Showing posts with label travel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label travel. Show all posts
Thursday, June 14, 2012
Generation Next?
There is some discord among the experts as to the exact range of years within which one would have to have been born to qualify as a Gen Xer. Sometimes it ranges generously from 1964 - 1981 and other times, the line is drawn more conservatively between 1965 and 1972. There seems to be no dispute about those that came before. The boomers sprinkled the continent with a curious juxtaposition of militia and hippies. Equally recognizeable were those that came after, Generation Y (as in 'why can't my mother come with me to my job interview?' and 'why shouldn't I wear pajama bottoms to work in an office? It's ironic!') And though Gavin and I seem to fall between the most agreed upon range of X years, I feel we are part of perhaps a smaller subset within Generation X: Generation NeXt. As in 'what's next?'
How do I explain our propensity for constantly looking forward?
Could the answer be that Gavin and I spent most of our grown-up lives moving, planning and packing. No sooner did we arrive at adulthood and we were pulling at our previous drivers - childish anticipation and adolescent restlessness - to guide us to the next checkpoint. No. After all, we had some 20,000 colleagues living this life of commuting to work by Boeing 737 every six to eight months and most of them are not tormented by the prospect of staying put. Then, could it be my parents' view of travel as a right rather than a privilege (an inexorably European sentiment)? Could this inclination be explained by the frequent moves that were Gavin's family life when he was growing up? No, this is about more than peripatetic family tendencies.
Before I talk more about the call to action, I want to clarify: It's not about the helicopter.
The helicopter training thing was the easy part. Sure, it's financially draining but it's emotionally uplifting for Gavin. And it is, after all, his turn. After years of subjugating his own professional aspirations to mine (turning down promotions, living in my hometown, being the income earning parent while I got to stay home and see our son grow) it was his turn. And anyway, this did not start off as 'Mission Chopper'. This began - as many giant waves of change do - as nothing more than a comment, a piece of a conversation that just as easily could have dissolved into something more urgent and quotidian like a ringing phone, or the cry of a toddler looking for his orange tow truck. Our now everyday could easily have been swallowed up by our then everyday. But it wasn't.
And so this little piece of talk between us was allowed to turn into a question. I don't remember if it was as romantic and moody as 'Is this all there is?' or the more capricious 'I'm bored; What are we doing today?' But I remember that once it took flight we could neither ground it nor let it whirl around in our heads like a tornado out of control. We could not turn our backs on our so-proclaimed generational contemporaries. We had to ask the question: What's next?
Our plan began in the UK. That was to be our destination for emotional and cultural reasons. Gavin is from England and wanted for us to have a taste of what life is like there and for himself to see a drop of his own history fall into the glass momentarily (really, I think he was jonesing for Maltesers and other English confections....but I don't think he would ever fess up). We have some dear friends there who said they were willing to let us build our entire lives around them!
But despite the promise of a year's supply of English candy and my dream of a perpetual fountain of coffees with my besty, Gilly, while our children played jubilantly on the nearby heath (they have a lot of heaths there), the stark reality of moving to the most expensive country in the most expensive continent on the planet with no job, no purpose and hardly any connections made even the knowledge that it would probably rain every day the most miniscule reason on the list of many that this was a colossally bad idea.
Enter the Helicopter.
I am certain that I have mentioned already that being a helicopter pilot has been a dream of Gavin's since he was a tike. So inspired was he with this vision that he actually started a pilot fund made up of savings stashed away a little at a time. So simultaneously aware was he that this dream was unlikely to ever be realized that he constructed said fund out of pennies! I think when we finally broke open the piggy bank which, by then, had been receiving his contributions for years, we counted a grand total of $65.00.
In the meantime, our little life story was being sent up to its zenith of narrative tension and we had to be ready for the hurtling denouement that was coming. Here we were, a few years post-ships, well into land life but not so entrenched as to have to give up too much to move forward. We were around - probably - the midpoint of our lives despite longevity in both of our ancestral lines. Luca had just turned two so we were in that short but glorious period of overlap during which he would be charming and communicative AND an unrelenting fan of his parents AND not yet bolted in place by the school year schedule. With virtually everything in favour of us taking off, we couldn't let this pesky purposelessness get in our way.
And so, despite the disappointing returns from the Copper Investment Portfolio, we decided to unsave our savings, make ourselves a project and give flight (sorry, couldn't resist) to Gavin's dream. The promise of all of us riding into the sunset (we'd be in England so of course there's no guarantee we would even see it from behind all the drizzle) in a helicopter with Gavin at the helm saved our dream from certain tragic end....
