Michael hanging out laundry on Christmas morning--this is more fun and satisfying than I ever would have guessed.
The kids playing with AJ's new science kit on Christmas morning.
ns, selling what they called “Real Christmas Trees.” Ah, but the weekends were so busy. So we punted and asked them to deliver us one, at great expense. And so it was, on Wednesday of this week, that we got the phone call…We had asked for a tree to be delivered? A 7-foot tall fur, brought to Paekakariki? Yes, that was us. Sorry. No tree, no delivery. Maybe next year.
ght over belly, appeared on the other side of the fence. “All the good ones are gone!” he told us. “Only ugly trees left!”
path. Thick forest all around us, the clear cut for the new subdivision ahead showed what humans often consider progress. His lawn was punctuated by veggie gardens and a scattering of straggly pines, with a view of the subdivision on one side and cows in a pasture on the other. “All the good ones are gone,” he repeated in a thick Dutch accent, surprising for one who had been in this country nearly 50 years. “Maybe you find something that is not so bad.”
u want. That one expires after two years, a way to make sure that you actually live here in NZ and don’t just bank the residence permit for use at some later point (like after you’re 55 and you can’t get this visa anymore). But if you’re good, and you live here and work here for the 2 years, that visa too converts to permanent. And so, now that our anniversary is behind us, Michael headed over to immigration, proved the various things that needed proving, and now we can come and go from New Zealand whenever we want for as long as we want. We belong here now.
the journey on a windy afternoon like this one. I love it here, love waking up to the sea and falling asleep looking at the stars. I don’t know if this is our home for the long haul or what comes next. But at this inflection point I am here and at this moment, here is home.
It’s my two year anniversary today. Two years since our plane touched down early one Thursday morning in a cold and damp December. When we moved here, I said I’d be here at least 18 months. Seems like we’ve met that target. Wonder what’s next.
(“What’s next” turned out to be MORE nits in Naomi’s hair. This is a fitting celebration of our 2-year anniversary. For those of you who haven’t been following since the beginning, it’s worth a dip back into the horrors of December 06.)
On Tuesday I decided that I would make one last big move on the house and then call it really seriously finally done (for now). When we bought this house, the attic was just a cavernous space of an easy standing height, crossed with support beams, and occupied only birds’ nests. We wanted up there! We dropped the ceiling in the kitchen and hall to get one lovely room and a bathroom, a haven for guests. But over the rest of the house, the ceilings on the ground floor are high which makes the space above smaller. The other half of the attic has been an unfinished space—with reinforced floor and the beginnings of dry wall and one small window. On Tuesday, I decided we’d just make that one last change and then we’d be done.
So I called Dave, the Builder Extraordinaire. How much will it cost to put one skylight in that room and plaster it up? I asked. And when can you do it? Dave gave me a figure that was less than the cash I had on hand from my work in
And so it was, on Wednesday, that I was looking at my attic walls and pointing to the place where I wanted the skylight. I was on an international phone call and so I had very little time to get the placement right. I wanted it far forward so that this skylight wouldn’t interfere with what we wanted to do to the room later. And I wanted it low enough to give me a view. Thursday night, I looked. The skylight seemed to be in the right place forward, I thought. But it was so high. I’d never get a view from there. I agonized, discussed things with Rob and Michael, and wished for the view.
Thursday morning I laid out my problem to Dave. How much work would it be to drop the skylight another 2 feet so I could see out of it? “No worries, Jen,” Dave told me (I think Dave is the only person I have met in the last 15 years who calls me Jen). He dropped the hole and I stood in the opening, delighted with my imagination of the view I’d see once the roof was cut open.
On Friday, I got to experience that. Shaking of house, rattling of windows and suddenly sunlight streaming into an attic that had never seen the day before. And, through the hole in the roof, broad views of blue sea wav
es lapping onto green hills. Perfection. God how I love perfection. I had exactly what I wanted.
Have you ever noticed how short lived perfection really is? And so it was, when the skylight was moved into place, when it was perching, not in the hole as I had imagined, but on top of the hole to be flashed above the roofline, that I once again remembered how little perfection there is in the world. The depth of the roof plus the depth of the skylight raised the viewline up 8 inches. The only eight inches of my sea view. Now, from my eye level, I look straight into the edge of the skylight and can raise my eyes to see the tips of the hills bumping into the sky. To make things worse, now the window is too low to add head height to the room, and maybe, just maybe, it’s a little too far forward.
