The In-Between

We are entering a season of In-Between.

People ask me if I’m ready to leave Kosovo, for my time here to end. My answer confuses even me: “I’d be happy to stay in Kosovo for another year. I like it here. But we aren’t staying; we’re leaving. So I’m ready to go. I’m tired of preparing to leave; I just want to leave already.”

I’m tired of preparing to leave. I’m tired of not knowing if this is the last time I’ll see this particular friend or visit this particular restaurant. I’m tired of hearing of newcomers arriving and shrugging my shoulders and saying, “If they need anything, I’m happy to help—but they’ll be better off hanging out and making friends with people who don’t have one foot on the plane.” My body and my stuff are still here, but my heart is in the process of disconnecting and my head is already gone. I am no longer fully here but not yet fully gone. I’m In-Between.

In roughly three weeks, this part of the In-Between will be over, and we’ll move into the next phase. We’ll be done with the mental preparation and on to the real, tangible sign of our impending move: packout. Our stuff will disappear into boxes and crates. We’ll have one week of living in our house that is no longer our home, with no pictures on the wall, no beloved treasures to remind us of past homes or adventures, no imprint of our family on this house. Alexa will play only with the five toys we allow her to take in her suitcase, I will cook only with borrowed pots and pans, and we will eat only off borrowed dishes. I’m glad we’ll have only one week of that this time—the time after packout is by far my least favorite time at any post. The empty house is not a symbol of possibility and anticipation like it is at the beginning of our time at post; instead, it’s a symbol of endings and loss. After the end, but before the beginning: the In-Between.

Then we’ll be in the most easily recognized In-Between: in between posts. No longer living in Kosovo, not yet living in Greece, just visiting in the United States. Wanderers who can answer the question “Where are you staying?” but not “Where do you live?” Don’t get me wrong; it should be a good summer. We have plans about which we’re excited—attending our first homeschool convention, going on a cruise with friends, renting a townhouse not far from our extended family. It will be a good summer. It’s probably the part of the In-Between that we’ll enjoy most. But it will be a summer of cramming in as much America, as much family, as much time with friends as we can, because it won’t last. It’s only In-Between.

The final stages of the In-Between will be in Greece. Hopefully they’ll be in our “permanent” housing (as much as any housing is permanent in this nomadic lifestyle), though they may be in temporary housing if our assigned quarters aren’t available yet. We’ll be back in an empty house, but this time, the emptiness will be waiting to be filled rather than waiting to be abandoned. We’ll start learning our new neighborhood, our new community, our new language. Eventually the boxes and crates will arrive and be unpacked. Our new house will become our new home. The In-Between will end, at least for a while, and we’ll be home again.

The Ending that is becoming the In-Between will lead to the new Beginning, which eventually will transition into another Ending.

It's a common experience. We all go through changes that include Endings, In-Betweens, and finally, new Beginnings. During these bittersweet times, we mourn the old and anticipate the new. Everyone experiences it as they make life's great transitions: from child to adult, from student to worker, single to married, childless to parent, worker to retiree.

The Foreign Service lifestyle, however, puts this rhythm on an endless loop and hits the fast-forward button. One of the great sacrifices of the Foreign Service lifestyle is the frequent mourning as we say goodbye; one of the great beauties is the frequent anticipation of new adventures, new experiences, and new friends. The In-Between is the transition between and intermingling of the two. Because the Endings and Beginnings happen so frequently in the Foreign Service, sometimes it seems that we live perpetually in the In-Between, that we just barely make it out of the Beginning before the End is back, and so the only part we experience fully is the In-Between. We don't have time to settle, to live, to abide in the comfort—or in the tedium—that we establish during the Beginning, because it so quickly becomes time to dismantle it all for the Ending. Life never becomes routine, at least not for long.

It's perfect for those who crave variety. It's difficult for those who crave stability. I am one of those who craves stability—but at the same time, I also love the adventure and variety of this lifestyle. I am beginning to recognize that I need to satisfy my need for stability not in long periods of time in one place, settled in and comfortable, but in the predictable pattern, the rhythm, the ebb and flow of hellos and goodbyes: the In-Between. 

I need to accept that I live, always, in the In-Between. It is my home, as much as any house ever will be. I need to put pictures on its walls, carpets on its floors, and memory-keepers on its shelves. At times it's more noticeable than at others, but the In-Between is always there. I need to create my stability in routines and traditions that hold up well in all the phases of transition—in the Ending, in the Beginning, and in the In-Between: Friday night pizza, daily devotions with my daughter, evening cups of tea. We need to take the advice I've seen on several expat blogs and create traditions around the Endings and the Beginnings, traditions that create stability, no matter if we're in Egypt or Cambodia or Kosovo or Greece.

