Show me the way to go home

Man I miss my bed. It looks just like this too. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Less than 48 hours to go and my seven week long jaunt around the world is over for another year. It has been a wonderful holiday full of great memories, the boy has been AMAZING (I attribute this to great parenting on my part, obviously) and I will no doubt be shedding a few tears on top of the ones already parted with as I say goodbye to my dear, dear friends and family for another half year. We have spent time at the beach, in the city and the countryside and immersed ourselves with trips to farms, aquariums, museums and theatres, saturating ourselves with both social and cultural experiences we just can’t get at home. My heart aches at the thought of leaving behind days playing in back gardens with my friends and their kids, and of nights spent in pubs or gazing out to sea or tucked up on the sofa with family all around.

But deep down, in places I don’t talk about, as much as I have had a great time, I’m rather looking forward to being back in Dubai. I would even go so far as to say there were things about it I have missed. A neat ten in fact. So here they are. See you back in the sandpit…

1. My bed

2. My cats. And (and this is a first) my friends. Plural.

3. My kitchen

4. Swimming. Or more realistically, lolling about in a pool to keep cool.

5. The driving (I appear to have gone native and driving in a civilized manner bores me rigid)

6. A manicure, pedicure, massage, eyebrow threading, hair cut and colour and a facial. Words fail to describe the general degenerative state of me right now. I need help, fast.

7. Shopping

8. My weekly thespian fix (the build up of attention seeking behaviour and the need for adulation and applause is overwhelming)

9. My shoe collection. Six pairs of shoes seemed excessive when I was packing two months ago, but I now have serious high heel withdrawal.

10. Going out for dinner with my husband. Well actually, I just miss my husband. See you in a few days babe. X

There’s no place like it

Pick a spot, any spot

Home. As usual our time in London has flown past in a blur of rainy days, sunny days, drinking, late nights, laughter and love, this year with a bit of Olympic excitement thrown in for good measure. We are physically exhausted but emotionally refreshed, and for a brief shining moment our Camelot-on-Thames has been the centre of my world once more.

With each passing year I get more used to the hellos and goodbyes, but this year as the faint whiff of hope surrounds me that one day we may come back, I have started to really think about what it would mean to return to London for more than just a holiday. There will be many good things about coming back that would have been lost on me had I never left. Staying in London as a comparitive tourist rather than living and working here has opened my eyes once more to what an incredible city we have at our feet. Walking the streets (walking! An unimaginable pastime for the average citizen of Dubai) and enjoying the weather, the people watching, the architecture, the noise – it is something of a musical dance whose moving parts make up the sum that is this city, full with life in a way that Dubai cannot possibly hope to master. The wonderful parks, museums, galleries and theatres that we have enjoyed the past ten days would never again be taken for granted or left unvisited by the repatriated version of me. Neither would the myriad of bars and restaurants and coffee shops that decorate the streets, or the boutiques and nick nack shops that nest amongst them. But have I been gone so long that I can’t see my city through anything but my sunglasses? And rose tinted ones at that?

With all the thoughts of registering with schools and so on, to plan for this hopeful but currently unsecured comeback, it occurred to me that I may have left a Londoner, but I will return as one third of an international family, a repatriated trailing spouse with an american husband and a third culture kid in tow. It is not going to be as easy as I think to become ‘English’ again, if ever.

My son will be homesick for a place neither me nor my husband call home. And yet, Dubai is our home, and by the time we return it will have most likely been so for nearly a decade. We are long time expats now, and even for me, the only true brit in the family, calling London home again will take time. I struggle with the basics of contemporary London life already, like how to charge my oyster card, and what can I recycle in those orange bags, and do I turn right at the lights if there is no oncoming traffic? And that’s just the start. I have no idea about tv (there were 5 channels or sky when we left), I’m a nervous wreck getting on the tube with my son in case we both magically leap off the platform or get split up by a closing door, and pretty much everything I have in my wardrobe is too white/shiny/expensive to be trotting round cobbled streets in the rain. To repatriate will be a difficult journey, I see now. I will not just simply slot back in, and pick up where I left off. I think it is good to be aware of this now, to start accepting that things will feel different, and that we may not always like it.

