Actually going home

It's been nearly three weeks since we landed in the US and things, as you can imagine, have been hectic with relocation. I wrote this little ditty while I was on the plane over. Yikes.

My body is shaking. Hands are shaky, the insides are shaky, and my breathing is far too shallow. My body is beginning to betray the anxiety. That and the coffee I had on an empty stomach this morning was not a good idea. Breakfast is usually served on Qantas morning flights, but this time it was just a cookie. It’s 1:30pm and that’s the only fuel this body has had so far. 

I’m sitting on an Air Canada flight from Sydney to Vancouver after a morning flight from Melbourne to Sydney and I’m slightly freaking out. We’ve talked about this for ages—moving to Seattle, going back to the US. But talking about something and actually doing it are completely different things. Despite the years of knowing this was in the future, nothing has prepared me for this moment. The moment the plane took off from Sydney, knowing it’s the last time I’ll be in Australia for quite some time. Looking out the window for our apartment in Balmain—that’s no longer our apartment—and not getting to say that last goodbye, to see that last bit of what has been my home for the last four years, because the clouds got in the way. This is so much harder than I thought it would be. 

Australia has been home now for five years. Five years. Despite my whinging and constant criticism, I’ve become accustomed to our life there. While Seattle is still home in my heart, the thought of building up a life again is scary. We have no place of our own. We’ll be bouncing from sister’s house to friends’ houses for the foreseeable future. We have no car. One of the first orders of business will be to acquire our own mode of transportation. Even before that, we have no phone number! That’s a place on my resume that’s currently highlighted, waiting to be updated. No jobs, of course. We are actually building our life from scratch.  

Yes, there are some suitcases of winter clothes at my sister’s house waiting for us. (Which were left there two years ago when we thought we’d only be another six months in Australia. Two years later…) There are also the boxes of souvenirs we sent home during our travels. And of course, not to be forgotten, our artwork and a few bags of our most important possessions that are at our Balmain neighbor’s dad’s house in Portland. The Angels they truly are, and we are blessed to have those wonderful people in our lives both in Australia and in the US.

That’s not an insubstantial pile from which we’ll start building our US home. Things from our Australia home, things from our many trips abroad. And at the heart of us, that’s our life. Our life has been spent all over the world, which is something I need to remember. Our life together, that life of Marcus and me, it started nearly six years ago. In South America. It started in Argentina, continued in Brazil, then went back to Argentina and maintained itself between Australia and Argentina, Bolivia and Peru. It picked up again back in the US, our typical Portland and Seattle. Then it was stretched between the US and Australia. Then finally, it was able to have stability, years of constancy and the ability to grow, in Australia. Since then we’ve traveled a lot. All over Australia as well as Fiji, New Zealand, Korea, southern Africa, Japan, back to South America then Antarctica, Europe, southeast Asia. We’ve gone around the world and those experiences have imprinted on us and changed us. Life is fluid, things are never certain, and we’re lucky to have our freedom, our privilege and the amount of control we have over our lives. In that sense, the move isn’t that huge. It’s a new start, but it’s also just a continuation of our lives. We have our history, education, and experience behind us. We’re not going into this blind. We know there are challenges to be surmounted before life is deemed comfortable once again. But we also know that most people have familiarity. They don’t move, they don’t embrace uncertainty and novelty in quite the same we do.  

And maybe it’s time for me to change back to “I” because I can’t speak for Marcus. I know that I’m capable of having a good, decently-paying job that allows me to lead the life I want to lead. It allows certain comforts, though I also know I don’t live beyond my means. Although my savings are slowly depleting, I’ll reach and surpass the level they were at before we embarked on this journey. I’m financially prepared for this. The biggest challenge is that thing I claim to embrace—uncertainty.  

Although I know I’ll get a job, we’ll find a car and an apartment, the question is, when? When will it happen? How? What lengths will I need to go to in order to achieve these things, and how difficult will it be? And when? When do I get to have that security once again? The fact that we’ve made this decision, that we are both on flights to the US right now, shows the amount of faith we have that this security will be achieved. Of course it will. Life always levels out. But the uncertainty is hard. 