I was wrong. The In-Between is not a season we're entering: it's the life we live.

Welcome to the In-Between.

Catching Up

We are almost 5 months into 2015 now … and I haven’t written a single blog post this year. Pathetic, I know. Rather than explaining and justifying and apologizing, let’s just catch up, shall we?

January started off with a bang—we’re in Kosovo: the New Year is celebrated with countless not-so-mini family fireworks displays. I continued enjoying our last true winter for the next few years, while Jeff continued looking forward to its end. (I can’t blame him; he has to drive in the snow and ice, whereas I stay home and enjoy the winter wonderland.)

Toward the end of January, we finally made it out to Gadime Cave, not too far from Prishtina. The Community Liaison Office organized a trip. We decided not to go with the large group—caves plus large groups equals lots of echoing noise, which would not be a great introduction to caves for our sensitive girl—but we did take advantage of the reservation to go a little early with a smaller group. It can be difficult at times to know when the cave will be open, so this opportunity was not to be missed. It was a great morning! The caves were much larger than we anticipated, and Alexa loved exploring them. She didn’t even notice that she also was learning, as she asked question after question about the cave, its features, and the life it contains. I found myself wishing I had an age-appropriate book about caves that we could have read before or after the trip. I’m hoping to correct that oversight and then find another fun cave to explore with her within the next few months.

We spent most of February in the United States. We traveled to Washington, DC, for some appointments and to see some friends. Unfortunately, we only saw about half of the friends we wanted to see—as we landed, my ears grew pillows where my ear drums should be; the next morning, my ears were better but my sinuses were awful, and it only got worse from there. I became so congested that my entire face hurt, even my teeth! After a week, I gave in and went to an urgent care doctor, because I was afraid of what would happen if I flew again 10 days later without treatment. I was diagnosed with a sinus infection and a double ear infection. The antibiotics started helping immediately, so I felt much better for the rest of the trip, but we’d already missed out on visits with a few friends. We hope to see those friends this summer instead.

We arrived back in Kosovo on schedule in late February, but a week later, Alexa and I were back on a plane. There was a medical situation back home with a close family member, and my help was needed. Jeff was needed at work, especially since he’d just returned, so he remained in Kosovo. I am thankful that the medical situation was not as bad as it easily could have been, and my family member seems to have made almost a full recovery. Alexa and I spent our time in the United States helping with everyday tasks and transportation, but we also were able to do fun “America” things like celebrate my sister-in-law’s RN pinning, go to my niece’s football soccer games, and entertain random passersby with Alexa’s TCK questions and comments (for example, “Does everybody in America know the name of that store is Wal-Mart?” and “Why is there more than one McDonald’s?”). We returned to Kosovo just after Jeff’s birthday, at the end of March.

After our second return to Kosovo this year, I realized just how close we are to the end of our time here. I spent a few days getting over jet lag, then dove in and finally started preparing for packout. So far, we’ve rid ourselves of almost all of Alexa’s baby clothes, most of our “we severely overestimated how much Kleenex we’d use” consumables, and several bags of my ill-fitting or unflattering clothes. We’ve sold the elliptical machine for which we expect to have no room in Greece, and we’ve made arrangements to sell our second vehicle once we can get the paperwork in order. I’ve organized several full drawers of small items into labelled gallon-sized Ziploc bags. Now I need to start focusing heavily on my list-making, which has been sadly neglected due to all the travel earlier this year. We’re leaving in less than a month, and I’ve never been so far behind on my preparations.

At some point during and between all these other activities, we completed the Sonlight P4/5 preK curriculum. We ended up dropping a couple of workbooks that were too advanced for Alexa at the time, and there’s still one book in which she has shown no interest whatsoever. I left that book in South Carolina back in March, assuming we could try it again this summer and see if she’s interested then. She’s still working through her Mathematical Reasoning workbook, which she does not do every day—but when she does do it, she wants to keep going and often does 10 or more pages! That is quite the change from when I required her to do it daily, when she resisted and often did no more than 2 pages. We intend to continue working through this book over the summer until it’s done, as well as continuing to “play” Reading Eggs and Math Seeds. I’ll have to do another post about our plans for homeschool next year, as I never finished that series, and we’ve changed our plans for language arts. 

That’s for another time, though.

Right now I have some lists to make.

