Change In Plans

Lyme, New Hampshire

Greetings from New York!

The days and weeks are flying by.  India and the kids returned from Nashville just before Memorial Day, and we have been sort of jammed into this small one-bedroom in SoHo together.  

On Memorial Day weekend we were up in the Catskills, which was great.  The kids spent hours catching (and releasing) frogs at our pond, and at the little pond by the Inn.  They had camp on Saturday and Sunday, and Zola had a sleepover with his friends Wyatt and Charlie.  We saw lots of our summer friends, and regaled them with stories from our trip around the world.  The average enquirer probably got a lot more detail than he or she wanted.  Summer will be fun.

Last Thursday, India and the kids drove up to my Mom’s and stepfather’s house in New Hampshire.  I flew and drove up on Friday evening, and we had a very nice weekend together.  Mom and Steve organized a family reunion on Saturday evening.  We had had a similar gathering in New Hampshire just before we left, so the events seemed sort of like bookends on the trip.  India and I had a chance to talk to Mom and Steve for a long time on Sunday, and they asked a lot of second-order and third-order questions about the trip that we had never really thought about before.  The trip was a rich experience, and it was fun for us to think about it and discuss it.

While they are in New York, India is trying hard to organize one major event each day.  If she didn’t do this, I think all of them would really feel aimless and out of sorts.

On Monday, they went to the war museum on the aircraft carrier Intrepid.  None of us had been since the boat/museum was totally renovated a few years ago.  Zola came back with stories of kamikaze attacks, flight simulators, and radar invisibility.  He continues to be enthralled by war and all of its trappings.  He and Tallulah bought a small collection of metal fighter planes, which have been underfoot constantly since they brought them home.

On Tuesday they all went to the Statue of Liberty.  Tallulah thought this was just fantastic.  Tuesday night she told me in  detail about the statue’s flip-flops, about the boat ride, and about the museum.  She insisted on calling the statue “Lady Liberty.”  Zola was mostly interested in the amount of security they had on the island, including a bomb sniffing machine.

This evening we went to see the play Mary Poppins on Broadway.  As you would expect, the singing and dancing and the sets were spectacular.  It is a thoroughly professional production, and fun for all of us.  India and I appreciated intellectually how difficult it is to sing and dance so well.  For Zola and Tallulah (particularly), it was all just magic.  At the very end, when Mary Poppins flies out over the audience and into the balcony, I thought Lu might jump out of my lap and try to catch the actress’s skirt as she went by.  Lu was bursting with joy and wonder.

I had forgotten that the core plot line is the story of a repressed, workaholic father, who rediscovers his inner child through the interventions of Mary Poppins.  Sounds also like the plot of Pretty Woman

, actually.  At one point, as the father was acting gruff and telling the children he was too busy to say goodnight to them, Zola leaned over and said, “That was like you before we went on the trip, Dad.”  

We have talked a lot about this theme of how I used to be, and how I changed during our year away.  It was interesting to see Zola make that connection and tell me about it.  I’m not sure whether I am slipping back into that way of being.  The fact that I made it to dinner and a play with the family at 7pm on a Wednesday night is a positive leading indicator.

Mostly what we need at the moment is clarity and stability.  This is a difficult time, frankly, but we are doing our best to work through it.

Happy Birthday, Mom!

Greetings from New York!

This afternoon I was desperate to get a haircut.  The last time I got a trim was in Cape Town in January.  The last proper hair cut was from the traditional Turkish barber, outdoors on a ledge at the Cave Hotel, high above the rock formations of Cappadoccia.  That must have been September.

I went to a place across the street from the McKinsey office, where I have gone probably 25 times before.  It has faded from its former near glamour, and is now a little sad and run down.  They even took out the televisions that used to run continuous loops of fashion-show videos.

The woman who cut my hair was Eastern European.  She grimaced and pursed her lips as she did a slow examination of my head. 

She ran her fingers through my hair and said, “So you want  more highlights?  Highlights again?”

I explained, “Actually, I don’t have highlights.  My hair got a little blond on top because I was outside in the sun a lot for the last year.”