However, a very short period of research did not yield auspicious findings. The cost of flight school anywhere in Europe (yes, I'm talking to you too, UK ) was three times that of North American equivalent training. The weather made the likelihood of flying blackout periods high and the flight school nearby where we would want to live did not offer the kind of training Gavin wanted. The comparative approach that we had employed to get a sense of the aviation world figured in destinations that we weren't even actually considering, like South Africa (too unfamiliar), Thunder Bay, Ontario (too cold) and Hawaii (too pipe dream within a pipe dreamish). But their intended roles as planning placebos were eclipsed when their candidatures - flawed though they may have been - all became more appealing than our original contender's. And so we pressed 'delete' on our plans to make England our home during 'Project Chopper'. One of the more viable destinations on our comparative study - and in fact where we eventually stuck the pin - was Southwest Florida. Hot, humid, conservative: The South. I guess it seems an unexpected choice. But then again, it all depends.
Consider the moment when you first wake up. For an unspecified time - a second, perhaps a dream vibration left over, a transition engineered by your subconscious - you don't understand your presence. You don't recognize your body and you don't know what to do next. You are an exotic, unfamiliar housing for your consciousness. Then, synapses fire all at once sending you a surge of recognition and suddenly you are fortified with yourself - reinvented exactly as you were yesterday before your dreams caught you up. Most of the time we aren't paying attention when this happens and sometimes we are, but then we soon forget what it was like to have ahead of us absolutely anything; to feel like wherever we are is delicious and exciting. We long to live somewhere and belong there. We thirst for community in whatever form. We work to establish rituals and comforting habits. But it is in that time that comes before, when we first arrive in a place and don't understand our presence, when we don't know what to do next, when we feel like we, accompanied by our bodies are in exotic, unfamiliar environs, that we feel most alive.
So, patient reader, you see now that this decision was not about the helicopter and it was not about our itchy feet. It was about extending and noticing that moment when you first wake up or when you first plant your feet somewhere when it's all ahead of you; about making it last and remembering how it feels. And it doesn't matter where we go because anywhere is exotic until we populate it with our familiarity, our habits, our consumption and our comforts. The helicopter was just a prop, our true Deus Ex Machina rescuing us from the would-be tragedy of talking ourselves out of it.
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Indolence is Bliss
I haven't posted for a while and part of the reason is my prolonged absence from my regular life rhythms because of our extended trip to Toronto. I was reminded why road-trips are so celebrated: the singular and very specific objective of 'getting there' is at the end of the trip. That leaves skads of time between the start of the trip and 'getting there' without any pressing tasks. True, the trip itself used to be more of an adventure. In our travel dense twenties, light on baggage and guided by the beacon of our Lonely Planet, we sought less beaten paths and the stuff of good stories. And now, the glow of our beacon has shifted to the the glint of sunlight on the pages of our hotel discount coupon books. Sure, a lot has changed but there is still ample time to do nothing. And I had a great time doing nothing during our road trip. Just driving and talking or driving and being silent. Nothing to do but get there. Indolence is bliss. And I wanted to extend that bliss after we arrived at our destination. But there were too many distractions and fresh from my new home I couldn't help but compare it to my old home.
So here I am: back in the new home and presenting to you the expected: 'Here vs. There' entry but - I hope - in a fresh format. A few vignettes will tell the tale of where my indolence lead. Nothing to do but make observations and package them into a little collection I like to call (and you will too)
'So What?'
 |
| WHITE MAN WALKING |
Citizens of Pedestria unite against what appears to be a conspiracy against you here in Florida! Six lane highways erroneously named 'Street' and 'Road' and even 'Avenue' when they should be called Local Interstate 'Rapido'. I knew I signed up for this when I moved here but didn't realize how long it had been since I visited Pedestria myself until I went away 'up North' to Toronto. It was when I finally uncoiled my pretzel like driver's body and used my gross motor skills; when I blinked rapidly trying to focus my eyes on the specimen photographed above (barely recognizable at first glance) that I saw what I had become: an ex-Pedestriate! People here in south-west Florida simply don't walk anywhere. A more empirical indication of this is that, during our 4 week stay in Toronto, we filled up with gas only once. When I'm in Florida and in my car - and that is constantly, my friends - my eyes are rapidly moving between speedometer, rear-view mirror, road ahead and the fuel gauge trying to stay ahead of that needle sliding fast along the crescent shaped display. I inevitably lose the race and consider my defeat as I stand sheepishly at the gas pump for the third time in a week!
