I Heart Blackberry

It turns out that the World Blackberry is a terrific service, even if it means that hubby can call you eight times in one morning from Brussels while you are really wanting to declutter and organize the study. Why is a device that facilitates the interruption of such domestic bliss terrific? Because I got to hear the following:

1. "The grounds are even lovelier at St. John's than they were when we visited in January!"

While I am sure he did not use the word "lovelier", it's what he meant. And loveliness matters because in next week we will be traveling to Brussels with the kids for the first time. Their number one destination is St. John's. And frankly, the better it looks, the better the kids are bound to feel about moving there.

To tell the truth, I feel an enormous amount of stress about this trip. Its raison d'etre is to get the kids on board with the move. Part of the problem with this is that vacationing someplace -- staying in a fancy hotel, eating out three meals a day, having time with parents with no work responsibilities -- is not the same as living somewhere. It's not realistic, and I guess that worries me a bit in terms of the impression it will give. But the other side of that coin is that the first experience is likely to highlight the differences between current home and new home, and addressing those differences is something I expect to be challenging. And while I love that challenge for myself (see Packing Up and Moving On), they may be among the most important maternal challenges I shall see. So . . . if St. John's looks great, and if the kids say, "Oooh, what a nice playground, what a nice building, what a nice bench to sit on and read," their optimism will soar and so will mine.

Not they aren't already optimistic. When we told them in January that we may move to Brussels, they jumped up and down and began planning our trips from Brussels to Paris and London (first day), Italy and Spain (second day), and Egypt and Tanzania (third day). We'll eat great chocolate, they said, trained to love Neuhaus from dad's frequent European business trips. We'll learn French, they realized with enthusiasm. And when I came home from my exploratory trip to Brussels and told them that the national dish is moules et frites (mussels and frites), they were delighted. (The boy loves exotic seafood and the girl could live on potatoes. I didn't tell her the frites are cooked in horse fat.)

So I guess I don't want the trip to ruin the extant enthusiasm. Is that a tall order? I don't know.

2. "The Carrefour is more like Walmart than it is like Target."

Why did hubby waste time in Belgium checking out the local supermarche when, heaven knows, there were hours to be billed? Because he knows, as I do, that this is true:

The odd thing in making a big move is the knowledge that your life will be
composed of hundreds of small things that you will arrive at only by trial
and error, and that for all the strikes and seminars you attend, the real flavor
of life will be determined, shaped, by these things. . . . Where will your hair
be cut? What kind of coffee will you buy, and where?

This is from Adam Gopnik's Paris to the Moon, a terrific tale of the New Yorker author, his wife, and their son and their relocation from New York to Paris in 1995. Gopnik is a skilled writer and, as is obvious from his chapters, a keen observer of the intricacies of human behavior. His stories make important points about the differences between French and American culture, sometimes through the lens of international events, sometimes through the eyes of a pair of American parents raising kids in a foreign land.

And he says, so succinctly, what I know to be true. That moving to Brussels won't be all about moules et frites, handmade pralines from Chocolatier Mary, and weekend trips to Paris and Amsterdam. It will mostly, in the weight of time and effort, be about moving what we do -- sleeping, eating, cooking, learning, playing, working -- from here to there. So the Carrefour and its products will matter indeed.

3. "I love you."

This is critical. No explanation needed for this one, right?

Je t'aime.

On Technology: A Recovering Luddite's Perspective

Okay, I admit it. I am completely, thoroughly, totally, one-hundred percent in love with technology.

Yep, that's me, the woman who celebrated National Turn Off the TV Week in 1998 by chucking the only television we owned onto the Cambridge curb. (Reduce, reuse, recycle -- it was gone by morning. I loved that about Cambridge . . .) \

Since the start of 2007 I have personally purchased a Blackberry, four iPods, a rocking docking station for said iPods, and 47 inch LCD television. The Blackberry is awesome; my emails are rarely very important, but honestly, it rocks to sit poolside and email the babysitter about Saturday night. The iPods are great because they have brought music back into our home. And watching sports and "Planet Earth" on the new TV is just plain gorgeous.

The most recent purchase is the pair of iPod Shuffles -- purple for the girl, silver for the boy -- in preparation for the kids' first transatlantic trip next month. While I am slightly disturbed to see my enfants walking around with headphones on, I do love that they love music. I love that Ethan sings along with no inhibition, butchering the lyrics to "You Can Call Me Al" without shame. And I am most tickled because this small investment already seems to give them something they need: little spaces of their own within the context of a family on the move. In the car or on the plane, each can tune the rest of us out, make a personal choice to listen to The Sound of Music soundtrack on repeat, and offend no one. Would I want them to tune us out at the dinner table or during a game of Monopoly? No. But their need for space and boundaries and autonomy is served well by the little iPod Shuffle. Score another point for technology.

