Category: Upheaval

For D’s birthday this year, one of his sisters-in-law gave him a cookbook from his favorite chef, Alton Brown. Because he was taught about books by the librarians at his junior-high school, the first thing he did was to open the book in the middle and spread it wide, to crack the spine (this is necessary so that the book won’t be lopsided, and should be followed by dividing each half and spreading the book wide again, and then each quarter, etc., until the book is fully “open”).

Upon opening the book, he was confronted with … The Parsnip.

It’s an amusing memory that early in our sojourn to Scotland, we were confronted with these things, and tried to eat them like carrots.

In a word, “NO.”

Steamed and buttered? To T., they tasted like licorice with salt, and as she is not a fan of licorice, she was really not a fan of this. D. found that they removed the enamel from his teeth, but otherwise thought they were reasonable. Mind you, at that time, we had a farm box from the local organic people, and we had what seemed to be a metric ton of the things. We had no idea what to do with them, and ended up turning them into cookies (“biscuits”), because, is there anything you can’t make into a good cookie? (Answer: no. Stay tuned for the lentil cookies we’re going to be making. No, seriously. It’s an Alton Brown recipe.)

We made far too many parsnip biscuits, and shared them out with our reluctant neighbors (the guys who lived on our left told us that they didn’t even like sweets, the second time we knocked on their door. They thought we were SO ODD) and the balance went to the neighborhood pharmacy, where the ladies, who were on foot for a lot of the day, were very happy indeed to take them for tea. (The cookies were worth enough good karma to get our prescriptions hand-delivered and discounted, which was a bit of a shock, but a nice one). Will we be trying parsnips again this autumn? Er… maybe if we’re really, really missing Glasgow… but we’re not sure we’ll ever miss it THAT much…

Meanwhile, the gift of a woolen plaid blanket – meant to remind us of Scotland – devolved into hilarity, as we admired the little piper on the tag, and read the name. “BUCA YÜNE Scotch Battaniye,” T sounded out, frowning. “What?” TURKÇE, my dears. The blanket is from Scotland, by way of Turkey. Apparently we’re not the only ones having recently taken long, strange trips!

Despite the number of possessions filling our home – thank God for good thrift-shoppers – we’re waiting – still – for the shipment of our possessions! Clearly, the “we’re here” bits of our brain aren’t entirely online, since the other day D. thought to walk to Grassroots (the Scottish equivalent of Whole Paycheck Foods), which he was thinking was just around the corner. Just getting on with things and living is still cuing thoughts of Scotland for us, but we’re feeling a bit less crazed these days.

The FILTHY OVEN OF DOOM has been cleaned (Better Living Through Chemistry means a lifetime supply of Easy Off. UGH.), the strip of lawn – about three feet wide – still hasn’t been mown in the back, and there’s a persistent orange tabby we’re gently but firmly encouraging to dig and deposit elsewhere; the near daily routing of spiders (And T’s requests of, “Um, D.? Could you …?”) has given way to the hourly pings and sighs as the old house settles around new residents. We are looking forward to a number of baking and cooking experiences, and are eying the butternut from community member Judy’s garden with undisguised glee.

So, the process continues. We’ll be back to what passes as normal shortly.

-D & T

(This might be a blog post to skip if you’re over hearing about how much the world, for us, has changed. We do realize we’ve kind of been going on about it.)

“I don’t think anyone expects the reentry to be as hard as it is. We hear a
lot about culture shock, but there’s a reverse as well. Coming home is hard. It’s still home, but it’s also not. And we get frustrated with ourselves because it doesn’t all happen naturally and easily, the way we think it should.” — A Pilgrim

In the past two months, we’ve had some interesting conversations with acquaintances and friends who have lived abroad – ambassador’s kids, travelers, international business folk. As we’ve found our present circumstances fitting us about as well as a scratchy shirt, we’ve been wondering if we somehow missed a memo from the universe on how to live now. Everything is … mostly normal, but somehow still vaguely… wrong. And to those of you whose quick snarky reflex is to write us an email about “obviously, America has changed in the past five years,” please don’t. Things are a little less than obvious from where we’re standing.