How is such an extreme car culture formed? Well, for starters the one time we fill the tank in Toronto costs 75% of what three fill-ups cost here. Ahh the smell of economies of scale. So, for starters, it costs less to drive here in the south. Despite the fact that Torontonians appear to be more in love with their cars than most city dwellers, it would be too expensive for every resident to sit behind a wheel for much of the day (commutes to Brampton or Pickering notwithstanding).
How is such an extreme car culture formed? Well, for starters the one time we fill the tank in Toronto costs 75% of what three fill-ups cost here. Ahh the smell of economies of scale. So, for starters, it costs less to drive here in the south. Despite the fact that Torontonians appear to be more in love with their cars than most city dwellers, it would be too expensive for every resident to sit behind a wheel for much of the day (commutes to Brampton or Pickering notwithstanding).
Also, it takes 20 minutes to get just about anywhere down here. Going to the grocery store? That takes about 20 minutes. ..the library? Oh, about 20 minutes. How about the gym? Yup - 20 minutes. In the bright lights of the big city, 20 minutes gets you about 2 miles (depending on traffic, red lights, construction, detours, closures, etc.) In fact, deciding on what mode of transport to use on any given day in Toronto takes a whole strategic planning session. I am not going far so I could walk.... I need to carry lots of stuff with me, however, for my presentation to the partners before heading to hockey practice, so maybe I should take the car...... It's like the arctic tundra out there so maybe I should take public transit....... Hmm...what will cost me more - gas and parking or the transit fare? Before you know it, the sun has set, you've missed your presentation, been cut from the hockey team team and are standing in your front hall sweating in your goose down jacket and toque (look it up, non-Canucks). Virtually, none of the above conditions exist here in Florida: everywhere is - that's right - 20 minutes away; no one plays sports requiring 100 extra pounds of gear; there are no Siberian weather conditions; you never pay for parking and there is no public transport system anyway. It's no wonder everyone is revving up their engines. Besides, walking is akin to willingly stepping into a pool of razor blades. My friend, Lisa astutely pointed out recently that people come here from everywhere bringing to the local roads a plethora of driving styles. We end up with Germans used to their G-force speeds on their Autobahns, Quebecers tediously waiting at red lights to turn right, 'back East'-ers used to a more, um, assertive style of taking to the road and so on...
Moreover, people have conversations out the backs of their cars. Serious issues of economic relevence or social justice reduced to a few words and exclamation marks on a bumber sticker:
'TEA PARTY WILL TRIUMPH'
'OBAMA IS NOT MY PRESIDENT',
CHOOSE ABORTION
ADOPTION
I make no comment here about what side of these issues one may be on. I only wonder why it would be important for some random person behind you at a traffic light to know what your opinion is. I can speculate that bumper sticker monologues take the place of actual dialogue and that people prefer expletives over the steering wheel to actual conversation with a human! Having said that, I had a discussion with a woman who had as many markers of where she belonged on the political spectrum as the NRA Tea Party Pro-Lifer except that she was on the other end of it. 'PROUD TO BE A DEMOCRAT' one sticker proclaimed. Another 'BP OIL SPILL: MORE PROOF OF WHY REGULATIONS AREN'T SOCIALIST, BUT COMMON SENSE'. She told me that she had been forced off the road once and that on the shoulder, the offending driver got out of his car and said to her 'With those bumper stickers, I wish I had my gun with me right now' !!!. Yet she persists in wearing her opinions on her car despite death threats. I guess the thrill of these car-boot conversations and the possibility of road rage - ironically enough - keeps people feeling connected in an increasingly disengaged world. And so it is thus that people are forced into their cars more often, for longer periods of time and for greater distances: 20 minute drives, cheap gas, unsafe walking conditions and the promise of sparkling conversation over a cup of coffee ....and a windshield.
Globalization has assured that we can eat strawberries in the middle of a snowstorm, chomp Big Macs by the Fontana Trevi and dispose of our Starbucks cups before entering the Taj Mahal. And yet, despite the ugliness and cultural depletion that all this threatens, it has not touched every corner of the globe (wait, globes don't have corners!) The milk marketing board of Canada has defied all the ostensible 'freedoms' created by globalization and transnationalism! It has protected the Canadian Dairy industry farmers, workers, and distributors! It has kept me from my favourite yogurt!
