Nope is Here

If you’d prefer to listen to this week’s newsletter, you can find The Fig podcast here.

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Dear Friends, 

It’s good to be back in your inbox (or your ears, if you’re listening). As I’m writing this, I realize that this is the first alone time I’ve had in a month. Jake and Nora have gone into the city to retrieve our visas for Kyrgyzstan. I’ve spent the last hour packing winter clothes for our air shipment and sneaking boxes of baby toys into the back of the car with the rest of the things bound for Goodwill.

Yesterday, we returned from our month-long Grand Tour of the south, during which we saw all of Nora’s living great grandparents, grandparents, aunties, uncles, and cousins, as well as some dear friends. 

Nora experienced her first trip to the movies and her first trip to the Waffle House. We ate peaches and watermelon and lots of ice cream. We got suntans and mosquito bites. I watched the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader documentary with my sisters and Olympic gymnastics with Jake’s cousins. Nora watched Moana more times than I can count, thanks to the influence of my friend Eleta’s daughter Estelle, whose favorite word is “Maui.” 

For the first time in our four summers of doing this big road trip, I wasn’t working while traveling. 

“It’s so nice you can stay up late and don’t have to get up at 5AM to work!” Eleta said on our first night in Atlanta. 

And it was. I stayed up. I slept in. I sat around with toddlers on my lap instead of my computer. In Florida, with so many adults in the house, my obligations dwindled to practically nothing. De-escalate Nora when necessary. Load the dishwasher. Be. 

And at the beach with Jake’s family, I embraced the whole point of the beach: doing practically nothing (other than keeping children alive). I read novels under a cabana and gazed at the soothing horizon line. I raked my fingers through coquina beds. 

Reading this, or seeing my photos on Instagram, you may think we had the perfect summer frolicking on the beach and picking blueberries and hugging our people. And you wouldn’t be wrong exactly. 

The other day my Kindle app sent me a pop up notification: Kind round of applause! You’ve unlocked the Perfect Week achievement!

I laughed when I saw it. Of course, in terms of daily novel-reading, I suppose I was having a perfect week. And in terms of cute cousins and saltwater swimming pools, it was a perfect vacation. 

But there was also reality–we got COVID in Florida (seems right) and a stomach flu in the Carolinas. Nora and her cousin Ada make each other super dysregulated, so our week at the beach with Jake’s family was set to a soundtrack of near-constant shrieking and door-slamming. And of course, we were also saying some pretty significant goodbyes as we prepare to move 7,000 miles away to the opposite side of the globe. 

The Bishkek countdown clock has shifted from months to weeks to days. 

5 days until the movers come to pack and take all of our stuff. 

10 days until we get on the plane. 

13 days until we arrive in Bishkek (long flight route + a stopover day in Germany). 

My friend Jill (also a Foreign Service spouse, headed to Laos soon) asked me how I was feeling about the move. 

“What stage are you in?” she asked. 

“The STUFF stage,” I said, and sent her a photo of my bedroom, which was littered with storage containers, piles of clothes, and a mountain of Music Together instruments. 

My friend Melissa, who worked alongside me in Riyadh, has a method for preparing for packout which she calls “Touch All The Things.” 

In her philosophy, you should not move house by dumping the contents of mystery closets and drawers into boxes and then opening them on the other side. You really gotta touch all the things. Ask yourself what you actually need. What you actually want. 

For me, the answer to this is always LESS. 

That sweater that makes me look like a pumpkin? My pre-baby skinny jeans? The bike seat Nora outgrew? Let it go. Clothing that’s holey or stained beyond meaningful wear. Mystery cords to electronics from 2008. Anything that doesn’t have an obvious home in our current house shouldn’t come to our new house, as we will have substantially fewer closets, and I don’t want our basement looking too much like Hoarders: Buried Alive. 

The to-do list is full of minutia like “order checks” and “cancel meal kit service” and “haircut???”

There’s so much to do in the next ten days. Hosting a farewell party. Buying two years worth of toothpaste and Kraft mac-n-cheese from Costco. Squeezing in last meetups and playdates. 

And I also have to console Nora as she processes everything that’s happening. She’s begun to worry about starting kindergarten and making friends. About leaving our house and the friends she loves here in Alexandria. 

In Sarah Manguso’s latest novel Liars, the protagonist (who is a mother) says she is “in charge of everything and in control of nothing.” 

This feels especially true these days. The lists, the organization, the management of emotions large and small. I’m in charge of all of it, but I can’t control the outcomes. I can’t control how easily my child adjusts to something she’s never done before. I can’t even control when we’ll see our stuff again. Being in charge but not in control feels like a new kind of in-between. There is both responsibility and the acceptance of what is. The unfairness of this in-between can be frustrating and overwhelming. But mostly it feels oddly familiar. 

Everything ends up in boxes eventually. The plane ride doesn’t last forever. The new normal sneaks up on us all. 

I told Greta (my therapist for just one more week) that I wasn’t sure if I was doing okay, or if I was numbed, in some way, to the grief and loss I should be feeling. 

Am I just doing okay because we’ve done this before? Is the excitement for a new chapter outweighing the sadness of this one coming to an end? Is it just resilience, that overused buzzword in all the Foreign Service guides and training courses? 

On the drive home from North Carolina, we passed a church with a sign out front. Due to a poor choice of italicized font, it initially appeared to read “NOPE IS HERE.” (The N, of course, was just a strangely formed H.) Hope is here. 

For me, it’s both, as I suppose it is for us all. 

Seeing new places! Making new friends! Kamala Harris! Simone Biles! Palestine, still. Sorting through the storage closet. COVID. Nephew dance parties. Goodbyes. Hellos. Anxiety. Packing tape. In charge, but not in control. Nope. And hope. 

In a week, I’ll be sitting in my empty house in Alexandria, a place that’s been so dear for the past four years. In two weeks, I’ll be sitting in my new home in Bishkek. In three weeks, I’ll be getting Nora ready for her first day of kindergarten and preparing for my first day of work at the Embassy. 

My goal is to get back to a regular writing schedule by September. Thank you all for your patience and your support of this newsletter through this time of transition. Feeling connected to you means so much, especially through the experience of moving somewhere so far and so unfamiliar. 

See you on the other side. 

Stay out of trouble, stay in touch, 

Dot

Ominous beach reflections on Pawley’s Island.

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DISCLAIMER: The views expressed in this newsletter are my own, and do not necessarily reflect those of the US Department of State or the US Government.

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