be fine.” If we were in the US, I would assume that these attitudes were sexist and that they were treating me this way because I’m just a girl and can’t be expected to hold such things in my head. But here, the “no worries” way of life reigns. There’s no bid for the project—just an hourly rate once the work begins (quite common here, I’m told). There’s no sense of precision about what happens next or when or how I’ll know. And maybe that’s the culture here and I’m being an uptight American about the whole thing—I worry. I notice that I often think there should be more precision, more protection—on twisty mountain roads with no guardrails, with little kids running around the playground unsupervised, with students walking to and from school on their own. And I love each of these things, too, and love the freedom the no worries life brings—the electrician who comes over that afternoon, the kids who freely explore their environment, the expansive sense of possibility without the limitations of constant fears of threat.

So, how’s the house coming? I don’t know. What happens next? We wait and we hope that while no one worries about what’s next (except me), people are watching out for it. The sketches with the new roofline should come this week, and we’ll see whether the time has come now for worrying. Until then, the wind from last night has died down, and on this train in the lovely early morning sun, the view of the harbour is sweet as.

Postscript: On the way into town on the crowded early morning train, as I was typing this, the man beside me kept falling asleep, and leaning into me. He twice put his head on my shoulder, to the amusement of the folks standing in the aisle and watching. Once, as he fell hard into me as I typed, I pulled away a little and he woke with a start. He apologized profusely and explained that he hadn’t slept well the night before. “No worries,” I told him—and I meant it, too.

(pictures today are just random sunsets, for colour)

--jennifer

Father's day and mother's birthday

It has turned into a chilly winter's night, the cold southerly wind howling and frightening the children. But it was a beautiful day. We celebrated father's day (which was actually last weekend, but that was Naomi's birthday party, so this was father's day, observed). We had Michael's favorite breakfast and then spent the afternoon at Battle Hill Farm Park, where we had once been with Rob. It's springtime here, or at least that's what they call it. There are tulip trees in bloom, things that look like cherry blossom trees, daffodils, and the neon yellow gorse. And, there are lambs. Lots of lambs, lambs in every field. Every day there are more lambs, scampering around after their mothers. We went to spend father's day with the lambs.

Here's a quick video taken from the top of the hills we look at from the beach, looking back down at the village. This might give you another perspective on the landscape.




And here is a long, and perhaps boring, video of the lambs. In this one, a young lamb loses his mother and goes off searching for her. It's so long because I was trying to film the reunion, but eventually gave up at the prodding of Michael. The good news is that he found his mother and his twin, and nursed and scampered around them, before charging off on his own again. I don't think this is the only time he'll be lost. (The very bad news, of course, is that all these adorable creatures will be a main course at some point--pretty good reason to be vegetarian, eh? We came home and had tofu for dinner with glee.)

Somehow it seems fitting to show a video of a lost lamb, on Father's day (observed) which also happens to be my mother's birthday. Happy birthday, Mom.
(oh, and this post is by Jennifer, as are just about all the posts--a couple of people have been confused about who's writing them and then things mostly don't make sense!)

Weaving

(Posted by Jennifer)

It’s all grey on this Tuesday morning train ride—even the greens are made of shades of grey. Sunday afternoon was as beautiful a day as I can imagine—Naomi wanted to go swimming! Today I’m in long johns and two layers of second-hand cashmere and thinking about layers of change.

Sunday, after I did some work to make up for all the work that didn’t get done while I was decorating that silly cake (and making the French toast and getting ready for the party generally), we went for a long walk on the beach. We went to what I now think of as CC’s end—and we peered at the house she is renting and wondered at a house with so many views of the sea that the most full-on front view is, er, the laundry room. (Naomi said, “WHAT are they thinking?”) The children dug in the sand and found treasures amongst the shell—green sea glass thick and round like river stones, pieces of paua polished in the waves until they looked like they had come from a jewelry store rather than the sea, and--the find of the day--a blue piece of sea glass so bright I had a hard time believing it wasn’t electric. Aidan revelled in his find, in the double joy of having something so objectively lovely and the bliss of having found something Naomi desperately wanted. When she offered to trade every piece of sea glass she had for that one blue piece, he smiled broadly and turned her down with unabashed joy.

In case the day and the sea and the sky weren’t enough, we also found this sculpture. K had told us about it long ago, a piece of public art standing proudly in a space that needs no human adornment. But this piece is brilliantly of the sea and wild—made of driftwood, hung with paua shells, rigged with tattered canvas sails. And it is distinctly human, the anchor blowing in the wind, as though the sailors were just looking for the best place to stay a while. It is both things. There are moments here when I feel so grounded and delighted to be here that I can hardly believe the joy of it—just now, passing a ewe cuddled with two lambs in a green field is one of those moments. And there are other times when my far-away ness is palpable—like now, when I know that at this exact moment, as I chug through the countryside in my sweaters and cold hands, nearly everyone I know will be celebrating the end of summer at some or another outdoor event on the other side of the world. And those moments are sometimes held—delightfully or painfully—apart, and sometimes woven together into the same tight cloth. Sunday, watching my children build sand castles, my husband throw a ball, my dog racing up and down the beach, was a tightly braided moment. How perfect this life is, how full, rich, to have every joy right here. And oh how Dad would love this driftwood boat. Oh how Jamie would love this beach, endless walking through endless beauty. My heart can ache from being too full and too empty at the same time.