A Simple Christmas

Am I the only one who often finds Christmas Day to be vastly different from the peaceful, joyful celebration of Christ and family promulgated by heartwarming family movies and rosy Facebook posts? As a child, my family’s annual celebration felt like what I saw on those movies. It had the feel of a Norman Rockwell painting—lots of gifts, a huge meal with the family gathered around the table, smiling faces. Maybe there was stress for my parents, but I never saw it. Christmas was perfect and full of magic.

As an adult, my experience with Christmas Day has been different. The first year that I did not go home to my parents’ (and later, after the divorce, my mother’s) house was the year that we moved to Egypt. It was just Jeff and me. It was a good Christmas, with lots of church activities, time with friends, and relaxation, but it was different from what I grew up experiencing. Jeff and I had bought gifts for each other, and we had gifts that we received by mail from family, but the morning gift tradition felt sparse after a history of bounty—my parents went a bit (a lot) overboard in gifts for us kids, and it was the first year in my memory that the tree had gifts for fewer than five people under it; in later years, it had been gifts for eight or nine people. The tree just didn’t look right to me with so few gifts under it, and the feel of a sparse Christmas was even greater since we’d only put decorations on the top half of the tree due to our two new kittens having entirely too much fun with the lower branches and any ornaments within their reach.

Our first Christmas tree in Egypt

 The meal that first Christmas on our own also was very different from what I’d experienced in the past. For the first time, I was responsible for preparing Christmas dinner. I had started learning to cook only after our move, so I had a scant six months’ experience, and the thought of preparing a full, traditional Christmas dinner was overwhelming. Jeff and I had talked about it and agreed that our Christmas dinner would be his favorite meal, one that was at about the limits of my cooking abilities at that time: meatloaf (using his mother’s recipe), baked macaroni and cheese (again using his mother’s recipe), green beans, carrots, and mashed potatoes. Even that meal was a stretch for me, though it turned out that we didn't eat it on Christmas day at all; we'd eaten a big breakfast and weren't that hungry, so we just ate pizza for Christmas dinner! It was a good Christmas, but I couldn't shake the feeling that it wasn't as perfect as it should have been ... even though I had no idea what a perfect Christmas would look like without a big family, a huge pile of presents, and enough food to feed an army.

The years went by. My cooking skills improved. Our family grew to include Alexa. Our cats became slightly less interested in the ornaments on the tree. By the time we had our first Christmas in Cambodia, I was ready to recreate my childhood Christmases for Alexa.

Or so I thought.

I carefully combed through Amazon’s website, looking for perfect gifts for my one-year-old. We put up and decorated the tree—again, only the top half of it, though, after the first lower-placed ornament was batted around the tile floor by one of the cats. I planned a full Christmas dinner, consisting of those traditional staples that graced the tables in all the movies and television shows, none of which I'd ever cooked before. I carefully planned out my cooking schedule, based on what time we wanted to eat dinner so that we could make it to a dessert party later that day. I was confident in my cooking skills and my planning ability. I hadn’t counted on the stress of cooking several new dishes in one day with the goal of having them all done, hot, perfect, and ready to eat at a specific time.

That day ended up being incredibly stressful, as I tried to enjoy watching Alexa open and play with her gifts (which still felt like not enough to me) while keeping one eye on the clock so I could start cooking on time. Then I spent the rest of the day in the kitchen, hurrying because I’d underestimated how long it would take to do certain tasks or stressing because the brand new recipe wasn’t turning out quite like I thought it should. By the time we sat down to eat, I was exhausted, grumpy, and all around not in a pleasant mood. And dinner didn’t even look or taste as impressive as I’d hoped. (Note, though, that my blog post from that year put a positive spin on everything! Christmas must be perfect, after all.)

Christmas dinner in Cambodia

 

Jeff told me later that he’d prefer we eat sandwiches and have me be relaxed and happy rather than attempt to have the Norman Rockwell Christmas dinner with me stressed out and grumpy. I had to agree.

The next year, we went to the States for Christmas. It was less stressful in some ways and more stressful in others—I didn’t have to cook, and I had my big family Christmas with the fully-trimmed tree and lots of presents under it, but we also had to juggle “doing Christmas” with several branches of the family, none of whom wanted to celebrate together. Our typical R&R stress of trying to coordinate with all the people we want to see, all the things we want to do, all the shopping we need to do, all the logistics of returning to post with everything we brought with us plus all the things we bought or were given—all of that stress was magnified because it was Christmas. Plus a reckless driver caused a car accident and broke my mother’s arm, resulting in a great deal of pain and an unexpected surgery for her. So it was good to be home for Christmas, but it was stressful, even aside from my mom’s accident and surgery. Not the joyful and relaxed holiday for which I longed.