I am in agony over the 8 inches wrong here, the 12 inches wrong there. I brooded around the house yesterday, feeling stupid for having made Dave move the hole once and wondering whether I should have had him move it again when I saw that it wasn’t what I wanted. This bed is too hard, this one is too soft. How many beds to you try before you find one that’s just right?
I try very hard to remember that perfection is the enemy of the good, a lesson that doesn’t come easily to me. But, ah, the responsibility of choosing where to put a window in a windowless wall. Suddenly, the world seemed full of responsibilities that I wasn’t up to meeting. How do you pick the perfect high school for Naomi? What shall we serve our dinner guests, controlling for multiple allergies? How do we know which country is the best one for us to live in? What colour should we paint the walls that surround the too-low and too-forward skylight?
And it’s also totally absurd. I have a good friend who is trying to come to terms with his dying father. I have other friends trying to figure out their loves and make relationship choices for their futures. I talk with teachers who are trying to figure out what on earth to teach for the new curriculum. We are gifted and plagued by our ability to measure and weigh, to agonize over decisions and to hold future—and backwards—images. We decide which things are too high, too low, too hot, too cold, too hard, too soft. This is life, though, where we cannot get it exactly right each time. There are roof pitches to take into consideration (oops), unexpected storm clouds, whether she loves you back, the effects of the new leadership on morale. There are unexpected detours and a confusion of competing commitments.
I spend big swaths of my day looking at the sea, watching its relentless rhythm. I watch the clouds get pushed around by the wind, the green hills go yellow without rain. I should be getting natural patterns, should 
be understanding that this life I lead is small and the choices I make (do I go to the
When Keith came over yesterday, having heard something of my discomfort about the window, he leapt up into the attic room and smiled broadly. “What do you mean no view?” he asked, looking out. “This is perfect!” I pointed out that it was perfect for some and useless for others and he looked at me confused. Putting my hand on his shoulder, I stooped him down until his eyes were level with mine, looking straight ahead at the edge of the skylight and into a sea-less hills and sky beyond. He burst into laughter. “The window isn’t too high—you’re too low!” he said. “Or we should raise the floor!” He pulled over a paint can for me to stand on, and there was my beloved view, swath of sea ruffling into hills. There isn’t an objective too high or too low or too hot or too cold, there’s just Goldilocks and the particular mood she’s in and the fact that she’s closer in size to baby bear than to Mama or Papa. There is only what is, a window there, a skylight there, the waves forming white crests in a silver sea.
On my Wednesday I had a meeting in town. I woke up and thought, “people are voting now.” I walked the kids to school thinking, “people are voting.” I took the train into my meeting. People in lines, at voting machines, making phone calls. Voting voting voting. Who were they voting for??
We had arranged to watch the election results together at the pub in the village because a) I don’t have a TV and b) I wanted to be around other people. Melissa and the kids and I would be there, Rob would pop in from his job at the deli across the street, and Michael would join us when he got home from work. And so it was that I was there on my own, anxious, waiting for the kids to walk there from school and Melissa to show up from work. And there, at a table in an empty pub, I first saw Obama take
The kids arrived, barefooted in the kiwi style, and Melissa blew in with
Little did we know that the train that leaves just after 4pm leaves at 4.04 rather than 4.08 (all the other trains leave at eight minutes after the hour). And so we raced for the train, and missed it by a breath. Until that minute, watching the train chug away and learning that the next one wouldn’t be there for 45 minutes, I hadn’t known how desperate I was to be near other people who cared as much as I did about the hoped-for election of the most exciting politician of my time. The weight of my loneliness in a country on the other side of the world from those voting pulled at me; I put my head in my hands and cried.
I wasn’t alone, though, and Melissa, who saw how important this was to me, piled us into her car and south we went, towards the embassy that would let me be with my people.