It has been good to realize that other people have struggled in the same way. We have watched friends move – and and move again. An acquaintance who had been educated abroad, and lived abroad for five years after college, had to take a weekend alone to balance between fear and anticipation about going home. Others have had children to help create the transition – planning schooling and finding a roof for the whole family gives one time to think and decompress and prepare for the personal stuff. But, in the end, it’s all a little bit of background noise and distraction. When the quiet moments come, it still hits you: everything is changed. Everything.

It probably would have been good if we’d been forewarned. Instead, it was one small disaster after another – stupid visa drama, stupid house stuff – which is the way life always goes. In some ways, we were whirled around and spat out on these shores, completely unprepared. In many ways, we shouldn’t have needed to prepare — after all, this is home, right? …sure, sure, there’s that cliché about never being able to really go there, but that was a cliché, right…?

“…I think once an expat, always partially an expat. That square peg feeling will recede, but it never entirely goes away. You lose the person you were before … Life continues there, as it does here, and we can’t be in both places at once. And in some ways, we can never only be in one place again. Part of us is always there.” — An Observer

It’s peculiarly comforting to know that other people have found themselves in the same conundrum. An irritating restlessness, a maddening inability to just settle – whether this is settling in or settling down. Something is always wrong, like the three bears’ chairs — too soft, too hard, too this or that. We’ve been house hunting in various nations and towns since June, when we arrived, and we’re hurtling toward September (ED: Or, we were when T. started writing this. And now we’re IN), still sleeping in the guestrooms of friends and relatives, still depending on the kindness of, if not strangers, people who themselves have their own needs and their own plans and agendas.

We’d started to feel, frankly, a little insane. And we knew — we know — that some of you think we’re crazy, too. Some of you have been quite clear on that fact.

We will settle if we can. We will choose when we know the parameters of our choices. We would give much to simply sit down like normal people and get on with the business of living, instead of longing desperately to just go home — to a place where we no longer live, to lives that no longer exist — and maybe never did, as hindsight and nostalgia eventually colors everything.

[When I came back]”…I found other people are not so interested in other cultures. They don’t understand our need to explore new places or our nostalgia of places once lived. I still have a certain fondness for anything [from that place]. I think moving away … is a good thing. You still have ties … So, it’s not like you’re never going back, which was my fear — That I was stuck. Maybe that’s what ails us. We got used to always learning new things and going to new places, trying new foods.” — An Expatriate

The good thing about building again, from the ground up, is that it is possible. Entire nations, razed by war, learned to salvage bricks and make from the shattered stones a new mortar. We’ve certainly not been decimated by violence, rather than by the ever-moving stream of life, of the things that just are — and so it’ll be a simple matter to find a few cords that are familiar, and set ourselves to weaving them again, into making a life. To thoroughly mix metaphors.

It’s funny, but the last five years of our lives are a real issue for not us, but for landlords and banks and people who like to account for who we are and where we’ve been. It was tricky getting started in the UK for the same reason, but we had the excuse that we were students. Now that we’re back… well, who are we? And what do we have to show for our years away?

“It’s surprisingly hard, in a confusing way. And it’s sort of this unseen wound or ache. It’s worse because no one expects it — not you, not your family.
But if it makes anything better, everyone I know who has come back — even just from long-term travel — has experienced something similar. And it takes everyone by surprise. Everyone.” — A Pilgrim

We’ve been kind of through the fire… but someone finally took a chance on us. It took filling out long applications, pulling tax forms, check stubs, and bank statements. It took an act of faith — a real one — for the people who own the house. But, we’ve made the first tentative stab of putting down roots — maybe just shallow ones for now, but roots. We’ve got an address.

Step 1.

-D & T

Just to give you a flavor of what it’s like to drive through the Mojave Desert, Mormon Rock, and surrounding areas, the picture below is why we love it: a land of high-contrast scenery, Joshua trees and cacti, scrub-brush and sand. It’s truly a dramatic place – and the car even got drenched by a rare rainstorm!

After our drive down from Northern California, we took a day to rest and plan out the house hunt. Today, we made the hour’s drive out to Desert Hot Springs to see a possibility (nope – definitely beautiful views, but the pool was a mere puddle, and had built-in barstools) and then on to La Quinta to view another (awesome landscape, but again, a truly miniature pool). Tomorrow we’re speaking with some realtors who specialize in the area, and should be out tomorrow evening to see a few more places, hopefully.