She didn’t say anything, but in any language, her expression said, “Yeah, right!  ‘Fess up, bottle boy!”

Regardless, she cut off most of the blond.  I felt a little nostalgic as I watched the hair fall to the floor.  I thought of sunny days in Australia, and in South Africa, and in Namibia.  I thought about skiing hatless in Switzerland, and surfing in New Zealand.  Blondes really do have more fun, I guess.

There will be more sunny days, more surfing, more skiing hatless.  In the meantime, back to brown, and back to work.

Greetings from New York!

India and I are experiencing a semblance of what our lives would be like if we had not chosen to have children.

Both kids are in Nashville, having a wonderful time with Gramae and Pop. The parade of chocolate cake, Bionicles, Cartoon Network, and cousin love continues.

India and I have been living in New York, sort of as if we were childless. We have been going out to dinner, seeing friends, living the high life. We saw the Black-Eyed Peas in concert last night.

This morning I left before 5 to go to Washington for the day (another shock to the system). India said she woke up completely alone for the first time in over a year. She went off for a 15-mile run with her friend, Sarah.

We miss Zola and Tallulah, but I’m not 100% sure they miss us yet. Soon enough, we will be together again.

Greetings from Nashville, and happy Mother’s Day!

We have had a fun, normal weekend as a family, together in Nashville. India and the kids had already been here for 10 days without me, before I arrived on Friday morning.

Friday was packed with activity.

As I walked up the concourse in the Nashville airport (while postponing a call scheduled to begin the moment I landed), I was very happy to see little Tallulah sprinting down toward me. Her blond hair was flying as she ran, and she leaped into my arms.

Zola followed a moment later, and nearly knocked me over. He has bulked up to 89 pounds during his time in Nashville, eating lots of cake and fried food.

India was slightly more restrained in greeting me, but we were all very happy to be embracing there in the corridor. Our team reunited.

We spent a couple of hours with our friend, Kim, who continues to recover from a kidney-pancreas transplant. She has been going through intensive daily treatment with a gamma-globulin derivative and corticosteroids. It appear to be working: her fevers have broken, and her pancreas is producing insulin again. She looks great, and seems to feel OK (ish).

It’s hard to imagine the medical odyssey that Kim has been on, while we have been on our geographic odyssey out in the world. It’s also hard to imagine that Zola, our baby boy, probably outweighs Kim by a little.

After lunch, we raced across Nashville, dropped the kids with Gramae and Pop, and went up to our local Department of Motor Vehicles. Somehow India and I had both let our driver’s licenses expire while we were traveling. This creates lots of problems.

Fortunately, it only took about 45 minutes to get new licenses on a Friday afternoon. As they say on the south island of New Zealand: “Bob’s your uncle.”

The next 36 hours was a blur of ice skating, Benihana-like Japanese dinner (the kids loved it), a torrential thunderstorm with hail, a long run, a kids’ scavenger hunt, a big roadside fun fair, a barbeque, another long run, church, a Mother’s Day picnic in a flooded park, and skateboard lessons for Zola.

I also spent several hours at the Verizon Wireless store, swapping out another dead BlackBerry. No tearful eulogy for that “hardly knew ye” one.

We have had fun, but mostly it has just been very normal and natural to be with India and with the kids.

Tonight, Zola cried for a while before he fell asleep. This is the first time he has cried in my presence in many months. He is sad because India and I are leaving early in the morning. She is coming up to New York for four days, as we try to make plans. He is bone tired too.

More broadly, though, I think Zola is feeling rootless, and slightly aimless, and definitely unstable. This seems reasonable, given our situation.

It made India and me sad to see him so upset. To a certain extent, we are accounting for the ragged reentry as part of the (psychic) cost of our adventure. It puts the onus on us to create a stable situation as soon as we can, which involves all four of us living together.

Being in Nashville, our home town now, after our travels, I was struck by the simplicity of two big questions that seem to get a lot of press coverage and punditry.

1- Why is GM losing so much share that it will file for bankrutcy? Because GM cars are almost all terrible: ugly, unreliable, and jammed with unwanted and annoying features. The pickups and SUVs are better, but the cars are just terrible.