Or perhaps not. Michael called to tell us the news. Five minutes ahead of us, he had gone to the embassy party and been turned away. You had to have tickets. “Aren’t our accents tickets enough?” I asked. Nope. We met in the lobby outside the embassy party to regroup. A friendly New Zealander at the door smiled at my Obama button and asked us what we were doing.
”I’m wanting to be in a room filled with cheering Americans on this amazing night,” I told him.
“Well that room up there isn’t for you,” he said in hushed tones. “That’s a political event, lots of Kiwis and political folks. Not much cheering. What you want is the Democrats Abroad party at the Irish Pub on
We thanked him and headed up to
The night is a blur punctuated by images I may well never forget. Watching McCain’s speech and hearing the cheers at his admission of his defeat and the silence in the room when he told us that
Afterwards I realised who I was missing the very most, even in this room so perfectly filled with celebrating people. I called my dear friend Mark, with whom I had taught about race again and again, with whom I had talked through issues around this election and the new possibility of the world. He answered the phone from a crowd.
”Mark, this is your congratulations call from
“I can’t hear you!” he shouted
“MARK, this is a celebration on the other side of the world, in
“Sorry! It’s too loud here and I can’t hear anything.”
“MARK!” I said, yelling into the phone, “IT’S JENNIFER IN NEW ZEALAND!”
“JEEENNNIFEEER!” he howled. “Oh Jennifer! BABY IT’S A MIRACLE!”
And I wept again to hear his joy, and to hear joyful yelling on the streets of
Four years ago, I found myself nearly constantly in tears after the last election. I would be sitting at dinner and suddenly realise my cheeks were wet. Michael thought I was frightening the children, which was probably true. I had it bad.
This week, I find myself bursting into smiles without knowing that I’m thinking about President-elect Obama. And when I think about that beautiful family moving into the White House, when I think of those girls—my kids’ ages—and their fantastic mother and their new puppy, my eyes fill with tears again. These are not Bush tears, though. These are the tears that are about pride in my country, hope about what might come next, joy over a barrier that was knocked down decisively.
Here in
[I have been working on this entry for several days in snatched time between the many writing projects which are now nearly blissfully behind me. Really the thing that’s most important here is obviously the election—voting going on as I type—but here’s a diversion from earlier in the week.]
My partner Mark says that one of the most risky behaviours one can engage in while traveling is to speak to the person in the seat next to you on an airplane. If ever I mentioned any in-air conversation, Mark would tsk-tsk at me and remind me that a conversation gone bad was bad, without escape, for hours. He’d advise me to plug in ear phones, avoid eye contact, and, if worse came to worse, feign sleep in order to escape from the dreaded conversation of the seat mate.
So it was with Mark’s warning fully in mind that I took my aisle seat on the five hour flight from Dulles to LA last week. My seatmate kept to himself, reading a guide book, and I kept to myself, editing a journal article. But, because I am not Mark Ledden, I couldn’t help noticing that the book opened next to me was a NZ guidebook, an unusual reading choice on a flight to LA unless there’s a longer flight directly following. And so I engaged in that most worrisome of airplane behaviours: I talked first.
Duane (as his named turned out to be), answered. He was meeting his wife in LA and together they were flying (not on an Air NZ plane like me) to
We talked maps and travel plans. He had never been to NZ, but had lived overseas when his son (now 20) was small, in the
And so it was, as we prepared for final descent and tucked up our tray tables, I did something far more dangerous than beginning a conversation; I invited him to come and stay with us during his travels. I gave him my name and phone number, and off we went, our separate ways in LA.
As I left the United terminal to cross over to the AirNZ terminal, I was surprised to see Duane waiting for me with his wife, Janet. We chatted about some of the wonderful things she might look forward to, I reiterated my invitation to them both. My gut reaction about Janet was that she was open and lovely, warm and gracious. I plunged out into the warm autumn evening in southern
Five days later, I opened my door in a magnificent spring evening in Paekakariki and welcomed Duane and Janet in for, as it turned out, more moments together. They came bearing thoughtful presents—a bottle of wine, a bag of chocolate chip cookies, a purple flowering plant to grace the garden of our purple house. The kids, when they got home from trick-or-treating, were offered armfuls of art supplies and the gentle guidance of Janet, an artist and art teacher. Over dinner we talked about leadership and travelling, about bringing your children to new places to live, about US politics. They were model guests, playful and interested in the children, warm and grateful (even about a dinner that lost some zing as Naomi and Aidan got carried away by their trick or treating). They talked about the trip so far, and we poured over maps for the trip to come. We walked on the beach at sunset and watched the sliver of a moon sink towards the sea. They were overcome with the beauty of the place. It was hard to believe that these people, total strangers to us, fit so easily into our house.
