Change In Plans

Greetings from Nashville!

Within a day, both kids both mentioned that everything in the U.S. is big: the cars, the roads, the plates of food, and the people. Big, big, big. Aside from that, they are purely happy to be in the warm embrace of grandparents and cousins and familiarity. Six months in South Africa, and the heartland feels foreign, but they like it.

For India and me, being here stimulates a more complicated set of emotions. We are happy to be with India’s family, and happy to see our kids so happy. That’s straightforward. We both feel a little guilty for living so far away, and for not participating actively in our families’ lives. We haven’t made it up to see my Mom (who just had her hip replaced) and step-father, but I feel sad to not be be closer to them. And I feel sad that the kids aren’t closer to any of their extended family.

On a personal/professional front, being here makes me keenly aware of how much time has passed since we had a stable and forward-moving existence.

For two years we have had a vagabond existence: moving, experiencing, repositioning, growing. It’s been fun, but many months ago, I reached the limit on my capacity for uncertainty and change. I have wanted nothing more than to be stable, working full time, making progress toward longer-term objectives. Cleaning out boxes of work papers and financial records in my in-laws’ garage brought this need to work to an emotional boil. The rest of the world has long since moved on, and I need to climb back on to it. Soon enough, I hope.

For India, being here reminds her of who she grew up wanting to be. She wanted to explore the world, live in the outdoors, know interesting people. She is happy that she has shaped her adult life in line with those dreams, but even she is feeling a need to stabilize and get embedded in longer-term relationships and objectives.

This all reads a little more angsty than I actually feel. We are happy to be here, and we treasure our family and friends. The next few weeks, in New York and at my Mom’s, will be fun and will refresh a lot of important relationships in our lives.

There are opportunity costs in all choices: if we live there we can’t also be living here, if I stop working and spend time with my family, have to accept that I have lost momentum, stature, etc. Generally I am good at ignoring opportunity costs, but being here confronts us with them directly.

When we go back to South Africa in mid-July, though, I think we will be good and ready to really start living there.