Rio+20 Days Away from my Family

No one ever said saving the planet was going to be easy. I just never imagined it would be this hard.

20 days away from my family is a conservative estimate. A month, is more like it.

Unfortunately, I have no beach pictures to share, stories of penguins washed up on shore, or sprints to Starbucks for mid-afternoon pick-me-ups. I left Rio more pale than when I arrived. Nearly impossible to do, I had thought, but I had done it.

We stayed in a beautiful apartment in Ipanema overlooking the Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas. Christ the Reedemer, lit green like a giant religious Hulk for the conference, floated in mid-air out the window, occasionally obscured by thick, low-hanging clouds. Tiny motes of light, speckled in condo towers across the lake, reflected off the water, the constant stream of the big city, passing by and beneath us. I could’ve stayed there forever.

Unfortunately, duty called. I changed into my costume. Father and husband by night, saver-of-humanity in a wrinkled suit by day. I usually left the apartment before 7:00, catching a cab to Copa and a 7:30 delegation meeting, then hopping in a van for the 1 ½ hour commute to Barra da Tijuca where the UN conference was being held. Sometimes, we didn’t arrive until 10:00, depending on how many armored vehicles, riot police behind plexiglass shields, indigenous peoples, and protesters blocked our path. The entire day was spent in a mammoth convention hall, bereft of fresh air, under the neon buzz of thousands of banks of fluorescent tubing. It was incredibly ironic how much unsustainable energy was being expended to host a conference on sustainable development. Not to mention the paper trail, as I was routinely asked to print 5 copies of each of the 14 U.S. principal delegate’s schedules. The paper-less conference the UN had envisioned it was not.

By 6:00 my head was aching to leave, threatening to crack. Sometimes, I could, climbing aboard a tour bus to make the long trip back to the Zona Sul, winding along the edge of the ocean on Avenida Niermeyer, passing Rocinha and Vidigal, impossibly vertical favelas, reaching toward the sky like flat board Olympuses. In the bright orange street lights, shoeless kids did capoeira, skateboarded or kicked a soccer ball in the street. Every lane was a party, winding up into infinity under an unnavigable snafu of pirated power and telephone lines. Usually I would return to the apartment by nine, the kids asleep.

I had no idea how hard the days would be for Elise. I had told myself that if there was ever an opportunity to go out of town for work, I would want my family to come with me. I hope this remains the case after Rio, but I don’t know yet. I don’t think we will know until we have to answer that question again. When we do, Clementine won't be three months old, waking up four times and night, and Peter won't be in the dark throes of the terrible twos, up one second, down...waaaay down the next. 

My days were much longer than I anticipated. Email torrents didn’t stop until midnight and picked back up again before dawn. The night before the Secretary arrived it went on all night, a steady stream of emails filling my inbox while I tried to get a few hours of much-needed sleep. I was selfish. I wanted my family with me. I thought I could have it both ways.

I missed Elise’s birthday. I missed Father’s Day.

Elise, Sam, Peter, Clementine and I went to Rio to save the planet. We may not have saved the planet today, but, hopefully, idealistically, maybe, the small part that we played will make some sort of difference for future generations. Maybe…just maybe…a small boy in Burundi, Sam’s age with equally poofy hair, will have light to read by thanks to Secretary Clinton’s participation in the U.S.-African Clean Energy Finance Initiative launch which I helped organize (frantically typing on a note card how to pronounce the Kenyan Environment Minister’s name, Chilau Ali Mwakwere 3 minutes before her arrival). I cling to this hope in order to justify the month I was a terrible father and a terrible husband, but hopefully able to do something important.

I think I did. I guess we’ll have to wait to find out if it was all worth it.