Like everyone else, my assumptions for what April would look like are not panning out. At the end of last year, Ari applied for nine different jobs on the USA mainland. We hoped to move somewhere within a day's drive of at least some family members, with a lower cost of living than is available in Hawaii. We wanted to settle somewhere permanent well before P15 finishes high school. However, as 2020 unfolded, the weeks went by and the only places he heard back from let him know they would not be hiring him. By early March, we were starting to wonder if we would be moving this year, after all.
Not moving when you expected to is an interesting mental adjustment. Ever since church family camp last summer, I had been silently saying goodbye to the annual events I have come to expect over the past five years. Every week at church, women's Bible study, and my teens' speech and debate league, friends would ask if we had heard anything yet. I had been trying to motivate myself to de-clutter before we had a destination, knowing it would make the eventual packing easier. I had been making an effort to enjoy as many opportunities like hiking to Kaena point as I could, with the idea that we wouldn't see it at this season again. But a week before COVID-19 related cancellations started affecting us, Ari got a rejection letter from his most hopeful prospect.
Our family discussions changed in tone from wondering where we'd be next year to accepting where we are - and the global discussion started changing its tone at the same time. Further job offers moved from seeming unlikely to impossible. But right at the time when I would have been sharing with all my friends that they probably won't have to say good-bye to me this summer, I've had to say good-bye to the chance to talk to just about anyone in person. It's fun to hear shrieks of delight over the phone or on a Zoom call when I tell a friend we'll be around a bit longer, but it feels less real not to be doing it face to face.
We couldn't have guessed it back when Ari applied for all those jobs at the end of 2019, but we're really blessed to stay here a while longer. Given the global crisis, not having to pack up and sell our house this month or next month is really a good thing! Lord willing, the ladies I study the Bible with over Zoom on Tuesday morning will be ladies I can study the Bible with in person next year, and the neighbor I drove to the car repair place when she couldn't take the bus will be the neighbor I see sitting on her porch in the fall. Our social circles may become more closely knit after the restrictions are lifted and we appreciate more deeply what we already had. It's good to be part of a community that I'm not preparing to leave.
As an adult TCK, it also feels pretty weird to be part of a community that I've been part of for almost 5 years and still have no immediate plans to leave. So much of my outlook on life has involved a willingness to put up with any minor annoyances knowing that in a few years, I'll be somewhere else and my little world will be completely different, with different annoyances. And since I'll just be moving anyway, I have learned to enjoy the good things without getting too deeply attached to them. And I try to warn people not to become too attached to me. I had started detaching over the past few months, and I'm not sure I'm going to be very good at re-attaching.
When I was 13 and my dad had been assigned to open the South African embassy in Jordan, the South African government wanted to check that I was unlikely to embarrass them by teenage antics inconsistent with our global image. At least, that's always been my assumption about the purpose of that barrage of psychological testing, required of me but not my younger brother. In addition to tests of academic aptitude (we don't want diplomats' kids looking stupid), I was required to write short stories inspired by each of several pictures.
One looked like a set up - a mean-looking guy concealing a gun by the bedside of an incapacitated elderly man. How do you tell a story about that picture that won't make you look like a psychopath? I decided our villain was actually giving the gun as a get-well gift, as unlikely as the image made it appear. I wondered how other diplomats' teens handled it.
But the story that the psychologist was most concerned about had to do with the least threatening image of all - an empty rowboat by the edge of a river. I created a narrative involving a runaway about my age, frustrated with school-related indignities, taking the rowboat and escaping down the river. I recall the psychologist explaining that one ought not to run away from one's problems, but ought instead to try to find a resolution. I listened politely. She might very well think that. She was not attending her eighth school in eight years. There might have been times in her life she had lived more than 3 years in one house. My experience told a different story - I just had to put up with wherever I was, and soon enough, I wouldn't need to resolve the problem. Life would be shoving me into my own rowboat in the not too distant future.
Looking back at that time, I realize I've always approached where I am with a "rowboat mentality." I'll enjoy the riverbank I happen to be on, make friends, put up with problems, and then leave them behind the next time life shoves me into the rowboat. It doesn't matter that I don't fully belong on a given riverbank - it's really the rowboat that's the constant. It's rather an odd feeling now, having expected the rowboat to approach and realizing that I'll be on the riverbank for a while longer.
Ari still plans to apply for mainland jobs to start in the fall of 2021. There's no guarantee that there will be any available, or that he'll get any - we might actually be in Hawaii for quite a while longer. And I'm not sure what I'm going to do with being on a riverbank I rather like, with the mirage of a rowboat on the horizon that may or may not ever materialize.