While waiting for the Air Canada flight to board, I read the Dalai Lama’s book and it started discussing the idea of suffering. The Dalai Lama, and Buddhism in general along with many self-help books, maintain that we can find freedom from suffering. The first idea at how this freedom can be achieved is by acknowledging that suffering is a part of life and that our attitude toward suffering is a huge part of how we cope with that pain. If we face our challenges head on and process through them, it will allow us to work through the suffering and in turn experience less anger, frustration and pain as a result.  

The last time I talked to Peter, he also touched on this saying that if I view this transition as an adventure it will allow me to flow with life more easily and in the end will allow a more positive experience. This anxiety I’m feeling now? While it’s not something that is easily switched on or off, I know that it’s self-inflicted. I’m allowing fear to get the better of me and I’m certainly thinking about it too much. Yesterday as I worked on my resume and perused job searching and interviewing tips, I felt calm. Nay, excited. Job searching, a new challenge! Researching ways to improve a resume and putting it into action. That’s exactly what it was, it was action. Not dwindling on anxious thoughts about the future and letting those thoughts drag me down, but taking action to alleviate the situation, to face it head on. Although this move has long been anticipated, we’ve been in a holding pattern unable to really act on anything. That’s not to say we haven’t prepared. There’s a target car in mind. A target neighborhood. Target companies and organizations. But we couldn’t take that step further to put the wheels in motion. Now it’s suddenly become real and it’s overwhelming. 

The first goodbyes were said three months ago. Coming back to Australia after living the life of a backpacker for three months was really strange. Marcus and I looked at each other on the flight from Bangkok to Sydney as we neared the Sydney airport, with big eyes, and admitted that it felt really, really weird to be coming back. But maybe I should step back a bit further to relate the rest of our travels first. 

Last time I wrote, I was finishing up my stint of yoga in Nepal with Devika in Pokhara. In a state of bliss, as I recall. The wi-fi was predictably unavailable on that last night in Pokhara, so there was no email to Marcus to tell him I’d be back to Kathmandu that afternoon. He was supposed to get back from his base camp hike that afternoon and I assumed he’d get in before me. The bus dropped me of a kilometer or two away from the hotel so I trekked my way in as quick as the weighted feet would go and arrived in a lather. I asked the front desk which room Marcus Montana was in. They looked at me blankly for a while, then asked which trekking company he was with. They called the company only to find out that his flight from Lukla had been canceled due to bad weather. I didn’t fully trust them, so I hopped on the wi-fi only to find an email from Marcus confirming the bad news. Damn. Since the reservation was in the name of the trekking company, I couldn’t stay, nor would I at a hefty $40/night. I trekked back to the guesthouse I’d stayed at in Thamel previously, glad that they could find a spare room at the last minute.  

Marcus and I Skype chatted (no video or headsets in the Lukla internet cafes), then I went shopping and had dinner, feeling lonely and sorry for myself. The next day I went to the Thamel yoga class I’d gone to previously, again the only student for the morning session. After too many back bends, I amended my bending to a straight up and down, only to be pushed by the teacher. I responded that my back wasn’t accustomed to such bending and that I was going to listen to my body. He then worked me through a bunch of back exercises, thinking he was being so helpful but it just ended up pissing me off, another person thinking they know what’s going to heal my back after meeting me once. That, on top of the uncertainty about when Marcus would be back and the emotion I was feeling from that, was just too much. I broke down into semi-angry tears and got up and walked away, leaving the poor, stunned yoga man wondering what had just happened.  