FAGE brand yogurt is the most beautiful yogurt I have ever tasted. The word FAGE (pronounced Fa-yeh) is the imperative of 'Eat' in Greek ....so "Eat!' and believe me, I would love to. Made using the original method of this company based in Greece, its exported products may be even better than the yogurt which is made from milk from actual Greek cows. Last year, they ran an also beautiful - if slightly esoteric - TV ad with flowy images and a voice over by Willem Dafoe. This stuff tastes so good, it appears to have a higher percentage of milk fat than milk fat itself and yet has none (or 1% or 2%). It has a balanced tartness that doesn't make you pucker like some watery Balkan style or stirred yogurts do. There is no gelatin or starch charged with suspending and stabilizing particles pretending 'smoothness'. It is available in Greece (obviously) the UK, France, Belgium, Italy, Holland, Germany, the US.....but not in Canada. The Canadian Milk marketing board has done such a good job of protecting the Canadian Dairy industry, they have protected us out of this gem. In order to be able to fix prices of milk, eggs, cheese etc., the marketing board had to meet World Trade Organizaton (WTO) and General Agreement on Tarrifs and Trade (GATT) requirements and those agreements included import restrictions. As a result, while in Canada I got to buy Canadian products (OK, yay) for 300% the price I pay here (not YAY) and no FAGE yogurt (definitely not YAY). I got used to enjoying this trove of tasty probiotics in Florida and missed it terribly when in Toronto. It became my mission (along with making trivial observations to put in this blog) to find out why. My research led me to a moment of harsh comparison between a true market economy and a market oriented economy. OK, we'll keep our health care, you keep your cheap cell phones. But let's get going on a trans-border yogurt stimulus plan.
WOULD YOU LIKE YOUR NICKEL BACK?
Always a popular fulcrum around which to plot one's anchors of comparison is that of music. Music, more than bumper stickers, hair styles or college majors is the G.P.S. for the cultural perspectives of individuals and communities alike. It's not surprising that in the largest city (Toronto) in a country with a strong songwriter tradition (Canada) that new and indie music is born and thrives consistently. On any given day, a band you love or would consider loving is playing somewhere. Here, try to find a decent radio station and you get on the fast track to settle-city. There's good music here only it's buried. And, honestly, my shovel is not hip enough to dig that deep. Besides the Latino stations on which some great classics and newer reggaeton and Latin hip-hop tunes can be heard, I listen to a basic, general, inoffensive FM station. Their claim that they 'play anything' is substantiated. Really. Their playlists are eclectic (I'm talking any of several Nirvana tunes followed by that Pina Colada song from the 70s!) but just not very big. I would say that about 70% of the time I get in my car (and you know how often that is) and turn the radio on, 'Rock Star' is playing. They sure do love their Nickelback here. Ever notice how when cultural paradigms are removed from their geographic birthplace, they take on an unexpected grandeur? Like how Chinese food - so revered here in North America - in Hong Kong is just food. And African safaris for all their exotic glamour-travel appeal in Africa are just Sunday afternoon walks in the park. Well, I know I haven't recorded any albums recently or ever. I don't believe, however, that that strips me of the right to say that Nickelback are something of a national embarrassment as far as I'm concerned. But here, they are worshipped to the tune of 2nd biggest grossing foreign act in the U.S. behind the Beatles!! Legend (and Google) has it that the band got their name from the phrase Mike Kroeger used at the job he had at Starbucks - before the band made it big - when returning change to customers as in 'Here's your nickel back, Sir'.
What's even more peculiar about this hourly ode to Nickelback on the radio is that the song they have chosen to overplay is one that they have to censor about 50% of. The song is about the quest for stardom and the glittery, disposable life of a rockstar. In the line 'the girls come easy and the drugs come cheap', on this radio station, the girls still come easy but - as it turns out - it's the bleep that come cheap. So, groupie promiscuity and essentially prostitution are OK, but the drugs (that by the way will come up in the next commercial break disguised as Celebrex or Lipitor) are a big problem!
Do I want my Nickelback? You can keep the whole dollar!
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Generation Next? Finally....some answers.