This year, we decided to go simple. We bought a real tree—my first one ever. Alexa excitedly helped decorate it, which meant that it had ornaments all the way down to the bottom, and somehow the cats didn’t bother it this year … maybe because of the motion-detector-activated cans of compressed air Jeff set up around its base J . Most of the other Christmas decorations stayed in their storage bins. We bought Alexa one big gift—a dollhouse—and one small gift—a family to live in the dollhouse. (It came mostly furnished, and Alexa’s grandmothers finished filling it as part of their Christmas gifts to her.) We bought small gifts for each other. I planned a traditional, but simplified, Christmas dinner, which consisted only of dishes that I’ve cooked before: pre-cooked honey baked ham, candied carrots, green beans, Irish soda bread (as the commissary was out of crescent rolls, which Jeff prefers over any other bread in the world), pumpkin pie, and birthday cake for Jesus. We agreed that the whole day would be played by ear.

This year's tree and Alexa's dollhouse

We woke up when Alexa woke us. We had her wait for just a minute while Daddy got the camera ready, then went downstairs with her and allowed her to open her gifts. We had a surprise video call from Jeff’s mom at what turned out to be the perfect time, so she was able to see her granddaughter open the gifts she had sent … as well as the gift she’d sent for Jeff, since I wasn’t paying close enough attention and Lexa opened it before I noticed. We made sure to take pictures of Alexa opening her gifts so we could put them on Facebook for the givers to see. Other than one gift—a Play Doh set that would have been messy—we allowed her to open her toys completely (box and all) and play with them before moving on to the next. We made sure she knew who had given her each gift, as an exercise in gratitude.

After all the gifts had been opened, I made breakfast while Jeff and Alexa played with her new toys. We ate a leisurely meal, and then I started preparations for Christmas dinner. We had no set time when we wanted to eat, no place to go, no one coming over. I’d planned out in what order I’d cook everything so that things would be ready and at the right temperature at the same time, but it didn’t matter what time that turned out to be. There were no surprises and very little stress. When dinner was ready, we ate it, all of us content and relaxed and happy to be together. It was by far the most joyful, relaxed Christmas I’ve experienced as an adult.

Are there things that we “should” have done differently for Christmas Day this year? Yep, no doubt. Are there things that I’d like to do differently next year? Absolutely. For one, I want to incorporate the real meaning of Christmas into our family traditions in more ways than just having a birthday cake for Jesus. And I’d love to follow the more traditional church calendar with a season dedicated to Advent (which I did to some degree this year, but not as deeply as I’d like) and a 12-day season dedicated to Christmas, rather than just one day. These are things I’ll think about and discuss with Jeff and plan for next year. But overall, I’m very happy with the way things went this year.

We found the Christmas playbook that works for our family: Keep it simple and relaxed. Don’t try to make it television- or Pinterest- or even Facebook-worthy. Recognize that my family now is different from my family of origin, and it is not necessary or even desirable to recreate my childhood Christmases. Allow for flexibility throughout the day, and remember the most important thing—Christmas is about love, not perfection.

Our Lives in Ornaments: 2013 Edition

In my last post, I described the many wonderful entries into this year’s Ornie Competition, leaving out only the three that belong to Jeff, Alexa, and myself. As the blog owner and author, I decided to reserve a post just for ours.

In the past, I have picked out Alexa’s ornament entirely on my own. Because I view these ornaments as memory keepers—visual reminders of the key themes and events of our lives, holding the memories and bringing them back to us each year—I didn’t want hers to be a childish “I like cats so mine is a cat!” theme when there have been more pervasive and meaningful currents running through the year. This year, however, I knew that she is old enough to have a preference, and she deserves to have her voice heard when it comes to the ornament that does, after all, represent her year. At the same time, though, I knew that we never would pick one for her—and if we did, it would be of the “I like cats!” variety—if I simply sat her down in front of a computer screen showing all of this year’s Hallmark ornaments and had her pick her own.

My compromise for her this year was that I picked two themes. Then I picked two ornaments, one for each theme. Then she picked the one she wanted from those two. The ornament that she rejected was a Noah’s ark ornament, complete with animals walking up the gangplank. In my mind, this ornament represented a couple of things—her love of all kinds of animals and the focus we’ve had this year on teaching the Bible as Truth, different from the other stories we read. It also represents both of our homeschool curricula, as Little Hands to Heaven has a week-long unit dedicated to Noah and the b-b-boat, and Sonlight P3/4 includes a Noah’s Ark graphic novel-style book.