2- Why are American health outcomes so terrible when we spend so much money on healthcare. The high cost comes from poorly aligned incentives: basically no one makes money keeping Americans healthy. The poor health comes from eating bad food, smoking, and not exercising.

It is good to be back with my family, and to have a shred of normalcy for a short while. Tomorrow morning we start with the abnormal again. /p>

Greetings from Soho, in New York City.

Last week, my BlackBerry cell phone basically stopped working all together. First, after many months of not rolling upward, the trackball in the center refused to roll downward as well. Then the device froze entirely, and apart from the sad side-to-side motion of the trackball, none of the keys or controls worked.

Like the owner of an incontinent pet, I knew it was time to say goodbye.

With heavy heart, I walked up to the Verizon store on West 57th Street. Raoul, in the service department, told me that the BlackBerry was still under warranty, and that he would replace it immediately, free of charge. This BlackBerry had come into my life on the day that we departed for Madrid; the beginning of the second leg of our world-round trip.

That day seemed like decades ago. How could a warranty last so long?

Raoul got a shiny new BlackBerry from a box, and hooked it to the right side of a desk-top terminal. He hooked my old, beaten BlackBerry to the left side of the terminal, and hit a switch. Raoul explained that the terminal would transfer all of my data from the old device to the new one, and that it would only take a few minutes.

As I watched my friend have its brains sucked out, I thought of everything we had been through together:

• Getting wet on the dinghy of the gulet boat in Turkey
• Being damp, frozen, crushed, and thoroughly sweat upon during the Haute Route ski trip (when half of the buttons stopped working, and then miraculously healed themselves)
• Listening to Zola speak to his friend Matthew, who was all the way back in New Jersey, as I swatted mosquitoes in a dusty tent in Rajasthan
Cleaning South African sand from the keys after it fell from a beach bag in Cape Town (and Namibian sand after dropping it in the dunes near Swakopmund)
• Cracking the screen by dropping it on the tile floor of the Hotel Agave in Positano

I thought of the countless mornings when I read the New York Times on-line, and the terrible days in October and November that I watched the financial world implode through the little screen.   I thought of the dozens of blog posts that I had tapped out with my hypertrophic thumbs in Morocco, and in Turkey, and in India, and in Australia.

I thought of the night in Namibia, 300 kilometers west of the South African border, where I walked up a huge hill in the moonlight, because I suspected (correctly) that I would get reception from the top.

This all seems a little pathetic. But while we traveled, I was clinging tenuously to my feelings of relevance, and connectedness, and of my very existence outside the small bubble of my untethered family. When I was in Switzerland, away from my India and the kids for the first time in months, I clung to them through garbled phone calls at the edges of frozen cliffs, standing on tiptoe in the cold wind to get a signal.

I clung to all of those important things through my cracked, worn out, barely functional, constant-companion BlackBerry.

As I took the new device, and thanked Raoul, he packed the old one away. Maybe it will be sent to a lab, where the RIM engineers will try to figure out why it stopped working after only 10 months. If they only knew.

Goodbye, old friend.

It is nice, though, to have a trackball that rolls upward again.

This short post is about my first week living alone in New York.  Please pardon the terrible pun in the title.

India and the kids spent Monday running around in the city. Tallulah’s friend, Clara, came in from New Jersey with her mom, and the little girls had a joyful reunion amidst princess dresses and crayons.   Zola remained aloof, reading a book and working on math.

On Monday afternoon, we all met in the East Village to visit a pre-school for Tallulah called “Blue Man Creativity Center.”   While we were traveling, we had read about the school, founded by members of Blue Man Group for their own children. Like everything in New York, admission has become very competitive, with artsy parents sending their kids from all over the city. Even though it is a school, the “Creativity Center” tag is symbolic of how they teach.

Somehow India crashed the admissions process, and got Tallulah an interview on the last day before admissions decisions were made. At BMCC we found ourselves in a kids’ paradise of paints, and electronics, and lights, and experiments. Tallulah and Zola both jumped into activities, while India and I met the director and staff, and tried our best to present ourselves well.