There is some discord among the experts as to the exact range of years within which one would have to have been born to qualify as a Gen Xer. Sometimes it ranges generously from 1964 - 1981 and other times, the line is drawn more conservatively between 1965 and 1972. There seems to be no dispute about those that came before. The boomers sprinkled the continent with a curious juxtaposition of militia and hippies. Equally recognizeable were those that came after, Generation Y (as in 'why can't my mother come with me to my job interview?' and 'why shouldn't I wear pajama bottoms to work in an office? It's ironic!') And though Gavin and I seem to fall between the most agreed upon range of X years, I feel we are part of perhaps a smaller subset within Generation X: Generation NeXt. As in 'what's next?'
How do I explain our propensity for constantly looking forward?
Could the answer be that Gavin and I spent most of our grown-up lives moving, planning and packing. No sooner did we arrive at adulthood and we were pulling at our previous drivers - childish anticipation and adolescent restlessness - to guide us to the next checkpoint. No. After all, we had some 20,000 colleagues living this life of commuting to work by Boeing 737 every six to eight months and most of them are not tormented by the prospect of staying put. Then, could it be my parents' view of travel as a right rather than a privilege (an inexorably European sentiment)? Could this inclination be explained by the frequent moves that were Gavin's family life when he was growing up? No, this is about more than peripatetic family tendencies.
Before I talk more about the call to action, I want to clarify: It's not about the helicopter.
The helicopter training thing was the easy part. Sure, it's financially draining but it's emotionally uplifting for Gavin. And it is, after all, his turn. After years of subjugating his own professional aspirations to mine (turning down promotions, living in my hometown, being the income earning parent while I got to stay home and see our son grow) it was his turn. And anyway, this did not start off as 'Mission Chopper'. This began - as many giant waves of change do - as nothing more than a comment, a piece of a conversation that just as easily could have dissolved into something more urgent and quotidian like a ringing phone, or the cry of a toddler looking for his orange tow truck. Our now everyday could easily have been swallowed up by our then everyday. But it wasn't.
And so this little piece of talk between us was allowed to turn into a question. I don't remember if it was as romantic and moody as 'Is this all there is?' or the more capricious 'I'm bored; What are we doing today?' But I remember that once it took flight we could neither ground it nor let it whirl around in our heads like a tornado out of control. We could not turn our backs on our so-proclaimed generational contemporaries. We had to ask the question: What's next?
Our plan began in the UK. That was to be our destination for emotional and cultural reasons. Gavin is from England and wanted for us to have a taste of what life is like there and for himself to see a drop of his own history fall into the glass momentarily (really, I think he was jonesing for Maltesers and other English confections....but I don't think he would ever fess up). We have some dear friends there who said they were willing to let us build our entire lives around them!
But despite the promise of a year's supply of English candy and my dream of a perpetual fountain of coffees with my besty, Gilly, while our children played jubilantly on the nearby heath (they have a lot of heaths there), the stark reality of moving to the most expensive country in the most expensive continent on the planet with no job, no purpose and hardly any connections made even the knowledge that it would probably rain every day the most miniscule reason on the list of many that this was a colossally bad idea.
Enter the Helicopter.
I am certain that I have mentioned already that being a helicopter pilot has been a dream of Gavin's since he was a tike. So inspired was he with this vision that he actually started a pilot fund made up of savings stashed away a little at a time. So simultaneously aware was he that this dream was unlikely to ever be realized that he constructed said fund out of pennies! I think when we finally broke open the piggy bank which, by then, had been receiving his contributions for years, we counted a grand total of $65.00.
In the meantime, our little life story was being sent up to its zenith of narrative tension and we had to be ready for the hurtling denouement that was coming. Here we were, a few years post-ships, well into land life but not so entrenched as to have to give up too much to move forward. We were around - probably - the midpoint of our lives despite longevity in both of our ancestral lines. Luca had just turned two so we were in that short but glorious period of overlap during which he would be charming and communicative AND an unrelenting fan of his parents AND not yet bolted in place by the school year schedule. With virtually everything in favour of us taking off, we couldn't let this pesky purposelessness get in our way.
And so, despite the disappointing returns from the Copper Investment Portfolio, we decided to unsave our savings, make ourselves a project and give flight (sorry, couldn't resist) to Gavin's dream. The promise of all of us riding into the sunset (we'd be in England so of course there's no guarantee we would even see it from behind all the drizzle) in a helicopter with Gavin at the helm saved our dream from certain tragic end....