Duane and Janet had intended to go on to the
The lessons of this story are subtle and not generalisable. The truth is that I rarely even share a sentence with the person sitting next to me on a plane, because planes are for working and not for chatting. It also could have gone very badly. They could have been difficult under longer circumstances, or Janet could have been justifiably wary over the invitation her husband received from a woman to spend the night at her house (ditto with Michael, by the way). But in that moment and with those people and with me at the exhausting end of a long and often-difficult trip, it was the perfect thing to do. I love being in the world in this way and meeting others who live in that same world. I love that just as I was feeling so far away from the familiar conversations and sounds and relationships of the
Sunday Michael and I went out to breakfast with some friends in town and came home and sat on the cool sand with Melissa to watch the kids in their first week of surf club. We walked home along the beach where I finished Michael’s birthday cake while Melissa and Rob cooked dinner. Here were longer-standing relationships, deep and better aged. Here were four Americans making their way in a new country, celebrating Michael’s 42 year on the planet. Our house, our lives, our hearts, contain space for old and new friends, for quick connections and lifelong ones. The world is vast, and it is also connected. Relationships are the most difficult thing we have, and they are also as natural as breathing. Love is a natural resource without any constraining factors.
Happy birthday Michael.
Happy one-year-in-New-Zealand anniversary, Rob.
Go Obama—let this be the start of a better world order.
In a window seat on the train again, snaking along on the wall above the sea and into Wellington. This isn’t quite the red line on the metro. I have passed through the timelessness of 24 hours in airports and in flying metal tubes, and I have arrived into this dream reality where the plane lands next to water dotted with surfers and I spend my first day home with my friends and family, weeding, pruning and planting vegetables in a sunny and sheltered garden, the sea audible as a background thrum.
I am dis-oriented in an internal way not obvious until I sit down and have conversations with myself. In the
What are those tears about, I have wondered to myself and others have wondered along with me. I remember my first time in that student center six years ago, me dressed up in a smart blue suit bought for the occasion, anxious and watchful in my first academic job interview. I remember meeting these IET faculty for the first time, impressed by the intelligence, the passion, the creativity of these folks. On the plane the next day, I called Michael to tell him the news. If offered this job I couldn’t imagine not taking it, if only for the honor of hanging out with these people for the next 20 or 30 years.
I was back in the building several months after taking the position. I had planned and taught my first summer session by then, sold my
Over time, the building became less novel. I at cheep and delicious middle eastern food there during faculty meetings, emailed friends and students from the comfy chairs upstairs. I went to receptions to celebrate new faculty joining us, and others to honor faculty retirements. I wrestled seemingly-intractable academic politics, and celebrated the possibility of a new way of working together. I watched trees go down and new buildings go up. I felt anxious, sleepy, angry, delighted, exhausted, dispirited, proud, and loving in that space. The space became mine; it held me and my colleagues and our careers.
It is mine no longer. It is ex-mine. I think it is the loss of one particular image of how my life might go that I am mourning. There is a vision for my future that still lives in me, and I have to understand how to let that vision go. It is a death of a future I’ll never have, and I’m mourning the loss of me in that role as I mourn the loss of my colleagues and students in their roles in my life. Now I have to figure out who I am in the ex-GMU world. While in the US, as I was ending some connections, I was attempting to deepen others, to try and figure out how to hold on to who I used to be as well as who I am in NZ so that I can figure out who I am becoming in this bi-hemispheric life. The GMU thing is one piece of who I am now not.