I’m not very cool under the best of circumstances. At the BMCC I felt conspicuously square and conventional. Fortunately, the people were all very welcoming and gracious, and pretended not to notice how unhip I am. More important, Tallulah and Zola were in top form, happy and sweet and playing well together.

On Monday evening, Zola and I went for a walk. He let me put my arm around him while we walked, even when we passed a group of girls his age. I think he was sad that we would be spending time apart.

Early on Tuesday morning, India and the kids were up early, and gone to Nashville. The “living alone” part of living alone had started. It was difficult to say goodbye.

The rest of the week passed quickly and strangely. I got a glimpse of what my life would be like without India and without kids. I would not like it.

I had fun seeing friends, and going out for dinner. But I missed the noise and the activity and the closeness of having all three of them near me. I can barely recall the many, many weeknights I spent away from them in the months and years prior to our trip.

On Friday night I drove up to the Catskills alone, and spent the night in our cabin in the Beaverkill.  This is the only place which is truly ours. All day Saturday I did normal Beaverkill family activities: riding bikes, clearing fallen trees, swimming, getting ice cream. The strange part was … no family.

On Saturday night I drove back down to the city and went to a friend’s engagement party. Aside from phone calls with my family, I had more conversation in 10 minutes at the party than I had had in the previous 24 hours. The solitary life would not exactly suit me.

This time will pass, in fragments and chunks. I will go to Nashville, and India will come back with me. We will all be together for the long Memorial Day weekend, and then they will be with me for some time after that. Still, this is not what we are used to, and not fun for any of us.

A final note: on Friday afternoon the Blue Man Creativity Center e-mailed us, accepting Tallulah to the half-day program for four year olds, starting in August.  We are delighted and excited.

Greetings from Bonita Beach, on Florida’s Gulf Coast.

We have spent a very fun weekend at my step-mother’s new home, halfway between Ft. Myers and Naples. As I hoped, all four of us quickly slipped back into the rhythms and routines (as they are) of family travel. It was easy to forget that the world-round trip is over, and that we have started the next chapter of our life as a family.

India and the kids flew down early on Thursday morning, and had pretty much two full days with Grandma Judi before I arrived late on Friday night. They went to the beach, swam in the pool, cooked semi-elaborate outdoor meals, had picnics, and just enjoyes being together.

Grandma Judi is girly (for a grandmother), and she and Tallulah are bonded at the hip whenever we visit. They gardened, took care of the kitty, admired each other’s clothes and shoes, and prepared small, pretty dishes. Tallulah literally dances around the kitchen as they talk.

Zola greatly enjoyed his time talking with Judi’s friend Larry: telling stories from our trip, and being the big man in an adult conversation. Larry indulged him with thoughtful questions, and rapt attention.

India relished the short break from her continuous, world-round responsibilities for keeping us all together and moving forward. She wrote me an e-mail on Friday afternoon, as she sat next to the pool, reading in the sunshine: “I can’t stop falling asleep. What do you think is wrong with me?” I’m not a doctor, but my guess was that she was tired. She still managed four long runs in four days, including one on Saturday where she dragged my sorry, out-of-shape self along. By Sunday morning, of course, she had reverted to form, and had gotten us all packed, cleaned, fed, and out the door in time for the plane. She had even printed our boarding passes.

Judi is a very accomplished sailor and sailing instructor. It was one of the great passions she shared with my father.

Late on Saturday morning, we rigged two Sunfish at her sailing club, and headed out into Estero Bay. We had planned to go in the afternoon, but the weather forecast indicated that the wind was going to strengthen to 20 knots; too strong for us to really sail safely.

Judi started by giving Zola a lesson in one boat, while India, Lu and I just cruised around in the other.

I am a barely competent sailor (sorry, Dad), but as we set out, the winds were mild and the water was pretty flat. India and Tallulah were good sports as we bashed around the shallow water of the bay. After about 20 minutes of sailing downwind (ie, away from shore), we spent the next 40 minutes tacking back. I think they enjoyed the first 20 minutes.