However, a very short period of research did not yield auspicious findings. The cost of flight school anywhere in Europe (yes, I'm talking to you too, UK ) was three times that of North American equivalent training. The weather made the likelihood of flying blackout periods high and the flight school nearby where we would want to live did not offer the kind of training Gavin wanted. The comparative approach that we had employed to get a sense of the aviation world figured in destinations that we weren't even actually considering, like South Africa (too unfamiliar), Thunder Bay, Ontario (too cold) and Hawaii (too pipe dream within a pipe dreamish). But their intended roles as planning placebos were eclipsed when their candidatures - flawed though they may have been - all became more appealing than our original contender's. And so we pressed 'delete' on our plans to make England our home during 'Project Chopper'. One of the more viable destinations on our comparative study - and in fact where we eventually stuck the pin - was Southwest Florida. Hot, humid, conservative: The South. I guess it seems an unexpected choice. But then again, it all depends.
Consider the moment when you first wake up. For an unspecified time - a second, perhaps a dream vibration left over, a transition engineered by your subconscious - you don't understand your presence. You don't recognize your body and you don't know what to do next. You are an exotic, unfamiliar housing for your consciousness. Then, synapses fire all at once sending you a surge of recognition and suddenly you are fortified with yourself - reinvented exactly as you were yesterday before your dreams caught you up. Most of the time we aren't paying attention when this happens and sometimes we are, but then we soon forget what it was like to have ahead of us absolutely anything; to feel like wherever we are is delicious and exciting. We long to live somewhere and belong there. We thirst for community in whatever form. We work to establish rituals and comforting habits. But it is in that time that comes before, when we first arrive in a place and don't understand our presence, when we don't know what to do next, when we feel like we, accompanied by our bodies are in exotic, unfamiliar environs, that we feel most alive.
So, patient reader, you see now that this decision was not about the helicopter and it was not about our itchy feet. It was about extending and noticing that moment when you first wake up or when you first plant your feet somewhere when it's all ahead of you; about making it last and remembering how it feels. And it doesn't matter where we go because anywhere is exotic until we populate it with our familiarity, our habits, our consumption and our comforts. The helicopter was just a prop, our true Deus Ex Machina rescuing us from the would-be tragedy of talking ourselves out of it.
How do I explain our propensity for constantly looking forward?
Could the answer be that Gavin and I spent most of our grown-up lives moving, planning and packing. No sooner did we arrive at adulthood and we were pulling at our previous drivers - childish anticipation and adolescent restlessness - to guide us to the next checkpoint. No. After all, we had some 20,000 colleagues living this life of commuting to work by Boeing 737 every six to eight months and most of them are not tormented by the prospect of staying put. Then, could it be my parents' view of travel as a right rather than a privilege (an inexorably European sentiment)? Could this inclination be explained by the frequent moves that were Gavin's family life when he was growing up? No, this is about more than peripatetic family tendencies.
Before I talk more about the call to action, I want to clarify: It's not about the helicopter.
The helicopter training thing was the easy part. Sure, it's financially draining but it's emotionally uplifting for Gavin. And it is, after all, his turn. After years of subjugating his own professional aspirations to mine (turning down promotions, living in my hometown, being the income earning parent while I got to stay home and see our son grow) it was his turn. And anyway, this did not start off as 'Mission Chopper'. This began - as many giant waves of change do - as nothing more than a comment, a piece of a conversation that just as easily could have dissolved into something more urgent and quotidian like a ringing phone, or the cry of a toddler looking for his orange tow truck. Our now everyday could easily have been swallowed up by our then everyday. But it wasn't.
And so this little piece of talk between us was allowed to turn into a question. I don't remember if it was as romantic and moody as 'Is this all there is?' or the more capricious 'I'm bored; What are we doing today?' But I remember that once it took flight we could neither ground it nor let it whirl around in our heads like a tornado out of control. We could not turn our backs on our so-proclaimed generational contemporaries. We had to ask the question: What's next?
Our plan began in the UK. That was to be our destination for emotional and cultural reasons. Gavin is from England and wanted for us to have a taste of what life is like there and for himself to see a drop of his own history fall into the glass momentarily (really, I think he was jonesing for Maltesers and other English confections....but I don't think he would ever fess up). We have some dear friends there who said they were willing to let us build our entire lives around them!