We are lucky to have a relatively international set of friends, full of expats and repats and hailing from around the world. They all call London their home and the city is such a melting pot that it hardly matters we’ve been away in that sense. But as I pack our bags and leave behind my beloved city to travel across the pond, I realise I am, these days, just as excited about returning to the US – I get that same familiar, easy feeling from the cities of Boston and New York as I do from London, and with the other 66.6% of the family unit holding a US passport, I am finding it increasingly important to promote American culture in the house and feel as comfortable with it as I do my own.

I wonder had we not lived abroad if I would have found it as easy to bring two cultures under one roof. I wonder if it would not have seemed so important, that my son who belongs to two countries and was born and raised in a third, should have the best experiences of them all and be truly international in his identity, rather than coming ‘from somewhere’. I wonder if coming ‘from somewhere’ has actually ceased to be as important to me. I certainly feel distinctly foreign when people talk about the jubilee, or the Olympics, or David Cameron. Well not foreign, just remote. I can’t relate to these things that people feel so passionately about, and yet I feel like a I should because I am ‘from here’.

But I fear I am not, anymore. Part of me is sad about that, that I have accepted a slightly nomadic existence that will no doubt continue to affect the way I live for a long time to come. That other part of me embraces the fact that I am living this incredible life that spans continents and oceans, that I have learnt and adopted new and different ways of doing things because of who I married and where we live and all the things we have seen along the way. I am daunted and yet excited by the prospect of raising my TCK to appreciate his place in this world. To belong ‘everywhere’ instead of ‘somewhere’, which must surely mean there are more places in this world to call home. To feel connected in these huge cities but undaunted by change. I hope this for him, but for myself as well, that the lessons I have learnt through moving away will stand me in good stead for moving back. To say ‘home’ to me now it means so many different places and I love each one for different reasons. So, from one home to another, we fly off on the next part of our summer journey. Tell you what, if Dorothy lived my life she would have been hard pushed to end up in the right place even with those ruby slippers…

Mother and son and the power of love

Thursday: I’m sitting on a plane somewhere high above Europe and missing my son so much it hardly seems possible. When I left this afternoon, when I turned my back and climbed into the taxi, my distress was immeasurable. And even though I am trying hard to relax and enjoy this short weekend of ‘freedom’ after three years of being with him constantly, I am struggling not to think about him all the time. As we edge further apart I feel the binds that tie us together stretching and pulling, thinner and thinner, but never breaking. And I realise the true eternity of motherhood. That he will always belong to me, that I will never stop wanting him by my side, that I will never tire of his voice, his giggles, his love. That even when he is grown and towers above me, I will always want him near. Leaving him even for just a few days, to travel so far away from him, is breaking my heart. I know now that this weekend I will sit for far too long wondering what he is doing and how he is feeling without me and he will in turn, as children do, barely notice I have gone before I am back again. But my goodness I miss him. My body aches for my little boy cuddles and my heart is leaping about madly with the thought of missing him this much for another three days. I feel perversely happy, that my feelings are so uncontrollable and that he holds such power over me. It reminds me that I am a mother, that he is my son, and that unconditional love, that most incredible of human emotions, is sitting right here with me, even when he is not.

See you on Monday my beautiful boy. X

Get over it

It is no secret in our house that I don’t want to live in Dubai forever. In fact I think the blog name I picked out might have given a clue as to my feelings on the subject. However for some reason I feel the need to push it in everyone’s face once in a while, just to make sure they are still listening. Last night was one of those times, and my husband copped the worst of it.

Well…all of it.

Again.

Everyone gets homesick once in a while (Photo credit: Kalexanderson)

My desire to ‘not be here’ has become deep rooted over the course of the last few years. In truth, I don’t think about it on a daily basis and very rarely get homesick anymore, in fact right now I’m having a rather enjoyable and satisfying time of it – but the bottom line, when you scrape all of the other stuff away and get to the heart of the matter, is that I can’t shake the feeling that being here is a huge compromise. It is so engrained in me that I want to go home that occasionally when the mood takes me and I am feeling particularly vulnerable, or dramatic, or both, I cannot see past this to anything else. And because it is not within my control to change the situation I get really foul about the whole subject of when and if it will ever happen.