(c) Hallmark. The ornament Alexa didn't choose.

The ornament that Alexa chose is a more specific representation of the beginning of her “formal” (to the extent that our homeschool is formal, which it isn’t) education. Her ornament shows a Mama Snowman … er, Snowwoman … holding a Baby Snowman … Snowbaby? … on her lap while reading to her. This scene represents the feel of our homeschool, though in our case, it’s more often that we’re lying on the carpet together while reading, rather than sitting in laps. And just like in our family, there’s a little cat sitting beside the reading pair. Oh, and do you want to know why Alexa chose this ornament instead of the Noah’s ark one, which I expected her to want because of all the animals? It’s because this ornament had a cat, and the Noah’s ark one didn’t—so Alexa got her “I like cats!” ornament after all. It paid off for her, too; she was the winner of this year’s Ornie Competition.

Alexa's 2013 ornament: Reading is "Snow" Much Fun!

Jeff’s and my ornaments appear very different from each other, but their themes are so similar that I will describe them together, at least at first.

This year was an odd combination of peace and chaotic stress for Jeff and me. It started out a little stressful, but nothing unusual or worrisome—we were in the throes of preparing for our third intercontinental move. Upon our arrival here in Kosovo, we settled in more quickly than we ever imagined we could. We made friends. We felt at home. It was amazing how peaceful our lives seemed.

Then, things began happening in each of “our” countries. The Egyptian army ousted President Morsi, who had been elected democratically but who was ruling dictatorially. The Muslim Brotherhood refused to go quietly, set up massive protest camps, and began attacking Egyptian Christians and their property. The Embassy of the United States underwent another mandatory evacuation, affecting friends of ours. In Cambodia, election results were disputed, protests—intended to be peaceful—broke out, and the possibility of violence loomed large. I received messages from friends there asking about how the American embassy would assist in case a mass evacuation of American citizens became advisable.

In the United States, continued leaks from a traitor damaged Americans’ perceptions of the intelligence agencies whose mission is to protect them, endangered those agencies’ ability to fulfill that mission, and caused a diplomatic furor that affects all Americans abroad, not just diplomats and their families. A political standoff resulted in a government shutdown, and the vitriol directed against federal workers—who did not in any way cause the shutdown; that was the politicians—was even more strident and widespread than I imagined it could be.

And, finally, here in Kosovo, in this place where the vast majority of the local population loves America and Americans; in this place where we met a young Kosovar man who joined the United States Marines out of a sense of gratitude to our country, who served honorably, and who even renounced his Kosovan citizenship in favor of American citizenship because it was asked of him in order to increase the ways in which he could serve; in this home where we felt (and still feel) such a sense of peace—here in Kosovo, two young American women were viciously attacked because they were here as missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS; known to most Americans as Mormons). In the aftermath of that attack, I became aware that Islamist extremism is on the rise here, and this place, though peaceful, is not as peaceful as I had assumed.

Deborah's 2013 ornament: A Wish For Peace

My ornament for 2013 reflects the turmoil that our countries have experienced this year and the hope and wish that I have for them—for all four of them. My ornament is an amber dove, inscribed with the words “one hope … one wish … peace.” It is the heart cry of a mother, a wife, and a friend.

Jeff’s ornament this year is in honor of those who work to make my wish reality. It is no secret that we are political conservatives, and that there are plenty of federal jobs that we believe should not be federal jobs. But there are many federal workers who work quietly, in the background, for the same or even less pay than they could earn in the private sector, and their goals are to provide for the security of the United States of America, to protect her people from threats of which we may not even be aware. These federal workers—all federal workers—were demonized this year by people who don’t understand what they do or why they do it, but who would be severely and negatively impacted if they were to stop doing it. It seems only appropriate to me that Jeff’s 2013 ornament is a figure of Batman, swooping down to save the day, in a move that would be characteristic of him even during the events of the movies The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises, when he was demonized by the people of Gotham City, on whose behalf he never stopped fighting. Likewise, many of our federal workers did not stop working—did not stop fighting—even during the shutdown, when they were being vilified and when they didn’t even know if or when they would be paid. Like Batman, they continued to protect us from threats, our blissful ignorance of which allowed us the luxury of demanding that they stop.

Jeff's 2013 ornament: Descending Upon Gotham City

A child’s pleasure in learning, in reading, and above all, in cats. A woman’s wish for peace. And a man’s determination to keep fighting the good fight no matter what others think. Those are the things for which 2013 will be remembered in our family.