It was Halloween. My favorite holiday of the year which somehow always ends up in drama. I decided to treat myself to some western food at the Himalayan Java café. A big mocha (with way too much whipped cream) and chocolate chip pancakes (likewise with way too much whipped cream). Then I went back to my guesthouse, checked out and stayed online for the next few hours. Still no word from Lukla. I went to a café with “the tallest rooftop in Thamel” at eight stories. I had lunch and nursed a pot of masala chai for a few hours then went back to that original hotel to check on the status. Their flight was canceled. Again. The cloudy weather had continued, so very few flights had gone in or out of Lukla that day. With all of the canceled flights, the tourists had to rely on helicopters to get in or out of the area, which isn’t terribly uncommon. However they hadn’t managed to get seats on any of the helicopters that day. Frick. 

I walked back to my guesthouse despondently to check in again. Thankfully, they yet again had a last-minute room for me. The manager asked if everything was okay and, on the verge of tears, a nod was the best I could do. I hopped online and there was Marcus, on email and Skype, the best timing ever. We chatted for a while, tried to tell ourselves that he’d be back the next day. He was supposedly booked in on the first helicopter out the next day, and though it was ridiculously expensive to get a seat, we tried to focus on the excitement of a first helicopter ride. Still had to hang on to that thread of optimism. 

After we signed off, I decided to try to get involved to resolve the situation. I got the trekking company’s number and went down to reception to see if I could make a phone call. After explaining the situation to the manager, he offered to help. He’d been a trekking guide before he became a guesthouse manager and he called a friend up in Lukla to see what he could do. Then I called the trekking company to find out where Marcus was staying and after a few phone calls was on the phone with Marcus! He was a bit surprised and was also doing everything he could at that end. In fact, while we were on the phone, he headed down to pay for a seat on a helicopter. He was again told he’d be on the first helicopter out the next day, a tenuous statement but still a hopeful one. I thanked the hotel manager for his help, then looked for distraction. 

Then another shopping trip ensued that resulted in some friend and family buys and, as it was Halloween, a big stack of fake chocolate bars and a small bottle of apple vodka procured from a very friendly store owner who talked about Seattle sports and, impressively, the Seattle Sounders. Back to the guesthouse, ordered room service, and downloaded “An American Werewolf in Paris” while Skyping mom. She didn’t realize I’d gotten into the apple vodka and was a bit tipsy while we were on the phone. Hi mom!  ;)  Thanks for the great three to four hour conversation and for distracting me from that silly self-inflicted misery.  

The next day, the day before our flight out of Kathmandu, was a waiting day. I slept in, watched the rest of the Halloween movie in bed, and polished off the rest of the fake chocolate bars for breakfast. I checked out yet again, and waited. I went to do some more shopping to distract me, then waited some more. By check-out at noon, there was still no word from Lukla so I called the trekking company again. They said Marcus was on a helicopter and that he’d be back in Kathmandu in an hour. And they said he’d be staying at my guesthouse! Certainly a better option than the crappy Nirvana Gardens hotel. I went to the front desk to book a room but they were fully booked out. The last thing Marcus would need when he got back would be to search for someplace to stay, so I hopped online and booked us in somewhere else that I thought was close. (It wasn’t that close.)  

I went for a walk, then waited. And waited. An hour went by. Then another. Four hours went by before that wonderful face came in the door, exhausted but happy that the ordeal was at an end. We picked up our bags and headed to where I’d thought the map showed our next guesthouse, only to find that my sense of direction had misled us. We found wi-fi, looked at the map again, and walked two or three kilometers to the hotel. So much for making things easy for the poor guy! He was a good sport, though, and showed a good deal of patience. 

Since I arrived in Sydney in 2008, we’ve not spent more than a few days outside of each other’s company and at the time, those days seemed difficult. We both had really enjoyed our separate activities and found some peace in our own ways. For me, learning about a new sort of spiritual path and spending hours in meditation had helped me center. For Marcus, spending days in the quiet and beauty of the mountains had allowed him to find the calm that had been so elusive for the past few months. It was so nice to see each other again and despite the ordeal of the past two days, to meet each other in a better frame of mind than when we had parted. And after spending two and a half months of being in each other’s face 24/7, it was nice that we each had an experience of our own to savor. Spending time apart is hard, but it was time well spent. 