Grossly unfair of me when I flip out about it and never my finest hour. I wish I could just be okay with being here, like, really okay with it. Or I wish that I could not be okay with it very quietly and privately, so that other people didn’t have to put up with my childish tantrums and whining, and so that I didn’t use my anger as a weapon of mass destruction. But I can’t seem to do either of those things. I think I have parked it, accepted it, and am coping with it, and then I suddenly flare up again and go nuclear, usually at my husband, about the terrible blow life has dealt me because I can’t go home.

Which of course is rubbish and immature and frankly rather silly. There is absolutely nothing to say my life away from Dubai would be any better than the one we enjoy here. I think it’s just – and I’m going to copyright my new term of diagnosis here – ‘Ultimate homesickness’. It’s like an extended remix, years and years of missing out on life at home all rolled into one big ball of emotion that once in a while appears rather suddenly and lashes out at everything in a two mile radius until it is spent.

I talked before about ‘that permanently temporary’ feeling of being an expat. It is here again, and I think it is exaggerated the closer I get to summer, and returning home. It is a particularly sensitive time for me as I plan my days away from here, and realise once again that it is all too short a time to spend with the people I love and miss dearly. However, faced with the reality of leaving our life here I’m sure I would have very mixed feelings about going. There are parts of living in Dubai that I have accepted, parts I actually like and some things I absolutely love about being here. There is actually very little I don’t like, and it mainly revolves around the uncertainty of how long we are here for, which of course is a ridiculous thing to spend life worrying about. Plan for the future, but live in the here and now, right? So I consider this post a telling-off, to myself, to get with the program and stop being an idiot. Feeling sorry for myself never got me anywhere and neither did going postal on my loved ones. Fortunately, Ultimate homesickness is rare and although brightly burning, it is very short lived. Now, if someone would just invent a vaccination…

Homesickness. Just a state of mind. (mistidaysofhope.com)
Homesickness (jessicaetandy.wordpress.com)

Lucky seven

Next week sees us mark the start of our 7th year in Dubai. SEVENTH. When I say to people I arrived in 2006 it really doesn’t seem very long ago. When I think of how I was a newlywed barely into my 30s and now my 40s are hurtling towards me at a rate of knots, I start to wonder where the decade went. When I realise I have entered my fifth cycle of friends in the space of roughly as many years (1. the ones I met when I arrived, 2. the ones I worked with, 3. the ones I met after having a baby, 4. the ones I met when my son started nursery, 5. the ones I met through theatre) I feel a little exhausted by the whole process.

Living abroad can be exciting, it can be depressing, it can be mediocre or even boring at times, and tremendously educational and fun at others. Depending on what you are doing or where life is taking you depends on how you feel about the whole expat experience at any given point. Dubai hasn’t been considered a hardship posting for years. But even for the mere housewife, between the times on the beach or in the mall or drinking coffee (which seems to be the general perception of my life even by the people who live here), it can be pretty hard work. If the summer heat doesn’t get you the incessant packing up and shipping out to escape it every year will. If living in the lap of luxury seems too good to be true it’s because there are hours and hours and hours of household management to keep it that way. If the ‘work hard, play hard’ ethic seemed like fun in your twenties then it’s a lot more like hard work a decade or two later to pull the same stunt whilst holding down a family – and a UK 10 dress size, a permanently perfect mani/pedi, a wardrobe full of up to the minute fashion and quite possibly a job. And then there’s the whole love ’em and leave ’em friend issue – the people you meet and like and fill your life with until they up and leave six months, a year, two years later and you have to work to find new ones all over again.