Judi had to come to my rescue with some expert advice, as I pinned my boat against the leaves and branches of a mangrove island. I ended up jumping in the water, and pulling the boat away from the island and pointing it into the (suddenly much stronger) wind. I opened a long cut on my right foot, stepping on the sharp mangrove roots.

When we finally got back to the dock (I dropped sail and paddled the last 30 meters), India and Lu decided to pursue shore-based activities.

Judi sailed off on her own, flying across the water like a sea-borne sprite. Zola and I went out together, enjoying some totally quality father-son time.

Unwisely, I let Zola take the helm as we sped downwind. After about three minutes of smooth sailing, Zola turned the boat and his body weight to starboard, the same side that the sail and I were already on. Zola and I were both hurled through the air and into the water, and the boat immediately capsized.

Realizing that the water was warm, that his life jacket was keeping him afloat, and that I was already wrapping my arms around him, Zola shouted, “That was awesome!”

To tell the truth, I wasn’t too sure it was awesome, until I realized I could stand in the chest-deep water, and I had double-checked my pocket to be sure that my BlackBerry was, in fact, still safely on shore.

Then we laughed. Judi once again sailed to our rescue with expert instruction on righting the boat and getting back in. If there is a heaven, I hope my father was watching us, and laughing so hard that he fell on the floor, or on a cloud, or whatever.

Zola and I dried in the wind and sun, only to get redrenched by sea spray as we tacked, and tacked, and tacked our way back to shore. Our promised 45 minutes had somehow become two hours, but India just laughed at us, and took pictures of our bedraggled return.

We were sad to leave Judi’s this morning. She and Larry had only heard about 5% of our travel stories. Larry graciously, but firmly, encouraged us to write a book, and to travel for as long as we can. As always, they were both terrific, fun, interesting company.

Zola and Tallulah are looking forward to weeks of similar pampering with their other two grandmothers, as part of their triumphant return-home tour.

India and I are looking forward to settling down for a couple of days in New York, before she and the kids go to Nashville.

India, with help from super-broker Linda Maloney, found us a terific NY apartment. I signed a lease and moved our bags in on Friday morning.

It feels as though the most ragged part of our re-entry is coming to an end. Now we are gearing up for the difficult and unwelcome period of not being together all of the time.

India already has the calendar and the latest Travel and Leisure magazine out again, plotting socially responsible trips to exotic destinations. The adventure continues.

Greetings from Gramercy Park, New York!

It has been an intense few days since we returned.  After being at work for three days, the shock to the system has receded a bit.  It has been fun to feel the frontal lobe of my brain coming back to life.  I can practically hear the machinery creaking as I try to multiply 7 x 5, or remember the details of some pharmaceutical product.

The kids have had a great time, hooking up with friends, playing in the playgrounds, shopping.  Both of them became feral during our time away.  Maybe these are the consequences of too little peer interaction.  

Tallulah is frequently taking off her shoes, and walking barefoot on the sidewalks of New York.  India says that passing mothers see our shoeless child, and give a look of horror, followed by a look of “I am calling social services.”  

Zola has gone to the other extreme, maybe compensating for his Antipodean wildness.  He got a haircut, and has been acting very polite and mature.  ”Can I get the door for you?”  ”That dress looks very nice on you, ma’am.”  ”I love you Mom.  You too, Dad.”  Very sweet, but not clear what he is up to yet.

India found me a suitable apartment today, way downtown.  Apparently it is big enough that all four of us can stay there in comfort when they are in New York.  It is strange to contemplate not having my family in my life every day for a while.  I am going from 24/7 family time to something considerably less than that.

Each night, India and I have talked for a few hours after the kids have fallen asleep.  We wonder what the next period will be like, and how we will get through it.  My guess is that the time will fly by.  Before we know it, we will be together again.  

The reentry has definitely been ragged.  By starting work immediately, I have inconvenienced my wife greatly (again).  

Tomorrow morning India and the kids are flying to Florida to see my step-mother.  We spent the evening packing our bags, which somehow exploded in our hotel room.

I will follow them to Florida on Friday evening.  If we squint, I think the weekend will feel like the world-round trip again.  On Sunday we come back, and on Tuesday morning they all go to Nashville for a few weeks.  The adventure continues.