Packing Up and Moving On

Growing up in a small town in rural Minnesota, my sensitive nature often chafed against the understood norms of the place. Yes, small town life was gracious and predictable. People knew how they were supposed to behave and, usually, they did it. This meant that there was a strong sense of shared purpose that led to routines that were convenient and comforting. Every local business operated on credit, so I, at the age of ten, could ride my bike “uptown” and have a donut at The Swedish Inn and pick up a roll of masking tape and a new paintbrush for my dad, charging both to his account without a fuss. Nearly everyone went to church and, although there were five different churches in the town – one Methodist, one Catholic, and three Lutheran – this affiliation neatly divided our community of five thousand into smaller, more intimate groups.

My life there was safe, comfortable, slow, easy, and set against the charming backdrop of rural American farm life. But adolescence brought me questions. What if you are not religious? What if you choose not a necessary profession – teaching, doctoring, nursing, farming, making, selling, serving – and need to act or sculpt or research? What if you are not straight? What if you are not conservative? My young suspicions didn’t match my hometown.

So when it was time to apply to colleges, I mailed off essays and transcripts to Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, and Washington. The resulting move to Chicago was transformative. And since, then, I haven’t stopped moving. Yes, my continuing journeys have been inefficient, costly, and emotionally challenging. But all things considered, they have taught me to believe in the value of packing up and moving on.

Implicit in this statement is that there is value in the packing up process, and yes, I do believe there is. My obsessive-compulsive nature loves the process of sorting and prioritizing, choosing between discarding and keeping. When I empty the linen closet to pack it, I sort through the quilts from my great grandmother, my aunts, my sister-in-law, and the ladies at Project Linus, who always send my daughter home from her frequent hospitalizations with a new quilt. And in the process of sorting I hold each quilt and ask, “Will it move on with me?” Some represent such deep family love and history that the question doesn’t even pause in my mind. But some have heavy memories attached to them. And somehow, putting those quilts in the “donations” pile lets me sort those memories into the past and gives me hope that they will bring needed warmth to someone else. This process cleanses my cluttered life and clarifies the purpose of my journey.

Important in the packing up stage is the time I do without my three tons of worldly possessions as they are en route to the new home. And I love this part. Sitting in an empty house, waiting for weeks for the furniture and dishes to arrive, I relearn those dual lessons of, “Boy, I love my seven-cup food processor!” and, “Hmmm, I can live without my seven-cup food processor.” When the truck does finally arrive, it’s like Christmas to unwrap every goblet and china dish, every book and framed photograph. Only it’s my stuff, the stuff I have gathered along the way, and it’s both exciting and familiar.

The lessons of living differently, in different places, are even greater than these material lessons. In each place I find a new way to live and learn important things about myself and my world. Drawn by the crisis in the alarmingly poor and violent neighborhoods of Chicago’s south side, I chose to make public education, not academia, my career. Moved by the rich and robust ongoing intellectual debate in Cambridge, I learned to articulate and refine my political point of view. Rocked by the shocking beauty of northern California, I grew to appreciate the role of nature in my life. And when, for the first time, I moved to the suburbs of Washington, I became at once an advocate of its social togetherness and a critic of its car-dependent sprawl and franchise restaurant ubiquity. At each stop I have gathered friends, ideas, recipes, memories, that are real pieces of my identity as a wife, mother, teacher, and friend.

So now I am moving again, this time away from beloved friends and school and neighborhood, to a new continent, a new language, and a new set of expectations. My dearest neighborhood friend wondered last week why, if I am so sad to go, I am going. “Is it what you really want?” she asked. And I could enthusiastically say that yes, I want to go, because I believe in the refreshing and reinvigorating power of packing up and moving on.

NOTE: My seniors wrote This I Believe statements for their final exam. This is mine. If you are unfamiliar with this idea, please link to thisibelieve.org to read about this project and listen to essays that have appeared on NPR shows.

The End, But Not the End, at the Beginning

I teach high school. Or taught high school. Today is the penultimate day of classes, which means I am sitting in front of my 23 English 10 students who are writing, with great adolescent, seven-twenty-five-in-the-morning enthusiasm, their final essay exams. Because I am not returning to work next year, it is my penultimate day as a teacher. Next year I will be free from paid employment, dedicating my efforts to volunteering both here and at my kids' elementary school, learning French, and coordinating the family move to Brussels.

But the greatest lesson I have taken from this back-to-work experience is . . . what is the greatest lesson? That being a working mother left me perpetually exhausted? That I still love and know my children intimately in spite of our crazy juggling of schedules? That it may be healthier for us all for me to have a professional identity? All important, but I don't want to talk about those (yet) because I am so not ready for this blog to enter the mommy wars. Really. No, the lesson I take is that I, even when not employed, am a teacher. Even after the eight year hiatus to be mommy-to-babes-and-toddlers, the teacher part of me was in tact. I could still do it, and do it well, (at least most of the time), and do it with passion and energy and pleasure.

So I won't be employed for the next two years, at least. These years are better spent transitioning my family from American suburbs to American expat. But I will always be a teacher. Always. It's as essential to me as being a wife or a mom or a friend.