The gap between the different societies and nationalities that live here looms large. Miscommunication and misunderstanding of cultural differences make up 90% of why things take so long and can get so stressful. Of course, the other 10% is because a lot of people here are total shysters. That doesn’t make life any easier either, although with six years under my belt now it’s certainly getting easier to spot them. Experience has also taught me that everything takes far, far longer than planned – the Spanish ‘mañana’ has nothing on the arabic ‘inshallah‘. This particular trait appears to be cross-cultural, spanning across the entire spectrum of customer care – from trying to buy a bottle of water to wondering which decade your house will be finished in.

Dubai is a brilliant place to live – until it isn’t. After six years I have learned that when things go wrong, however big or small, it will take five times as long, be three times as expensive, and cause twice as much stress to put it right as it would do at home. The best thing to do, I have discovered, is really enjoy the bits inbetween. No doubt it is a great life we have here and when I try to imagine my life in the UK had we not come, I’m not sure where we would have been instead. Our house would have been smaller, for sure, as would my shoe collection – but there’s other things that would have been different too. I would most likely have still been on the corporate treadmill instead of realising a dream to teach, and to write. We would never have experienced living somewhere so different and life would be less rich for that. But most importantly and against all medical odds, I have a child. Yes, Dubai is a hard place to live sometimes, but it gave me my son, and there is no guarantee the stars would have aligned to make that happen anywhere else in the world. When I see the decades of pleasure I will have from this one simple act, six years doesn’t seem all that much to give in return.

In Memoriam

My paternal grandmother passed away yesterday. It did not come as a surprise, she had terminal cancer diagnosed a long while ago, so we all knew it was only a matter of time. But when you are living thousands of miles away a ‘matter of time’ does not have the same meaning. Distance puts an invisible and impenetrable barrier between me and my loved ones. Unless I am ‘lucky’ to be home when death strikes, I cannot help, I cannot support, and I cannot say goodbye when goodbye matters most. Until last year all four of my grandparents were still alive but all over 85, and clearly not going to live forever. With each trip back I have to quietly say my goodbyes to these old people whom I love so much, in case it’s the last time I see them. I strive to make my peace with it but the bottom line is I’m not there.

There is a school of thought that death is easier to cope with if you are far away. You don’t have to deal with any of the nasty, you don’t have to see what’s happening, you don’t have to help, simply because you can’t. There is no way of being with them in an ambulance, or dropping a hot dinner round to their home, brushing their hair, or holding their hand at the bedside. There is no true understanding of what that person is going through, nor the terror, grief and worry of the other people who are there to provide all the support that you can’t. I have no real clue to what my dad has been doing these past months to assist his parents, just as I have no proper understanding of what my mum went through caring for my grandfather before he passed away last year. I am sheltered from all of this. And when a person dies, I am sheltered all over again, from everyone else’s grief, because I am not there to see it.

I toy with the idea of flying back for the funeral but I feel guilty, as if I have just turned up for the easy bit and missed all the hard stuff everyone else has been through. I cannot be part of the process, I can only turn up to the party. But it is not easy sitting here by myself. Grief is a lonely business when you are far away. I might not be able to help or support my family but there is no-one to help me either. A comment from another post I read on this subject said this: “We must be self-reliant in a way most grievers do not have to be…Grieving solo is one of the hardest things to do…(and) can also prevent us from the closure that other people receive from going to the funeral, the wake, the reception.”

And I am discovering for the second time now, that the process for grieving is difficult when you are doing it by yourself. I rely on phone calls and emails to keep me up to date with funeral arrangements, but no-one really wants to talk to me about how they are feeling over the phone, it just isn’t the same. No-one will ask me how I’m doing because they will unconsciously (or consciously) assume that I am somehow less attached for being far away. I will watch other people with less attachment, less history, less loss than me become more involved than I can possibly be in the grieving process because I am not there. I wrote an email and sent text messages to tell my grandmother we loved her but it’s unlikely I’ll ever find the right time to ask if they were delivered before she slipped into her last sleep. I cannot comfort my dad, my sisters, my grandfather. I cannot sit and have a cup of tea with them just to have the company of another human being who is going through the same thing. I cannot hug anyone. No-one can hug me back. I hate that I am not there to help, I resent that I am not there to be part of the grieving, I am devastated that I could not say goodbye when it was truly time.