After we stopped at the dairy (=general store) on the way home for tofu and onions to add to dinner, we made our way through the heaps of soggy driftwood on the beach. We sat on the rocks to watch the sun drop below the horizon, and to watch the spray on the waves turn pink in the reflection. The pulling forces of full and empty dissolved into a single cloth, because we are always aching for those things we cannot have, always surrounded by those things we can have. There is a kind of connection to all of humanity in that mixed urge, a connection to all that can never be because of the choices that give us all that we have. Now the rain has started in earnest, and this harbour, generally so smooth, has flying patterns of whitecaps. The grey of the day is lit by the gorse blooming now neon yellow on the hills. It is all woven into the pattern of the cloth, the monochrome grey and the vivid colour, the presence and absence of fullness. I’m not sure I have ever been so alive.

HP2

(Posted by Jennifer)

Ahhhh, the bliss of a house with just my family in it. Both Harry Potter parties are behind us now, and we are ready to face the first week of spring (?) with a fresh start. The day feels like spring, too, which is lovely—with bright blue sky and dark black clouds sharing the same space.

Shall I begin by talking about the misadventures? Like borrowing an air mattress and discovering the hole just as the kids were starting their movie. And then wanting to fill it a little with the borrowed pump which attaches to the lighter. But not wanting to run the car (not environmentally sound) and so, instead, running the pump until it turned off. And, er, the car wouldn’t work either. Turns out that’s a bad idea. So there we were, with a dead car perched at the top of a hill at our new house which was devoid of furniture (phone service, etc.) but filled with girls. We hoped and hoped no one would want to go home in the middle of the night (as far as I know, I’m the only one who came really close to going home in the middle of the night…). Or about midnight fights that sent girls to new rooms? Or about Perry (who had the party name “Snuffles” all night) who wanted to sleep closer, closer, closer to us, who kept putting his nose or paw or tail in my ear

Or shall I tell you about the glories of it? There were broomstick races at dusk (backwards) and the creating of “half moon warewolf pies” in potions (they look like muggle pizzas, but are magical). The girls, in full witch regalia, ate the pies with good cheer in a room lit only by candles. They cheerfully endured the team-building exercises I imported into the birthday party (because while I can’t make girls this age be nice to each other all the time, I could give House points for it at the party). And they heaped into the empty lounge and watched the first Harry Potter and laughed and screamed together.

We also had a grip on our foreign-ness. The makers of the “half-moon warewolf pies” were disappointed that there wasn’t bacon or pineapple to put on the pizzas. I could cut up a pineapple fast and put it out, but they were out of luck with the bacon. (But who would have thought that those two were the central pizza toppings for kids? ) One girl was so polite that she happily made the pizza and then sat with it in front of her, never telling us that she hated pizza. And it’s also just a little odd to have ALL of the kids at your party have accents different than yours. “Pier-ry!” they called to the dog, and celebrated that Naomi was now “tin.”

The party was, I think, a total success—or as close to a success as you can get under these circumstances. It turned out that having the party in the new house was a big piece of the delight of it. First, I got to spend a night in that magnificent place (and hear the wind howling—because I was up a lot to be able to hear it). Second, because all the rooms are empty, we could put three girls each in each of the three little bedrooms. That meant that they could have their common rooms (they had divided into Hogwarts houses) and passwords and secret knocks; mostly the girls who didn’t like each other were totally separate from one another. So the fighting was held to a minimum even though there were distinctly different sorts of girls all together. Phew. Now there is room-cleaning to do, I can hardly keep my eyes open, and I have a big chunk of work ahead of me before I can enjoy this magnificent Sunday afternoon. But, the Harry Potter magic held out for a second birthday party, and really, that’s as many sequels as I needed.

Spring booknote

(Posted by Jennifer)

Two quick ideas from me, as I craft a Hogwarts castle from spice cake and mocha buttercream.

Many of you have wondered what’s up with the book project, so sadly stymied by the current publisher. K and I had a meeting this week to figure out what’s next, and we’ve got a fantastic plan for moving forward. So we think it’s likely you’ll see Berger and Johnston in airport bookstores near you—albeit in perhaps a slightly longer time than we were originally hoping. Keep sending us the good wishes, though, as we begin anew the search for a publisher for this thing…

Also, Thursday was as perfect an afternoon as you could imagine. Before Girl Guides, the kids and I went down to Campbell park to practice soccer, throw the ball for Perry, and watch the sun set. Here’s a wee video of a regular perfect sunse at the park.

And, for those of you who are confused seasonally (which we think is most of you), you should know that 1 September, which it is today here, is the official first day of Spring. So, as you go about your business today, you can walk around and smell spring in the air. At least if there’s a breeze from the south…