Greetings from New York, New York, the city so great they had to name it twice.

We left Russell, New Zealand about 30 hours ago. On our last morning, we had a family walk on Long Beach, then Zola and I went for a swim in the Pacific. We drove back to the house, packed up, and 30 minutes later we were on the road to Auckland.

Everyone slept on the Auckland to LA flight. It was a little bumpy, but India was admirably brave (pretty much). In LA, we said another goodbye to our friend Ginny -who had flown from Auckland with us. She was off to Dallas and then Raleigh/Durham. We barely had enough time in the layover to buy a newspaper and snacks for the kids, and we were off to New York.

Both LAX and JFK are better than they used to be, but still pretty ratty relative to almost every major airport we have seen (except for Kathmandu). Not sure how the richest country in the world has fallen so far behind.

Bad planning and time constraints when we departed in October meant that we left my car in long-term parking at JFK (instead of selling it, garaging it, etc.). At least we weren’t so jammed that we left it in short-term.

Over the last few weeks, India and I have channeled some of our anxieties into “what if” concerns about the car. What if it has been towed? Or stolen? Or crashed into? What if we simply can’t find it?

What if the car doesn’t start? Stupidly, I did not disconnect the battery. What if the police have to jump start it, and the registration or inspection is expired, and I get arrested? What if the parking fee is more than the daily limit our credit cards will approve, and we have to come back three days in a row? Plenty of worst-case scenarios.

In the end, we found the car easily, and it did not start. Parking-lot security called for assistance, a guy with very long jumper cables showed up a few minutes later, and a few minutes after that, we were on our way. A lot of wasted anxiety.

The parking fee was steep -the two ladies in the booth laughed and high-fived each other- but in line with expectations. We gritted our teeth, thought about the frequent flyer miles, and were relieved when the transaction was approved.

On the drive in from the airport, Zola kept looking around and saying, “This isn’t the New York I remember.” We kept explaining that we were in Queens. When we came through the Mid-Town Tunnel, he said, “Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about.”

Lower Manhattan on a Friday night seems little changed in the last year. Crowds of people in the streets, a very festive atmosphere. I wasn’t expecting a scene out of “The Grapes of Wrath,” but on the surface it is hard to tell that the economy is in the tank, and that the financial world lies in ruins. Maybe we will see it tomorrow.

I hope everyone can sleep. It is good to be home.

Greetings from Gramercy Park, New York!

Our reentry to the U.S., and the ragged end of our traveling ways, has been fun. It has also been much rockier and more thought provoking than we had expected.

At least for the weekend, it felt a lot like an extension of the world-round trip. We are living in a nice hotel (hey, that feels familiar), and we are running around in a big city.

It happens to be our ‘home’ city, and the running around has mostly been reconnecting with friends: a sleepover for Zola, a genteel roof-top cocktail party in Harlem followed by a raucous dinner party on the Upper West Side.

On Sunday, we also dashed up to our house in the Catskills to do laundry, shed baggage, and assess the damage from the winter. Both kids were so happy to be truly in a place of their own that it was hard for us to leave again.

Still, if I squinted, until Monday morning it felt like the world-round trip.

This morning, though, I had my first day back at work. It was pleasant and felt natural to go back to the New York offices of the Firm where I worked for ten years. I saw dozens of people I knew, and felt very much at home. The work will be challenging and interesting.

Still, it was strange to not be with India and the kids. They had a full day together, running around in the cold New York rain. We met for dinner early at the apartment of old and dear friends, so I was not separated from them for all that long.

Even if I squint, though, it doesn’t feel like a world-round trip anymore.

Because we have re-entered a world we know in the middle of the school year, in the middle of the month, all around us we see stability and routine. Our own instability and rootlessness feels highlighted by contrast. I am definitely feeling uncomfortable with this much ambiguity and. turbulence.

This is one of the consequences of adventure, I think. We will settle down some, rent a place for me to live, and create some greater sense of stability. India and the kids will go to Nashville for a while, and I will join them as much as I can.

We knew that the reentry would be ragged. We need to hold each other closely and get through it.