Every expat must face the possibility of someone they love passing away while they are abroad. We face grief all over again when we return for visits because life has changed unalterably, again, and whilst everyone else has gradually come to accept the change, it is thrown at us like a bucket of cold water. My grandmother (she would have loved that I’m calling her grandmother, and that I’m writing about her, by the way) probably had the most understanding of my situation of all my family. Her own siblings emigrated to California decades ago and she has dealt with all the pleasure and pain that this brings. She was a meddlesome old bat sometimes (and she knew it) who I didn’t always agree with, but she managed to keep herself relevant and even with her great-grandson bouncing around the room claiming all the attention, she would always take time to ask how I was doing, how I was feeling. I write this for her, because I know she would understand where so many others might not, how I am feeling right now. This is my goodbye, Nanna. Rest in Peace.

Nanna & Grandad with my son, summer 2011

Another year over..

And so here we are, suddenly, at the end of another year. Traditionally the time to reflect on what has been, and start fresh with new ambitions, hopes and dreams for the 12months ahead.

My year began on a sad note, with my grandad passing away after a long struggle against dementia. Despite him being gone from us for a lot longer in reality, I miss him very much and find myself thinking about him a lot this past few days. I think he would have immensely enjoyed seeing my son grow from baby to little boy this year.

The first quarter of the year was tough for a number of reasons, and went by in a haze of sleepless nights and a few too many tears. Spring was a recovery period in one sense but found us the victim of numerous illnesses as my son bought one thing after another home from his first term at nursery. My favourite was the noro virus which we managed to bring back to the UK with us and systematically wipe out half the family a week before my sisters wedding. Fortunately we were all better, if a bit thinner, by the big day.

The summer, despite living out of a suitcase for most of it, was the highlight of this year. We had the most amazing time and it really helped to show us what was important in life. We came back from the trip knowing who we were as a family, what we wanted for ourselves, and with a clear vision of how life should progress. Returning to Dubai again in september was tough and it has been hard to accept that we are still not leaving any time soon. But having resolved to make the most of our beautiful autumn weather, I really feel like we did this year. The weeks leading up to now have been a total joy and really such a lot of fun that in actual fact it was hard to drag ourselves away.

Somewhere around the middle of this year I began writing this blog in a bid to release some of the negativity and loneliness I felt around living as an expat, trailing spouse and mother of one. And as I sit on a sofa somewhere north of Boston listening to the chatter of my family all around, I realise the huge emotional and spiritual journey that I feel I began this year will no doubt continue into the next.

2012 holds much promise for me. I feel that I have begun to make peace with myself in a way that I have struggled to up until now. My role as a mother no longer seems to bind me and terrify me in equal parts, but instead I find myself enjoying it and savouring all the special moments that seemed to evade me for so long. And so this forms resolution no.1 on my list, to continue to grow as a parent and be the best mother I can be, without totally stressing myself out about it in the process.

I also feel our summer hiatus from Dubai, and the inevitable but reluctant return have left a deeper mark than usual on me this year. I know now where we are headed, and with an end game in mind I am better able to accept where we are now, and look toward the future with an optimistic and open mind, all the while acknowledging that the here and now is just as important and worthwhile. So to my resolution no. 2: to enjoy the moment, to make the most of where we are, where we live and our lives as they stand. To plan for the future without wishing away the present. To make the most of our time in Dubai because life will not always be this way. To look forward to the future without missing it so much.

I have lost a lot of friends in Dubai this year, from those moving away to those who dropped off the face of the earth, to those who are no longer around because of sad or exceptional circumstances. I’m not sure I will ever truly accept the nature of expat friendship, in that vein of here one day, gone the next- but I am trying my best to appreciate it really is nothing personal and is simply the nature of the beast. So to resolution no.3: to make friendships where they present themselves, to accept the demise of others, cherish the ones that last, and to pick up the phone to home, to someone I trust with my heart and soul, when it all gets too much.

