The Plunge Down Under

August Expat Blog Challenge: An Accomplishment

It's time again to respond to the monthly expat blog challenge provided by Cristin over at Between Roots and Wings.  For August, it's a photo prompt titled "An Accomplishment."

This empty storage closet is my accomplishment for the past three months.  It may not look like much.  I haven't published a book, endured radiation treatments, fnished a degree, or sent a child off to university.  I haven't even managed to join a fitness class.  But I do have one completely empty closet, and it took hours of work to get it to the state you see in the above photograph.

Moving overseas and back again inevitbly leads to changed perspectives.  One area that changed for me this time around was how I view what I will call stuff.  I remember feeling a sense of accomplishment before we left for Australia over how much stuff I thought had removed from our house, either through giving it away or throwing it out.  Then we left, taking only thirty odd boxes with us.   It wasn't long before I realized that we were surviving quite well without all of the things we left behind.  There were things we missed, of course, but overall life was simpler with less stuff in our closets and drawers.

The Second First Day of School for 2014

It's 8am on a Monday morning, and for the first time in nearly five months, three of our kids have gone off to school.  It's a day of firsts in our household:  first time for three of them to board a big yellow school bus, first time to attend school on American soil, first day in 9th grade, 6th grade and 2nd grade respectively, and probably the only time in their lives that they will experience the first day of school for the second time in one calendar year.  

During the past few months we have become familiar with mixtures of emotions.  Joy, sadness, excitement, grief, happiness, anxiety and peace intertwine until it is impossible to separate them.  This medley has been part and parcel of the process of preparing to return to school.  

Resurfacing: End of Summer

It's been more than three months since we landed in Pittsburgh.  I think if you did a poll in our household tonight, all would agree that those three months have lasted forever and a day.  It has often seemed that time has been suspended, that we would never come to the end of this intermediate time period of waiting for the next stage of our lives to begin.  But now we are staring into the face of another big change, and time is speeding up again.

We are all anxious and excited for what the next two weeks will bring.  The mixture of emotions is nothing new, but beginning school on U.S. soil will bring a boatload of novel experiences for our crew.  I am sure I will be checking in more than once about their impressions as they attend school for the first time in America.  Already the older two have picked up on several key differences.  In the meantime, here are a few of the things they have been doing while waiting.

1.  Climbing trees, riding bikes, catching fireflies and playing ghosts in the graveyard (along with other neighborhood favorites such as sardines and capture the flag).  What fun to be a kid in the summer.

2.  Chasing the deer from our backyard.  We wouldn't mind sharing the space so much if it weren't for the threat of lyme disease.

{This Moment}

Jumping on the SouleMama wagon train for today's photo post:

{this moment} ~ A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

Living with The Great Brain

We have been living with the Great Brain for the entirety of the American summer.  It is almost as if a seventh person has been inhabiting our house, sharing our meals, haunting our dreams and greeting us when we awake.  It all began a few months ago when our eleven-year-old listened to the audio versions of the first two books in John D. Fitzgerald's best-selling series for children.  She discovered that they helped her to relax and fall asleep. Eventually she convinced her younger brother to give them a go.  

Little did we realize that what this would mean.  J not only shared in her appreciation for the humorous antics of the Great Brain, he become obsessed. If you have read my posts about our youngest child, you know that whatever he pursues, he does so with passion.  Whether it is his preference for his father, his interest in numbers, his fixation with fashion, or his favorite sport, he becomes obsessed until he drives the members of his family to the brink of exasperation.

Zucchini Slice for the American Cook

What is the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word zucchini?  I think about the sweet, dark, moist loaves of zucchini bread that are a specialty of my grandmother.  Spread with butter or served with cheese, the delicious slices of her zucchini bread are as much a part of my summertime memories as the juicy ears of sweet corn that we picked from her garden an hour or two before dinner time.  

The second image that the word zucchini evokes is a funny comment from my distant cousin Garrison Keillor.  He explains that in the country, July is the only time of year that church goers lock their car doors in the parking lot.  Why is that you ask?  They are afraid that otherwise, when they return to their vehicle, they will find bags of squash on their front seat, a gift from well-meaning friends or neighbors.

I thought about both zucchini bread and Garrison Keillor two weeks ago when our pastor's wife handed me two zucchini squash that had been given to her by a generous church member.  She was about to go out of town for two weeks and did not want the squash to be wasted.  I gladly accepted them, and as I considered how to use them, I realized that close on the heels of the first two images of zucchini came a third.  This third image was a dish I discovered in Australia:  Zucchini Slice.

Resurfacing: Ugly Grief

J saying goodbye to his Australian "bestie."  

Last week I wrote about the day that our seven-year-old decided to run away from home.  The post seemed to strike a chord with several readers, many of whom recounted similar stories from their own childhoods.  One reader even reminded me that our son was following the example of his own father, whether he realized it or not.  R was a bit older than J when he ran away from home, but he too decided one day that he had had enough.  After packing his bags, he left his house, and although he didn't actually make it out of his backyard, he stayed successfully hidden for several hours.

I wasn't satisfied with how I ended the post.  I wrote about the need to retrain our son's thinking patterns, to remind him that he actually has many things in his life which are good, and that he needs to learn to be thankful instead of complaining over his perceived mistreatments.  Another reader suggested that J was smack dab in the middle of grief, that he was mourning all that he has had to leave behind.  I was not sure that I agreed with this initially.  It seemed to me that J was acting like the prototype of an overprivileged, spoiled child. Then things went from bad to worse, and I started thinking more about grief.