We’ve narrowed the search a bit, in some ways, having driven through the whole area today. We’ve ruled out Desert Hot Springs as being just a bit too far off the beaten path and as having nothing really there except for a few spas (hence, “hot springs”). We’ve also decided that Indian Wells is far too much of a resort place, again without anything much in terms of people living there who aren’t wealthy and retired or in the service industries. We particularly liked Palm Desert, and could probably extend that liking into Thousand Palms – not only did they look like real places, where people have occupations other than playing golf or serving drinks, but there are a number of colleges and university extension campuses in the area, so D. could likely pick up a few hours of teaching.

The heat, here, is … well, not so hot. Yes, it’s been up above 100°F / 40°C consistently, but because it’s dry, you just don’t notice. Every time we’ve gotten out of the car, we’ve said, “huh, well, it’s hot.” Your body sweats, but the dry air evaporates it to cool you, and if you don’t linger at high noon, it’s reasonable to be out in the heat. It’s not something which can be understood without experiencing it, really – you have to be out in it, and to feel it, and then understand that it’s not so crazy to live in the desert.

The scenery is also something to behold. Hopefully when we’re settled we’ll be able to take some decent photos to share which can express the beauty of the place. Until then, though, we’re going to be taking a few shots from the car as we drive, or from places we’re considering. We’re also still trying to pretzel ourselves around work commitments, so the quiet here will likely continue for at least a few more weeks.

Until the next episode…

-D & T

SUCCESS! We have finally managed to retrieve our passports from the UK Borders Agency. Rather than sending them to the University (as instructed in the application, in the application withdrawal fax, and via the telephone), they sent them to our old flat. The one which sold…

Fortunately, the people at the University were on top of things and noticed that it’d been unable to be delivered, so D. went down to the Royal Mail Central Office in Stirling and begged – upon his knees (literally) – for them to search for the passports, telling them of the woes of being a student (in a broad, California accent) and having had the landlord sell the flat before the passports were returned. The kind gentleman of the post was unable to resist a large man kneeling before him begging and sent someone off to search (well, OK, D. doesn’t have a very loud voice, and was tired of shouting through the wee window). The ones that want to travel to Europe can always renew uk passport from usa as well.

20 minutes later, the passports were located: in a stack of mail to be returned to sender.

So, it is with a great mixture of glee and grief that we announce that we will be leaving this island, stopping off in Iceland for a few days (sans snow, huzzah!), visiting California for a restful four weeks or so, and then be moving on to the as-yet-undisclosed Caribbean Island Location. We will both be working from home, and will be splitting our time between visits to the mainland US, the warm island, and this cold island. We plan on returning to Scotland to spend a month at a time several times a year, in order for D. to visit his office, for us to see friends and to keep on singing with the City of Glasgow Chorus occasionally – who have recently announced a tour to Leipzig.

So, this time next week will see us packing everything into four suitcases, followed by a flurry of sunny pictures from Reykjavik (they have 20 hours of daylight, this time of year), followed by a return to California for the first time in two years. We’ll see some of you there.

-D & T

Today is our last day in Cambusbarron, quiet village of sheep, mill buildings, and wind. At the moment, we’re supposed to be cleaning, packing up the last bits, etc., instead, we’re checking email and blogging as we don’t quite know whether we’ll be able to have reliable internet for the next few weeks.

As you may know, UKBA – the UK Border Agency – has had our passports since before February, and had made no progress on returning them to us. We’ve been advised by the University to cancel our visa extensions in order to travel. Apparently this won’t cause us any trouble in returning to the UK for visits, because they are at fault – after personnel cuts, they’re just too overwhelmed with the visa for the Olympics (and some some MAJOR technical difficulties – all is not well in UKBA Paradise). A lack of visa is also the case for our erstwhile Elijah for the May 26 performance of Mendelssohn’s beloved oratorio: he’s stuck in Brazil, and has been waiting for weeks, so our maestro has had to frantically locate someone else – which is a real shame, because Mr. de Souza, who sang Belshazzar’s Feast with us last year, has a stunning voice.