There have been many moments this year I am not proud of. I have struggled to figure out why they came so thick and fast, and why I seem to lack the self control of others when it comes to expressing myself appropriately to my nearest and dearest. But my resolution no.4 is not to dull these feelings and pretend they are not there, rather to find a better way to show them, and to take advice and help when it is offered instead of brushing it away like an unwanted fluff bunny.

Resolution no.5: get tennis lessons. No deeper meaning to that, I just think given some lessons I’d be pretty good at it.

I have other aspirations for myself for the coming year but find them clashing dangerously with my ‘list of things to do before I’m 40’ and given I have a few more years to achieve them I don’t feel I have to commit to them right now. I also have a ‘list of things to do before we leave Dubai’ formulating, which I am keeping separately from either my 2012 resolutions or my 40 list in the vain hope it falls somewhere between the two to accomplish.

So really I guess my 2012 hopes and dreams boil down to a simple wish: to have fun and relax, be good to my family, kind to myself, and when all else fails go out and hit a few balls. Happy new year to you all.

Apple for the teacher

Image via Wikipedia

I have something to celebrate. I’ve been at work the past two weeks. Yes, you read right – work! But don’t be fooled…I am not celebrating because I spent two weeks being useful and being paid; but because it’s over, after possibly the longest fortnight I’ve ever lived through.

My son’s nursery school accidentally lost a teacher just before the start of the school year, replaced her, and then carelessly lost another one (through no fault of their own, I might add). I had rather stupidly offered to help out in the case of an emergency when the first one was mislaid, and two days before the start of term I assumed as I hadn’t heard from them that I was off the hook. Just as I was tucking into my “I’m a hero for offering but guess you found someone” email, I had a message float into my inbox with details of my starting date, pay package and a class list. What could possibly be worse than being stuck at home with only a 2-year old for company? I’ll tell you: being stuck in a room with 16 of the little dears for five mornings a week after a 3-month hiatus for them and a great big two and a half year break for me.

I don’t know how I ever did this job full time. Maybe once I had ‘the calling’ and maybe I will again, when I’ve had a bit more sleep. But now I find it impossible to imagine getting through a full school year without losing the plot completely. It’s no wonder teachers are by and large a bit of a strange breed. It could drive you mad if you let it. Of course experience tells me that if you don’t actually have a child of the same age you are teaching, it’s slightly more bearable, but for the ‘today’ me it was at best logistically difficult and at worst emotionally and physically exhausting.

Of course I picked the worst two weeks of the year. Orientation in a nursery school is one of the most harrowing experiences you can go through, for pretty much everybody concerned. Tots howling for their mummies (and in a few cases, for the nanny – that’s Dubai, folks). Mummies – ah, the mummies – staring in horror at children screaming at the door, on the floor – well, anywhere they can find really – then lingering too long and asking really helpful questions such as ‘when will they all stop crying?’ (answer: when you stop trying to figure out if I’m really as qualified as I say I am and let me get back to my job).
More Mummies upset in the hallways as they tear themselves away from their traumatised offspring, converting their guilt to resentment at the obvious incompetence of the staff who have only just met them and are expected to be an instantly accepted primary carer replacement. (Note: a qualification in Early years teaching does not mean your child is going to like me in the first 30 seconds of meeting me, nor will they thank you for leaving them with me having spent nearly three months in your company, just because you suggested they stay and play with me for a while.)
And yet more Mummies, questioning why the teachers haven’t been genetically modified to have a few extra sets of arms so that all the crying children can be comforted at the same time as taking one of them to the bathroom and breaking up a fight over a book in the reading corner. A token Daddy in a suit, who stands in the doorway feeling increasingly uncomfortable in this sea of emotional wretchedness and resolves to make sure his wife does the drop off from now on and bugger her job/yoga/coffee morning. And finally -last and most definitely least – the lowly teachers, the suckers in this whole human separation experiment, who are wondering (not for the first time) what on earth it was that inspired them to teach in the first place. Because it sure as hell wasn’t orientation week.