But despite the promise of a year's supply of English candy and my dream of a perpetual fountain of coffees with my besty, Gilly, while our children played jubilantly on the nearby heath (they have a lot of heaths there), the stark reality of moving to the most expensive country in the most expensive continent on the planet with no job, no purpose and hardly any connections made even the knowledge that it would probably rain every day the most miniscule reason on the list of many that this was a colossally bad idea.
Enter the Helicopter.
I am certain that I have mentioned already that being a helicopter pilot has been a dream of Gavin's since he was a tike. So inspired was he with this vision that he actually started a pilot fund made up of savings stashed away a little at a time. So simultaneously aware was he that this dream was unlikely to ever be realized that he constructed said fund out of pennies! I think when we finally broke open the piggy bank which, by then, had been receiving his contributions for years, we counted a grand total of $65.00.
In the meantime, our little life story was being sent up to its zenith of narrative tension and we had to be ready for the hurtling denouement that was coming. Here we were, a few years post-ships, well into land life but not so entrenched as to have to give up too much to move forward. We were around - probably - the midpoint of our lives despite longevity in both of our ancestral lines. Luca had just turned two so we were in that short but glorious period of overlap during which he would be charming and communicative AND an unrelenting fan of his parents AND not yet bolted in place by the school year schedule. With virtually everything in favour of us taking off, we couldn't let this pesky purposelessness get in our way.
And so, despite the disappointing returns from the Copper Investment Portfolio, we decided to unsave our savings, make ourselves a project and give flight (sorry, couldn't resist) to Gavin's dream. The promise of all of us riding into the sunset (we'd be in England so of course there's no guarantee we would even see it from behind all the drizzle) in a helicopter with Gavin at the helm saved our dream from certain tragic end....
However, a very short period of research did not yield auspicious findings. The cost of flight school anywhere in Europe (yes, I'm talking to you too, UK ) was three times that of North American equivalent training. The weather made the likelihood of flying blackout periods high and the flight school nearby where we would want to live did not offer the kind of training Gavin wanted. The comparative approach that we had employed to get a sense of the aviation world figured in destinations that we weren't even actually considering, like South Africa (too unfamiliar), Thunder Bay, Ontario (too cold) and Hawaii (too pipe dream within a pipe dreamish). But their intended roles as planning placebos were eclipsed when their candidatures - flawed though they may have been - all became more appealing than our original contender's. And so we pressed 'delete' on our plans to make England our home during 'Project Chopper'. One of the more viable destinations on our comparative study - and in fact where we eventually stuck the pin - was Southwest Florida. Hot, humid, conservative: The South. I guess it seems an unexpected choice. But then again, it all depends.
Consider the moment when you first wake up. For an unspecified time - a second, perhaps a dream vibration left over, a transition engineered by your subconscious - you don't understand your presence. You don't recognize your body and you don't know what to do next. You are an exotic, unfamiliar housing for your consciousness. Then, synapses fire all at once sending you a surge of recognition and suddenly you are fortified with yourself - reinvented exactly as you were yesterday before your dreams caught you up. Most of the time we aren't paying attention when this happens and sometimes we are, but then we soon forget what it was like to have ahead of us absolutely anything; to feel like wherever we are is delicious and exciting. We long to live somewhere and belong there. We thirst for community in whatever form. We work to establish rituals and comforting habits. But it is in that time that comes before, when we first arrive in a place and don't understand our presence, when we don't know what to do next, when we feel like we, accompanied by our bodies are in exotic, unfamiliar environs, that we feel most alive.
So, patient reader, you see now that this decision was not about the helicopter and it was not about our itchy feet. It was about extending and noticing that moment when you first wake up or when you first plant your feet somewhere when it's all ahead of you; about making it last and remembering how it feels. And it doesn't matter where we go because anywhere is exotic until we populate it with our familiarity, our habits, our consumption and our comforts. The helicopter was just a prop, our true Deus Ex Machina rescuing us from the would-be tragedy of talking ourselves out of it.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
The Arrival
Each day we drove I noticed the negative space between our belongings shrinking as our clothes, books and the material sum of our life as a family all compressed ever more compactly into the space of our trunk. This was strangely comforting in light of the fact that the space that would soon be our home was actually not much bigger than the trunk of our car and surprisingly similar in its "coziness" or "charm" or insert another appropriate realtor's adjective here. Our apartment - unlike our car - did have plumbing though.
