Monday, July 8, 2019

Return to Ballston

Like the Empire Strikes Back or Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn, sometimes the best iterations of a thing are its sequels, even if they lack the emotional resonance of the original.

We just moved into a high-rise corporate housing apartment in the Ballston neighborhood of Arlington for the second time in our careers. The first time was when we first began this journey, way back in 2010. It is now a little over nine years later and much has changed since that first, well-documented and tumultuous stay. It would be hard for this installment to be worse than the first. Not that it was necessarily hard but it wasn't the easiest time in our lives, either.

We had just moved from Jupiter, Florida where Peter and Sam were born and waded into an ocean of unknowns. Sam was two. Peter was only a few months old. Everything was new. We were on the 18th floor of an apartment building we can see from the one we are in now. Steel plates and metal grates on the road far below crashed and rattled every time a car drove over them which was constant, regardless of the day or night. As we passed the building on our initial walk to the grocery store for a few basic sundries (our apartment was completely devoid of food; we didn't even have salt and pepper), Elise noticed the plates and grates were still there nine years later. Last night, we reminisced about the time the block below our window was roped off and a police robot investigated a suspicious package left in the street.

Things are different now. There are fewer unknowns. The apartment is likely the same size, but feels smaller. There are five us now. Not four. And the tiny kids we once squeezed into one room at Oakwood Falls Church are longer and require more physical (and emotional) space. Clementine is sleeping on a rickety, World War II era cot; the housing company refuses to bring her a twin bed for a different reason every time I ask.


Up until yesterday, we had a dining room table in front of the bay window. We moved it at the kids' behest, in anticipation of their Legos from Jordan. They enjoy taking in the city views, watching the morning commuters rush to work. I like sitting on the couch in the dark at night in front of the city lights. 

When I returned to the training center for the class I have to take before we can continue on to Sri Lanka, I again felt the magic of those initial days nine years ago. Coming here, you are reminded of the excitement we felt before we set off for Brazil, a little unsure of exactly I was supposed to be doing and very unsure of what our lives there would be like. The feeling is the same now as it was then. It is a reset of sorts, a place where the cynicism and jadedness of working in the Middle East is washed off and replaced by naivete and dewey-eyed enthusiasm of a new adventure.

The magic, however, is tempered by the restlessness of three energetic children trapped on the tenth floor in a small two-bedroom apartment with nothing to do. We packed Legos, Transformers, and matchbox cars, but the shipment hasn't arrived yet. Elise has been working miracles trying to keep the kids from killing each other, but even her resources and patience have limits. 

After my first day of work, we decided to take the kids to ride their scooters around the neighborhood, but even getting the kids motivated enough to put their shoes and socks on takes a level of motivational speaking even Yogi Berra doesn't possess. We were poised to emerge from the apartment just as Clementine slammed Peter's fingers in the front door causing him to scream in pain as though someone had lopped his hand clean off at the wrist.

Later that night, after Sam was denied a bowl of ice cream for not eating his brussel sprouts, he pounded his headboard into submission, then fled into Elise's closet where I found him curled up in a quivering ball next to the dirty clothes hamper. He admitted then he missed his friends from Jordan, too.

Clementine has lost two teeth in our three days in Ballston. She lost the first when Peter popped her in the mouth and the second trying to bite Peter and Sam when they came into her room in a misguided attempt to cheer her up. Yesterday, she placed the first tooth in a plastic bag and tied it closes at the top. In my exhaustion, the tooth fairy forgot to come last night, and I had to admit to Clementine the knot on the bag was likely too tight for the tooth fairy to untie. Tonight, the tooth fairy has to pay double.

Plus interest. 

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