Not moving when you expected to is an interesting mental adjustment. Ever since church family camp last summer, I had been silently saying goodbye to the annual events I have come to expect over the past five years. Every week at church, women's Bible study, and my teens' speech and debate league, friends would ask if we had heard anything yet. I had been trying to motivate myself to de-clutter before we had a destination, knowing it would make the eventual packing easier. I had been making an effort to enjoy as many opportunities like hiking to Kaena point as I could, with the idea that we wouldn't see it at this season again. But a week before COVID-19 related cancellations started affecting us, Ari got a rejection letter from his most hopeful prospect.
Our family discussions changed in tone from wondering where we'd be next year to accepting where we are - and the global discussion started changing its tone at the same time. Further job offers moved from seeming unlikely to impossible. But right at the time when I would have been sharing with all my friends that they probably won't have to say good-bye to me this summer, I've had to say good-bye to the chance to talk to just about anyone in person. It's fun to hear shrieks of delight over the phone or on a Zoom call when I tell a friend we'll be around a bit longer, but it feels less real not to be doing it face to face.
We couldn't have guessed it back when Ari applied for all those jobs at the end of 2019, but we're really blessed to stay here a while longer. Given the global crisis, not having to pack up and sell our house this month or next month is really a good thing! Lord willing, the ladies I study the Bible with over Zoom on Tuesday morning will be ladies I can study the Bible with in person next year, and the neighbor I drove to the car repair place when she couldn't take the bus will be the neighbor I see sitting on her porch in the fall. Our social circles may become more closely knit after the restrictions are lifted and we appreciate more deeply what we already had. It's good to be part of a community that I'm not preparing to leave.
As an adult TCK, it also feels pretty weird to be part of a community that I've been part of for almost 5 years and still have no immediate plans to leave. So much of my outlook on life has involved a willingness to put up with any minor annoyances knowing that in a few years, I'll be somewhere else and my little world will be completely different, with different annoyances. And since I'll just be moving anyway, I have learned to enjoy the good things without getting too deeply attached to them. And I try to warn people not to become too attached to me. I had started detaching over the past few months, and I'm not sure I'm going to be very good at re-attaching.
When I was 13 and my dad had been assigned to open the South African embassy in Jordan, the South African government wanted to check that I was unlikely to embarrass them by teenage antics inconsistent with our global image. At least, that's always been my assumption about the purpose of that barrage of psychological testing, required of me but not my younger brother. In addition to tests of academic aptitude (we don't want diplomats' kids looking stupid), I was required to write short stories inspired by each of several pictures.
One looked like a set up - a mean-looking guy concealing a gun by the bedside of an incapacitated elderly man. How do you tell a story about that picture that won't make you look like a psychopath? I decided our villain was actually giving the gun as a get-well gift, as unlikely as the image made it appear. I wondered how other diplomats' teens handled it.
But the story that the psychologist was most concerned about had to do with the least threatening image of all - an empty rowboat by the edge of a river. I created a narrative involving a runaway about my age, frustrated with school-related indignities, taking the rowboat and escaping down the river. I recall the psychologist explaining that one ought not to run away from one's problems, but ought instead to try to find a resolution. I listened politely. She might very well think that. She was not attending her eighth school in eight years. There might have been times in her life she had lived more than 3 years in one house. My experience told a different story - I just had to put up with wherever I was, and soon enough, I wouldn't need to resolve the problem. Life would be shoving me into my own rowboat in the not too distant future.
Looking back at that time, I realize I've always approached where I am with a "rowboat mentality." I'll enjoy the riverbank I happen to be on, make friends, put up with problems, and then leave them behind the next time life shoves me into the rowboat. It doesn't matter that I don't fully belong on a given riverbank - it's really the rowboat that's the constant. It's rather an odd feeling now, having expected the rowboat to approach and realizing that I'll be on the riverbank for a while longer.
Ari still plans to apply for mainland jobs to start in the fall of 2021. There's no guarantee that there will be any available, or that he'll get any - we might actually be in Hawaii for quite a while longer. And I'm not sure what I'm going to do with being on a riverbank I rather like, with the mirage of a rowboat on the horizon that may or may not ever materialize.
1 comment:
We were wondering what the status of your move/job apps were. Janine W and I are still rooting for you moving north, like us :)
Joel and I were actually discussing coming to visit you this summer as he was supposed to have a conference in HI... before Covid-19 struck. Well, we'll see how next year goes, right?
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