After withdrawing our visa application, we expect to receive our passports within the next three weeks, and to travel at the beginning of June, first to Iceland, to spend a few days in Reykjavik, then home to California for a long-overdue long visit – all this, if the passports arrive in time for such leisure. After California, we’re off to Puerto Rico – we don’t know where, exactly, yet. We’ll certainly let you all know when we figure it out, though. This is the result of D. continuing a relationship with his boss here in the UK and beginning a relationship with universities in PR. We’ll keep you posted…

85 boxes / items shipped out this past Friday, on their way to our new home. All that remains to us is 4 suitcases, several computer bags, cameras, and D’s violin. We’re really hoping that it’s not that cold in Iceland, as we recently realized that between us we have a cardigan and two jackets… by the way, yes, there are gusts of wind in the tornado range, and it’s pouring. Why, yes, thank you, we DO feel intelligent sans coats…!

Believe it or not, we have a concert this evening!! Our last time singing choral classics, then we’ll pick up our suitcases and change addresses for – hopefully – only three weeks.

And now, to close down the network here, prepare for the concert, throw the last few food items into a laundry basket, and walk away yet again. Six moves in the last five years… oy. We are not home yet…

Thank you for coming along for the ride.

-D & T

You’ll have noted the long pauses in blog entries. The reason? We’re busily packing…

One of the things you never remember about moving is how …just… grubby the whole enterprise ends up being. It’s not that you never clean beneath your couches — we do, with a dust mop, at minimum on a weekly basis. It’s just that dust is a sneaky, sneaky thing, and like its namesake bunnies which breed horrifyingly quickly, it gets behind furniture and quietly gives birth. Add to it that the Georgian date of the building, the fact that they’re doing dig-up-the-sidewalks type of construction again just across the street (in front of Bridget’s old flat), and that we have single-paned windows that don’t really seal, and you get drifts of sand and flakes of paint along with the dust and the general human sheddings of dander, skin, and hair.

Remember how when you were little, sometimes certain parts of the floor were lava and you had to jump across? Yeah, well, when one is moving, at times the whole house is deemed lava-land. We want to perch atop our boxes and stare down in dismay. Instead we… clean. And clean. And clean again, as each new crop of dust bunnies (or slut’s wool, as T’s grandma used to call it – a bit more pejorative, that) reveals itself… because of course the property manager insists on running herds of potential renters through while we’re trying to pack everything away, and T. still grimaces when she remembers being teased once by the property inspector about a dusty baseboard.

It’s hard for us to see how finding new renters so soon is reasonable, as we’ve been in this flat for over two years. In the part of the U.S. where we’re from, the law states that after one year, an apartment has to be freshly painted, and the floors cleaned for the next tenants – it’s more of a health/safety law than anything else, but it does mean that there are frequently brightened apartments. Here, that’s not the law; the owner essentially does what they want, and in this case, the owner wants money, and so farewell to the idea of someone figuring out, once and for all, what is wrong with the boiler — we’re considering leaving the wooden spoon we use to jimmy the reset switch, but have a feeling that probably won’t help; farewell to the idea of scraping away the paint from the wooden windowsills and redoing them. Farewell to thoroughly cleaning the blinds and the drapes and removing the strange discolorations and molds from the ceiling where the tenant can’t reach. Just… shove in the next crop. ::sigh::

When last we spoke on the topic – in June – we thought we were moving, but had no idea where we were going, and D. was sending out résumés in stacks. To Canada, to the U.S., to various companies with offices in Puerto Rico, the British Virgin Islands, — he was taking interest in both academic and tech positions everywhere. To our surprise, there wasn’t a lot of response. While the economy is indeed job-poor, we thought that it would be fairly simple to find something acceptable… but companies are being cagey and going with closer candidates for shorter periods of time with more money, but no benefits. Universities have been mildly interested, but of course they want people with degrees-in-hand who don’t have any thought of tenure or anything but adjunct positions. After about four months of trying, D. realized that a.) since his grades for the PhD don’t post until December, job-hunting will be easier in January and b.) despite the fact that his contract was, on paper at least, meant to last ’til September, he’d worked himself out of work, and needed to rethink things in order to keep the roof over our heads. We realized that maybe it wasn’t yet time to leave this place, no matter what we thought we wanted.