My heart was plucked from its natural resting place on Day 1 when I left my own howling two year old behind and ran straight to a classful of the same. I spent all morning wondering how my little one was doing in comparison to the ones I was looking after and was so worried I nearly burst into tears on several occasions. It was awful, because I couldn’t call in to find out, I couldn’t pick him up a bit early to ease him in – I couldn’t do anything except just keep dropping him off early and picking him up late, feel horribly guilty and upset and then crush my own feelings into a small place where no-one could find them and deal with everyone else’s. It didn’t improve for a good three or four days, until finally, on Day 5, my wonderful little man looked up at me with a wobbly bottom lip and said “Mummy’s brave boy. Kiss. Bye bye mummy.” He gave me his shoes and wandered off to the playdough table and that was that. With a huge sigh of relief that he had finally accepted his fate, I turned my attention to myself, and the fact that for a week I had been peed on, thrown up over, had my sweater repeatedly used as a handkerchief, used the phrase ‘sit down and cross your legs’ about 497 times, lost my voice from talking and singing non-stop over unreasonable decibels of crying, had had no tea break, lunch break, toilet break or child break for 12 hours, five days straight, missed having quality time with my son so much it hurt – and came to the conclusion that I was absolutely, unbelievably, irreversibly broken.

Then I had two days off and did it all again.

I read a really ignorant comment from a mother on a local website here which claimed nursery was merely “playtime for toddlers” and how difficult could it be? Well lady, YOU try it. It’s really, really tough. I once again take my hat off to the teachers that do it day in, day out. It might come with short hours and long holidays but the actual work part of the day is harder than anything else I’ve ever known. 60 hours a week of sitting in front of a PC and having meetings and lunches and making a few difficult phone calls to clients/suppliers/whoever is a walk in the park in comparison. And to all of the teachers out there, I wish you luck and love and motivation to keep going, because you are amazing people who are under-appreciated by so many, yet entrusted with our most sacred of possessions.

And as for me? Well my sacred possession is no doubt currently occupied doing finger painting or water play or whatever, and I am back to civilian life. I have already started the long process of getting on with the ‘to do’ list that has been lingering since we returned to Dubai nearly a month ago, stalling slightly while I write this, it’s true, but I’m getting to it. I feel like September got lost in the mail, and I’m heartily glad for a change to be doing absolutely nothing with my life while I try and sort it out a bit. Going to work has made me appreciate not going, for once. And I plan to make the most of it while it lasts.

Leeeea-ving on a jet plane…

Image via Wikipedia

And so, the countdown begins. With a few days to go until we leave Dubai for the summer, they can’t go fast enough and yet I need them to be an extra hour longer to get everything done. My suitcase lingers half full waiting for the ironing pile to make its way inside. I have a two page packing list for my son’s case which will be done over the weekend. The hand luggage will be stuffed to bursting on Sunday night and I’ll spend the next day sweating and swearing about how much crap I put inside when I have to carry a rucksack full of toys, a nappy bag and a toddler the inevitable 14 mile walk from the plane to passport control at Gatwick airport.

I have mixed feelings about leaving for seven weeks. On the one hand, we are leaving our home, our cats, our routine. I am supremely stressed about the travel, as always, which will be a trial from start to finish with no-one to help me. Then there are the sleeping arrangements for my son to worry about, who has grown out of his travel cot and will sleep in a bed for the first time when we reach the UK. I have little hope that I will get much sleep for the first week whilst he simultaneously recovers from jet lag and discovers he can get out of his bed and into mine with no barriers. Due to weeks and weeks of confinement inside, we are worn out, pasty white and have been constantly sick with something or another, and I’m so damn exhausted from trying to keep this stupid super-sized house clean (the maid is away as well) that I have no hope of not completely losing the plot within 48 hours of us landing. Probably at my mother or my son or both. So apologies to both of you in advance, it’s nothing personal – it’s just I’m knackered before I even start this travel marathon, and part of me wishes I could check into a spa for a week instead and be left alone to sleep and read magazines whilst being massaged until my muscles fall off.