Here today there is a bright blue sun in the sparkling air. The fields have become neon green with the constant spring rains in my absence, and they are dotted with plump and playful lambs. Spring wildflowers bloom, yellow, pink, purple, along the rail lines. The sea, hazy in the spray-filled northerly breeze, marks its steady rhythm. The voices I hear around me are unlike mine, the politics they talk about is unfamiliar, about an election next week about which I have few opinions and almost no knowledge (the NZ national elections are four days after the US ones). I am sleepy and disoriented in the familiarity of this train ride through fields and past towns. Now we’ll head trough the tunnel that drives through the mountains and comes out in
What is it about these trips home that make me feel like a time traveler, that have me spinning through life cycles and making my way, dizzy, from one event to the next?
Last week we drove up the Thruway to my grandparents’ house. We sat at their kitchen island—as I have been doing since I was Naomi’s age—and ate tuna fish sandwiches on white bread. I heard stories about my grandma’s childhood in
A few days later I sat around a big table at my Aunt Patty’s house. Here, on the other, smaller side of the family (Dad has only 6 siblings), I know all the cousins and their children, and there are no grandparents left to tell me stories or show me mysterious gadgets. On Saturday there was a little gathering for us Kiwibergers—medium yield for this family with three sets of aunts and uncles, four first cousins (and partners) and three first cousins once removed. Aunt Patty was the one I spent the most time with as a kid because she was the mom of Tara, my favorite cousin. When I was a kid, I lived farther away than nearly any of my cousins, and I lived with my mom. This meant that I wasn’t at the regular family events and didn’t see this closely-knit family as much as they saw one another. When I was there it was a major party time, and livingrooms would be filled with adults talking and dandling babies on knees or at breast, kitchens with (mostly women) chopping, mixing, cleaning, and family rooms or bedrooms filled with cousins making up games or plays or just zooming around the house. I loved these gatherings, loved racing through the living rooms to catch a glimpse of beloved aunts and uncles. I loved slowing down through kitchens to see whether I could spy the plastic-wrapped chocolate chip cookies someone had brought, hiding until everyone had had enough dinner. And beyond it all I loved the time with my cousins, the stories we told, events we organized, silly games we played. Tara and I, as the eldest, kept the little ones under control, half babysitters and half queens of the domain.
Since the last time I was in the
This means that my aunts and uncles aren’t the generation who produces the children and checks up on the cousins racing the house; that’s now my generation. The cousins that make up stories and play games? Those are my kids’ generation, with Naomi the eldest of the bunch, leading her smaller cousins around, keeping the peace, being the tattletale. The aunts and uncles sit in the living room and tell stories about their kids in college, pass albums of weddings, wax lovingly about grandchildren, and are beginning to look rather like my grandmother as I remember her most strongly.
In some ways, this is just part of the family cycle, right? It is the uncanny way that two best cousins produce children who love one another and pal around at the next generation’s family event. It is the echo of the mother in the voice of the daughter, the taste of a meal we have had at family gatherings for my whole life, the rhythms of family patterns and habits held steady over time.
But I keep hearing my father’s voice, deep with melancholy, after Naomi told him she couldn’t wait until she had silver hair like his. He looked at her, golden hair shining in the
This is a one way cycle, the patterns of the generations repeat in a beautiful and encouraging way, but we only get one ride around. My aunts and uncles are taking my grandmother’s place, but Grandma left that place more than three years ago. The last time I looked up, I was amazed that I was joining the generation of my aunts and uncles and producing children. Now, more than a decade later, I realize that I was actually replacing that generation, stepping into the major childbearing role into my large and growing family. At Aunt Patty’s, I realized that I have stepped out of that role. No more will new baby announcements come from us. We are moving on into the comfortable and beautiful time of raising these lovely children of ours rather than producing more of them. We are crossing thresholds we cannot cross back over. This is not going to be news to anyone, and at the same time, each time I get a real sense of it, it is a punch in the stomach. On this trip, I am getting a lot of punches.
A mid-trip, mid-life crisis? I finish this blog more than a week after leaving Patty’s, in a swank hotel in
But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Remembering about my one way ticket helps me focus on what I want from this short ride. In the eyeblink of parenting my children, what do I want them to take with them? In the flash of a career, what do I want to accomplish? In the ringing notes of my friendships and loves, what do I want to experience and to give? I don’t want to notice my mortality constantly, but neither to I ever again want to forget it. The end of playboy Marvell’s poem is a call, not just to lust, but to life:
Let us roll all our strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one ball;
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life.
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