Almost as soon as we came to this conclusion, a woman from a nearby town phoned and mentioned that she had seen D’s resume somewhere, and requested that he come and interview in Stirling at her company, forty minutes away. And just like that, things came together. D. starts the job next week as the head of the developers, so he’ll get to mentor and teach and do all those things he loves for as long we we’re here.

Meanwhile: the new place has double paned windows, is made of plain old brick instead of sandstone, and was built within the current century. This means it will hopefully breed less dust in the back corners of things, but there’s no guarantee on this. Flat hunting was trickier with the distances and having to take the train to all appointments, but we managed. We were too flustered to take any pictures, but it’s in a quiet little village called Cambusbarron and the townhouse is nestled next to picturesque woolen mills from the 1830’s.

The townhouse is tall and narrow like a treehouse – a narrow central stairway twists up with rooms branching off. First, downstairs the garage and a library (or what will be the library), with shower/toilet/sink combo and a door to a small backyard. The next floor has a lovely kitchen/living room open up in a bubble of light from north and south, which means those will be lighted rooms in the dark of winter as well as now. The full back wall of the kitchen is windows, as well as there being picture windows in the living room, to overlook the lovely fenced yard and larger greenbelt in the back. Up a floor from there are an office and a very tiny room which literally has only room for a table – we’ll make it a work room – a full bathroom, as well as another shower room for the master bedroom. (So now we’ve gone from one bathroom for the last several years, to three. Why we have all of this largess now…) Pictures to come soon.

But, for now, all of that quiet and order of the new place is but a dream. Before us are ten more days of living with boxes and sorting things into piles of what goes, and what goes out to Oxfam. Right now, we ADORE Oxfam, and hope they enjoy the donation of paperbacks and kitchen stuff and nice-but-under-used clothing which will soon be theirs.

Meanwhile, D. has received some last changes to make to his thesis / dissertation thing before submitting it. Yes, you thought he had submitted it! So did he, but his advisers sprang into action suddenly and want to be sure it’s perfect before it goes on to the larger committee.

Ummmm…yeah. You see there’s a lot being left unsaid, and since this is a family blog, we’ll leave it that way. The bottom line to this sudden influx of input is that the date of the oral exams is irretrievably inching its way toward an October date, not a September one as was originally planned to facilitate an out-of-country student. It really is just as well that D. has a job in this country still, or he’d have to be flying back for exams, which would be an expensive nuisance. The way this whole process has gone has been a nuisance, but we keep reminding ourselves that soon it will be done, and D. will be the latest (and most unique) Dr. M.

That’s the news from Lake Glasgow, where the women are cranky, the house is filthy, and the men are running out of strapping tape…

So, we’re having a relaxing evening, playing Lexulous with relatives, each of us on our own computer, listening to Putomayo Music’s Latin Playground (at the moment – awhile ago it was the Out of Africa soundtrack, before that the Brandenburg Concertos).

I looked over at T., at the beginning of the last song, and realized: Latin music is home for us both. She was dancing in her chair, as was I.

Last time we were home, while T. was getting her hair done, I went out for lunch. I went to a little Mexican restaurant and actually sat in, rather than taking away – it was simply so familiar, and tugged at me to stay. It’s strange: the second culture of California said “home” to me in a way which was so much stronger than anything else, and I realized that I’d missed it terribly.

It’s the same, listening to this album, on a full stereo.

Home seems to be Latin America, or, at least, the music of Latin America.

-D

Either “ambulance” means something different in the UK than in the US, or … well, let’s hope you really didn’t need one, if you got sick in London. I can just picture you, hugging the back of this guy, struggling for your life, while being driven to the hospital. Right. Sure.

Life will be busy for the next few weeks while 1) T. finishes up her latest novel, and 2) D. finishes up a draft of the first half of his PhD thesis / dissertation (whatever you call it in your country, you freaky strange people who can’t decide on the meaning of a word). Sorry for not posting, but … life happens.

Without ambulances for us thank God.