The rest of the night and the next morning was spent tying up loose ends and picking up some bits and bobs, then we went to catch our flight to Bangkok. We both left our big packs secured at the airport (we were flying back to Sydney the following morning—it had been cheaper to get two round trip tickets than to buy three one-ways) and went on our last Skytrain trip back to the Lemonseed guesthouse in Silom.  

Did I mention our Bangkok mailing kerfuffle previously? Our last day in Bangkok, we’d gone to the weekend markets and bought a cool statue and had shipped it (and the rest of our trip souvenirs) to Portland. Thailand has a rule that you can’t ship Buddha statues or images out of the country without getting a permit. We purposely chose a statue that was NOT Buddha so we wouldn’t get caught up with the hassle. The statue vendors and the shipping company both assured us that the statue we had chosen was just fine. But two days after we arrived in Kathmandu, I got an email from the shipping company to tell us that customs had denied our package because the statue was of a “graven Indian image”. What the??? After many emails, the wonderful lady (Amornrat at TNT if anyone happens to be trying to ship anything from the Chatuchak weekend markets in the future) reboxed everything else in our package and shipped that to Portland (which has since arrived safe and sound). She also agreed to drop off our statue and the leftover $$ from the difference in shipping costs at the Lemonseed Rooms hotel in Silom, where we spent our last few nights in Bangkok. I had emailed the owner and he said he’d hold onto our statue for us and confirmed our reservation for that last transit night.  

Fast forward to the last last night in Bangkok, post-Nepal. We arrived, the same friendly man who had greeted us previously was at the front desk. Reservation under Tina Ferguson. He smiled that “something’s gone wrong” smile.  

What’s the name? Deena?  

No.  

Last name Smith?  

Definitely no. 

Katrina? Wrong again. By the way, did you get the package sent to Tina Ferguson?  

Package? 

You’ve got to be kidding me. 

After we rummaged and scanned around the front desk, Marcus and I laid our eyes on a big cardboard box with the name “Tina Ferguson” on it. That certainly looks like the package we’re looking for. 

Oh!!! He exclaimed. Clueless. He also had no reservation under our name and, of course, they were booked out for the night. He called the owners and the wife came down to chat. There were four Sri Lankans who were supposed to check in and since there’s no booking fee, she let us slip into one of the other reservations. A couple showed up just as we were leaving to go up to our room who were late for their booking. We probably had the keys reserved for them. Quite the organizational skills… but she was very friendly, apologetic, and in the end got us our room and made us breakfast-to-go for our early departure the next morning. Plus, our package had arrived safe and sound, statue and money fully accounted for. Good result. 

After deciding we couldn’t be bothered with a 40-something floor skyscraper buffet dinner that would most likely leave us sick, we decided street food would be the most appropriate fare for the last night of our trip. Pad Thai, oh-so-fitting as well as delicious. Then we got our last slightly painful and slightly more than mediocre Thai massages and headed to bed before an early wake up the next morning. 

Everything else went smoothly. Cheap-ish taxi to the airport at 5am and an on-time flight to Sydney. Our dear friend Claire was kind enough to pick us up from the airport late on a Sunday night and let us crash at her new home. We stayed up with Claire and her American husband Aaron, had a glass of wine, and played a quick and entirely insufficient game of catch-up. We had breakfast the next morning, and after a quick hello said goodbye again just as quickly. 

Marcus and I ventured into the city for various coffees and lunches with friends to do hello/goodbyes, which were again insufficient. Then we stayed with another set of friends, Angela and Aaron. Angela treated us to the dinner that, unbeknownst to her, Marcus had been craving for the last few months. A good steak and red wine. We watched the show Aaron is now working on (and was working on that night) which we all got into. Of course I was enthralled that Dan Savage, a well-known editor/sex columnist/writer from Seattle, was on the show that night. I was star struck by approximation.  

The next morning we got to have breakfast with Aaron for a proper catch up, as well as our wonderful Aimee friend. Again, a far-too-short catch up before we said goodbye again. Goodbyes suck! 

