Temporary, Forever

Pretty much the first thing I did after receiving all your gorgeous congratulations regarding the news last week was to get sick, causing me to miss a couple of work opportunities as well as the chance to make delicious Thanksgiving treats at my friend-from-high-school’s cooking school. Not to worry though, because in exchange I’ve spent the last couple of days in bed: wiping my daintily dribbling nose, moaning piteously, and wringing every last drop of being-taken-care-of-by-my-mom I can out of the situation. We’ve both been acting as if I have consumption or something (Me: “Dim the lights, I beg of you! I wish to slumber peacefully!” Mom: “I will immediately convey a trayful of soothing liquid nourishment to your bedside!”) and I have been enjoying every minute (“A cold compress, for pity’s sake! A cold compress!”) that hasn’t been taken up by actually being sick and feeling gross.

Add to this the completely insane decision to foster a leetle beebee keetee, who needs to be bottle-fed and fur-to-skin cuddled about eighteen hours a day or he loses his little baby kitten mind, and there hasn’t been much time or opportunity to think about things like immigration or plane tickets or visas, really. I mean, not any more than I usually think about those things, which I would say has varied between thirty and eighty percent of my awake brain time since—well, over a year ago, now. My to-do list is humming along nicely and I’m planning out our vegetarian Thanksgiving-under-the-palm-trees and picking up more work here and there, but something has changed with the realization that I really can go back, that I really will go back, like, in eight-to-ten weeks. Soon I’ll have a plane ticket and a date and a real timeline, soon I’ll be there.

It does feel different. Last time I left I was consumed by unknowing, having no idea about what anything would be like. My first morning in Auckland when I got a trim hot chocolate I was stunned at how expensive it was, and was flabbergasted that the crosswalks made a beeping sound, and could not wrap my mind around dollar (and TWO dollar!) coins…and for a while everything was like that, everything was about being stymied by little details, about explaining myself and being explained to. So many things fell perfectly into my lap those first few months, I now see: the friends, the job, the flat, the bus route. I was so confused, and I was so lucky. So many things worked out so well so immediately.

With that in mind, I’m not worried about the small things anymore—I’ve been carrying around my leftover Kiwi dollars in my wallet since June so I won’t even have to go to the ATM for cab fare when I get to Wellington airport—but I have to say that some of the bigger picture stuff is beginning to gently nose itself into my constant running tally of what needs to be done now. Now there isn’t the same sense of “Oh what the hell, it’s only for a year,” that I had back then, there isn’t the same feeling of what-happens-in-NZ-stays-in-NZ. I’m not going to somewhere new and exciting this time, I’m going back to somewhere I have history and traditions—not many, not set in stone, but not a blank slate anymore, either. Now the emphasis isn’t on adventure and novelty, but about what it’s really going to mean to be on the other side of the world from a goodly portion of my loved ones for an unspecified amount of years. It’s not that I’m not going to return for visits, it’s not that at all—but at this point I’m not thinking in terms of When I Come Back. I’m really going to go, I’m really going to stay.

And even though much of this year has been sedate, especially these last few months home in Miami (when I haven’t been about to chew my hand off with frustration), I realize that I am really looking forward to some stability for the next little while. I’m looking forward to having my own place and to a paycheck and to little routines and rituals. I’m looking forward to new awesome friends and a new interesting job and new fabulous things to learn about my city but also to safety and security, to ordinariness. To not have to answer “Oh, I don’t really know!” when someone asks me how long I’m staying. It has been an exhilarating year on pretty much all levels but I’m deeply tired; I think, actually, that my getting sick after getting some of the best news, was a reaction to months and months of low-level, manageable stress, to always having to say “Oh I don’t really know!” I know it’s silly—because there are lots of people who are dealing for way higher levels of stress and anxiety for way longer time periods, I know–but there’s a part of me that hopes 2009 is sort of boring. That said, one of the many many things New Zealand taught me the first time around was that everything is temporary, even though everything feels like forever. You never can tell, exactly how fleeting a certain time will be, how many days or months or years you have left, but you can guarantee yourself that someday something will change. So who knows, maybe in a couple of months I will be looking back with nostalgia at this time of rest and peaceful underemployment, when I had time to snuggle with kittens and to be slightly, indulgently ill, when I could be with my family completely without schedule or agenda. Or maybe I’ll be chomping at the bit, restless, rolling my eyes for a way out, pressing hard for the next thing, sneaking looks at travel websites the way I did while I was waiting to leave the first time. It’s impossible to know or predict, and so I continue to try to concentrate on being where I am right here, right now.

Taken while I was writing this entry.