When we lived in Falls Church, I rode the shuttle every
morning to work. It was a short commute, usually lasting twenty minutes. On the
way to work I would listen to Pandora Radio…specifically, the Rogue Wave
channel as Rogue Wave is one of my favorite bands.
Other people on the shuttle read the news, checked email,
and studied flashcards, but, invariably, everyone was glued to one wireless
device or another while I gazed out the window…firstly, at snow flurries, then
summer showers, and lastly, at trees with leaves changing colors. I haven’t
listened to Rogue Wave radio since we left Northern Virginia almost two long
months ago.
Recently, I tried to pull up Pandora on my iPhone, but
Pandora doesn’t have a license in India. I put the iPhone away, discouraged.
Until I realized I could pull it up on my laptop, connecting to the internet
through a VPN which disguised my computer and made it seem to the internet that
I was dialing up from the U.S. instead of India. But, unfortunately, my
computer has less than stellar sound quality. No sub-woofers or tweeters here.
I have iPhone speakers, but no way to connect them to my laptop. I found a
random cord in a plastic zip-lock bag. It was a cord that came with the
treadmill we bought right before we left the U.S. to connect an iPod to the
treadmill’s auxiliary jack (it’s a pretty fancy treadmill). Low and behold, the
cord fit! I was back in business.
Sunday mornings, Elise has been intrepidly leaving the house
at 5:45 a.m. and joining a photowalk somewhere in the city of Chennai. You can
see the fruit of her efforts in the margins of this blog. That leaves me solo
piloting for most of Sunday mornings. Hardly an unpleasant, but rarely an easy
task. By way of example, my homemade Martha Stewart pancakes that I made last
Sunday morning turned out more like Olympic discuses after I mistakenly
substituted baking powder for baking soda. I miss Bisquik.
It is interesting to me how certain sounds and smells can
sometimes more easily evoke a time and place than sights can. Whenever I smell
gas, I am still reminded of Sitti’s kitchen in West Palm, the only gas cooking
appliances I had really ever been around until we moved into our home in
Brazil. When I plugged in Rogue Wave radio last Sunday morning, I was
immediately transported back in time a few short months to our home in Falls
Church…and all the good and bad memories of the place came flooding back.
I immediately scooped Clementine up in my arms and we danced
around the kitchen much the same way we used to in our small two-bedroom
corporate housing apartment. Her muscle memory, too, is keen and she easily
fell into step.
Music, especially familiar music, can bring a sense of calm,
happiness, and reassurance. I had been without these things until I returned
from my work trip to Bangalore a week and a half ago. The music helped.
Never let it be said that moving your family halfway across
the world is easy. It is not logistically easy, nor is it a mental exercise for
the faint of heart. The jet lag alone is reason enough to think twice. I don’t
know exactly what it was about Bangalore…I don’t know what happened there…but
once I had returned I felt much more at peace with the decision to bring my
family to India.
The first month we were here I was incredibly anxious. I was
quick to temper and slow to patience. I wasn’t sure if I had done the right
thing.
I was stressed out.
I wasn’t sure if the change would be good for my family or
if everyone would contract dengue fever and we would spend the next two years
medivac-ing back and forth between Chennai and Singapore or, worse, the States.
On some intuitive level, I thought India
would be good for us. It looked good on paper…a good international school for
Sam to start kindergarten in…good, challenging pre-school for Peter…affordable
domestic staff to help around the house and let Elise and I re-establish the
connection we had in Brazil, but that had frayed under the stress of living in
Washington, D.C….no end to the wonders awaiting Elise’s photographic eye. But
being good on paper is one thing. Being good in reality was something entirely
different, and the long commute to and from Sam’s school, the pollution, and
the mosquitoes made me second guess myself. It would only be natural to wonder
if I had done the right thing, and there is no way to know if one of the
children won’t get sick. In India, it is a near certainty.
I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. When it didn’t, I
finally relaxed.
The reason it didn’t drop is because Elise didn’t let it. My
sometimes unrealistic optimism would not have been enough to get us through
those difficult first weeks. It was going to take no-nonsense, pragmatic
adaptability. Which she demonstrated in spades. All I have to do is go to work.
My exposure to India is a fraction of what hers is. I am incredibly proud of
the way she has embraced our new home. I don’t know anyone else who could have
dove in headfirst the way she has. I know, already, India is loving her back.
Before we came to India, I had heard it said that it is a
place that you either love or hate. You either can’t get enough of it, it
brings about in you an insatiable appetite and appreciation for noise, color,
smells and tea or it revolts and frustrates you.
It is cliché to say that India will change our lives or
become a seminal turning point. It surely will, but in as of yet unfathomable
ways.
When I turned on Rogue Wave radio, I was reminded of another
seminal moment, another life changing span of time that will often be
overlooked as I think our time in Falls Church was much more difficult than our
time in Chennai and India ever will be and will go much further in shaping our
lives. It has already gone further in bringing Elise and I even closer together
than India ever could…for all the good and the bad that happened in that tiny,
two-bedroom shit corporate housing apartment overlooking a cemetery that was
either freezing cold or boiling hot and…….
…filled with love.
It goes without saying that 2014 will be a very, very interesting
year.
Happy New Year, Hewie.