On the other hand…I’m going home. To Essex and clean fresh air and green fields and friends and family, to watch my son run around a garden made of real grass with the people who matter most. To London to hang out in pubs and bars and restaurants in cobbled streets that smell of tramp (who knew you could miss that smell). To New York where I leave a little bit of my heart every time we visit. To Massachusetts, to reunite with my husband’s family after a full year apart and play on the beaches and relax to the sound of the ocean. Seven weeks doesn’t seem long enough to get my fix of all of this before I have to head back to the desert. It makes my heart ache thinking about how little time I actually have to soak it all up, and take everybody and everything in before we return. Despite being back for so long, I’m seeing most people only once because there simply isn’t time for any more. It breaks my heart having to cram in all our news, laughter, and enjoyment of eachother into one evening and that be enough to last me until, well, who knows when.

I will, of course, make my annual attempt to persuade everyone to come and visit us sometime over the winter. Despite all my gripes about living here, Dubai is a truly great place to come on holiday and I love having our friends and family visit because as well as the fact that they always have a really good time, I like to think it gives an insight into our lives here, and helps them to know us better as we spend more and more years away. I love seeing our friends and family in a relaxed environment where they are not running off to work, and having the time to spend reconnecting that I don’t get on trips home because there are just so many people to spread myself around. It also helps cure the homesickness during the long periods we are in Dubai, to see a familiar face or two and catch up with the day to day back home.

But even with visitors to support us in our quest to keep up, we do miss things and the summer is our chance to make sure we haven’t been forgotten about entirely. I can’t wait and yet I need to put up some emotional barriers to stop me from feeling too much or I’ll never be able to leave. I know everyone’s going to tell me about traffic jams and rain and cold and no housemaids and financial crises and how nobody sees eachother anyway and I know that seven weeks of summer isn’t real life, I really do. But it is my life, fast tracked into less than two months, that I would usually live over the course of a year, and it’s a rush and a downer at the same time, to know it’s all I’ve got.

The next blog entry will no doubt be from somewhere a long way west of here. However it’s fair to say that I plan to make the most of my summer and therefore you won’t find me sitting at a computer that often. With any luck those who have substituted talking to me or emailing me with reading this (and I have had at least two admissions that this is the case – one from my own sister!) will prefer the live version and forgive the slow-down in production. For the rest of you, I’m sure there will be plenty to read come September when I’m sulking about being back in Dubai. Wishing you a all a wonderful summer, just like mine is going to be. Bring it on.

Sad day/Happy day

I was going to post something witty, pithy and slightly frothy this week, but it will have to wait in favour of me offloading my emotions again.

I had some really sad news yesterday. And some really happy news as well. I want to hold and hug and comfort my friend with the sad news, and hold and hug and congratulate the one with the happy news – but all I can do is write an email to both of them and hope it captures my emotions and makes them feel loved. I feel utterly helpless, but that’s not to say I’d be any more use to anyone if I wasn’t thousands of miles away. Being the other side of the world doesn’t make my sadness or my happiness for them any more or less intense. And as long as they know I am there, that I paid attention, that I am thinking of them, that I love them – well that’s all anyone can do whether they live next door or on the other side of the world.

Getting good or bad news is better than no news at all. It means you are loved back, you are counted, you are a part of someone’s life, you are their friend. I have some amazing people in my life, without whom I would be less than half a person. They made me love them so much I can’t bear the thought of them being without me, or I without them. Their good news and their bad news have become part of my story too as we have grown up and grown older together – and apart.

There are times in life when we are called upon to be strong. And then there are times in life when we need to lean on our friends, to share with them a burden, a secret, elation or pain. I believe that strength lies in numbers and sometimes you just can’t, or don’t want to do it on your own. Nor should anyone have to. Comfort or congratulate, sympathise or celebrate, however the moment dictates us to be, we transform ourselves chameleon-like for our friends and put our own lives on hold to be in their world, to be part of their story. Possibly the most amazing, powerful, unique aspect of being human, friendship is something we choose and something we are chosen for. Good or bad, I’m glad I’m still giving, and getting the news.

Where's my ruby slippers?

There's no place like home. Especially if you don't live there.

Category Archives: Emotional