Then we loaded our bags on and caught the train to Newcastle, then the bus to Nelson Bay. A day of travel, it seemed, where we discovered the nicest bus driver in the world. As people who have ridden buses in many countries, we feel this is a qualified statement. J  He knew where each passenger was getting off the bus and had chats with many of the well-known residents. When the drivers switched mid-shift, he informed the new driver of each passenger’s stop (including ours) and after forgetting some detail, he drove after the bus to fill in the driver on one last item. He was such a nice guy, uber-friendly and efficient. We were blown away. 

I wouldn’t have predicted it, but it felt so good to get to Nelson Bay. Marcus’s mom’s house is the closest thing to a home we have in Australia now. We spent a few days there, running errands, completing tasks, and rounding up the last things we wanted to take to the US with us. Oh, and there was a little bit of relaxing.  

A day in a half in Sydney, three days in Nelson Bay, then we were off to Melbourne to meet Marcus’s newborn niece, Sienna. We arrived on Friday evening and spent the weekend with the Montana family which was capped with Sienna’s christening on the Sunday. I get apprehensive at spending larger family time, but the weekend was pretty nice and I really enjoyed the time we got to spend with everyone before our departure. The family flew back to Sydney on Monday and Marcus and I spent the rest of that week with Marcus’s brother Nathan, his lovely wife Tina (yes, it does get confusing, especially since she’s a Kristina, too—even with a K) and their little baby Sienna. It was quality family time. We had breakfast and dinner together every day, Marcus went and helped Nathan with his landscaping business on a few days and we took care of a few last tasks.  

Now, Friday morning, 15 November. Nathan drove us to the airport, we had coffee, and I said goodbye. Marcus will get into PDX five hours after me. Jessi will come pick me up and we’ll have a bit of sister time before going back to pick up Marcus. And…well, this is a little embarrassing. I thought Thanksgiving was on the third Thursday of November (and it made me feel better that my sister Kalisha also had thought the same thing, she told me in an email—apparently I’m the one to inform her otherwise!). But Thanksgiving isn’t this Thursday. It’s the Thursday after. Which means we have an extra week on our hands. Luckily, we’ve booked in a car rental so we’ll head up to Seattle on Monday where the fantastic Candace is letting us crash at her place. We’ll start the apartment/job/car hunt in that order while we’re in Seattle. I think. 

There’s one thing that is helping relieve the worry, and that’s family and friends. My parents, sisters and brother are all sending words of excitement that we’re coming back. And friends! Every single message of happiness that we’re coming to Seattle makes the transition that much smoother. I feel very lucky to have been blessed with such wonderful people in my life, and that goes for both Australia and the US. Those who have shown their support for our decision to make this transition—thank you. There have been a lot of people who have given negative feedback at this choice. Do you have jobs? Do you have a place to live? But, why are you moving???  That kind of close-mindedness has been difficult to deal with, especially for Marcus since he’s gotten a much bigger helping of it than I have. So I have to say how much I appreciate the words of kindness and encouragement from those of you who have given it. It’s a big decision we’ve made, one we’re still processing and understanding the consequences of (both the positive and negative).  

It will take time. We will both need patience. And I am going to adopt an attitude that moves away from suffering. I want to embrace life and I want to face the challenges head-on. Even though it’s a new beginning, it’s still life, a continuation of the last 30 years and it will be lived in much the same way I’ve lived my whole life. This is a part of my evolution, a challenge from which I hope to learn, grow and derive strength from. It’s a path I’ve consciously chosen.  

I’d like to believe that all of the experiences in my life have built up to lead here. That jobs, situations and difficult moments which seemed isolated will come together, will make sense and lead to that “aha!” moment where I understand how those things have woven into my life to result in something bigger than I could have previously understood. That’s probably preemptive, but it’s a hope.  

So here’s to living in the present moment. To making the most of now and realizing that worrying about the future isn’t terribly useful. Taking action is better than worry. Here’s to a new but continued life in my beloved city. And too coming to terms with a life between two countries.