Their twirling pink and lime green and orange stood out boldly too, despite nature's best efforts. Their shrill little voices, thrown, laughing, into the wind, were equally defiant. The maples flaunted their colors, jewels for just a few weeks before they go barren and dormant. Even the weather, the shivering fall wind and the challenging, ominous sky taunted. Be bold. Change. Move on. Do something.
We are. We have news. We have plans. Our little family is throwing our caution and our careful planning and our meticulously constructed safety nets into the gusting wind with the maple leaves. Matt resigned from his job yesterday, we are leaving a week from Monday for the Northern Marianas. We'll spend three months, the bulk of the winter, on the stunning, tiny tropical island where Matt and I lived the double-income, no-kids life of luxury once upon a time, where Gee was born.
(Stunning Saipan photography by Mike Tripp.)
I want this. I have always wanted this. To keep traveling with our children. To not lose myself, my trust in the world, to fear once I had something outside of myself to lose. But yesterday, I felt unsure. We have finally found a home here, put down some tentative roots, begun to fit in. I have friends, real friends, the kind you can call in the middle of the night. The kids have a routine. We attend school, we have two cars, a fence (not picket, but still), a beautiful home, things. We have everything I want to show them they don't have to want. We have everything I want them to understand they don't need.
Yet, I'm torn. Because, I want them to have this too. I want them to have a home, a place that is theirs. I've moved every few years my whole life and I want them to know that unbelievable freedom, but there's a conflicting part of me that wants something different for them. An entire childhood in the same school system, the same friends from kindergarten through high school graduation, a place to come back to when it's dark and the wind is blowing. Home.
Then I swing back, caught in the eddy between my longing to give them security and my desire to take them on adventures. Life is too short to stay behind a fence on a manicured lawn. I want them to stick their faces in the sapphire Pacific and stare down at clown fish, two feet away. I want to watch them run on the beach under the palm trees. I want to submerse them in the diversity of the islands, let the colors of the people and their languages and their cultures swirl around them and delight them. Like leaves in the wind.
Can we have both? Does anyone pull that off?
We're going to try, at least for this one year. We've cut ourselves adrift from Matt's safe, steady job (as the world financial markets crash around us), his excellent health benefits, his perfect, family-friendly hours. He'll work for three months on Saipan, and then. And then? We'll come back to this house. To frozen February. To our picket fence dream. Unless he can't find a job here and then I guess we'll have to sell the trappings and move on.
It's going to be a hell of a trip. (That's not counting the actual travel, thirty-six hours of hell, I mean time, on airplanes with our demons from the ninth level, I mean toddlers.)
We'll boldly go, or we'll pretend to be brave, at least. Even though we hold hands in our dark room at night and whisper solutions to fearful scenarios. Aren't most worth while leaps in life a little scary? We'll get on a plane and show our three darlings a little bit of this world we live in, in all it's gorgeous color. We'll teach them that the journey is often more fun than the destination.
As soon as I pack eight suitcases, get the entire house ready to leave for three months, tie up a billion loose ends with friends and activities, make sure all the bills are paid and set up to be paid electronically, empty all of the kitchen cupboards and the fridge, purchase holiday gifts and get them sent, catch up on three years of scrap booking, learn to speak Chinese, find the missing pieces of my exploded brain...the list goes on.
Come with us? It'll be fun.*
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Name that fabulous famous poet for five points. Five more points if you can give me the whole first stanza - without looking it up! On your honor, no cheating. I'm going to spice the trivia game up a little. Who ever is in the lead on Thanksgiving Day, I'll send you a holiday present from the tropics.
*Yes, there's internet on Saipan, you can't get rid of me that easily. No, there's no Starbucks. I know you were worried for me. It will be tough, but I'll survive. The sacrifices.
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