This progressive compression made me think of what we left behind. The destination of some of our items was lovingly considered. Some of our furniture went to Meredith to be equally lovingly looked after in our absence. Some found new permanent homes or returned from whence they were generously donated - like our baby stuff that went via Kristen to soon to be parents. Some met a lonely, dark and damp fate relegated to a too small (still bigger than our car though!) storage unit in a bad part of town.
And what of the fate of the consumable items? Simply throwing them away - the easiest but most heinous of solutions - would not do. On the day before our departure, I realized that just because the refrigerator and pantry have doors on them allowing me to ignore their contents doesn't mean the new resident would do the same. Does it? Nope.
So, I opened said doors. Then I panicked. How is it that denying myself the pleasure (yes, I mean that) of grocery shopping for weeks in preparation for our departure resulted in such an insignificant reduction of food-stuffs? Well, this would all have to be donated - thoughtfully. After all, donating amaranth flour and candied chestnuts to a food bank is inconsiderate and naive. Even in my state of emergency I would not succumb to this middle-class insular behaviour even if the alternatives were inconvenient...very inconvenient.
I began to consider carefully the recipients of the food. All the baking ingredients and accoutrement would go to Melissa who, were she making her living from baking rather than from nursing, would be causing health issues instead of solving them (but would be extremely rich from her cheesecake sales!)
Obscure grains, bulk items and so-proclaimed (by myself) healthy foods go to my recently reduced brother. Staples go to practical Erika. And any exotic, hard to find items go to my foodiest of foodie friends - Dana (props to Norma, Meredith and Kristen though). Despite her creativity with food as well as other media, I have no idea what she will do with rose petal preserve!
When we arrived, as we started to de-compress (our nerves and our stuff) I found myself caught in this contradictory meltdown. First, "there is no storage space here - where will we put our special jumbo muffin tin?"...and then a minute later, " doh, I forgot my electric pepper grinder" or "aw, I wish I HAD brought those rice paper wrappers after all". Now, I longed for the rose petal preserves and all the stuff we left behind....anything to anchor me here, to make me feel like I was just here on vacation and that this year of drinking hormone injected milk and pee-pee coloured, weak beer would fly by in a flash like the choppers Gavin would soon be piloting.
We all felt disconnected - suddenly with no sense of place - vagabond like in our bottom of the barrel clothes we were left with while everything else waited in the laundry basket. We felt tattered and homeless especially during those first few days during the unpacking phase. Gavin and I might glance at each other tacitly agreeing not to dwell out loud on this feeling. 'It will pass' we thought.
Only Luca acknowledged the elephant in the Florida room. I don't know if he was referring to the little rolling Travel-pro luggage we used every time we checked into hotels - or as he was calling each inn - Luca's hotel house. Maybe he was talking about the little case with a handle that he got for his toy cars for Christmas from his cousins, Noah and Tyler. But when we asked him as we walked about the condo complex of our new home on our first day there, "where is Luca's house?" he pointed to our building and said in his adorable, squeaky voice with its upturned inflection at the end making everything sound like a question, "...black suitcase(?)".
This progressive compression made me think of what we left behind. The destination of some of our items was lovingly considered. Some of our furniture went to Meredith to be equally lovingly looked after in our absence. Some found new permanent homes or returned from whence they were generously donated - like our baby stuff that went via Kristen to soon to be parents. Some met a lonely, dark and damp fate relegated to a too small (still bigger than our car though!) storage unit in a bad part of town.
And what of the fate of the consumable items? Simply throwing them away - the easiest but most heinous of solutions - would not do. On the day before our departure, I realized that just because the refrigerator and pantry have doors on them allowing me to ignore their contents doesn't mean the new resident would do the same. Does it? Nope.
So, I opened said doors. Then I panicked. How is it that denying myself the pleasure (yes, I mean that) of grocery shopping for weeks in preparation for our departure resulted in such an insignificant reduction of food-stuffs? Well, this would all have to be donated - thoughtfully. After all, donating amaranth flour and candied chestnuts to a food bank is inconsiderate and naive. Even in my state of emergency I would not succumb to this middle-class insular behaviour even if the alternatives were inconvenient...very inconvenient.
I began to consider carefully the recipients of the food. All the baking ingredients and accoutrement would go to Melissa who, were she making her living from baking rather than from nursing, would be causing health issues instead of solving them (but would be extremely rich from her cheesecake sales!)
Obscure grains, bulk items and so-proclaimed (by myself) healthy foods go to my recently reduced brother. Staples go to practical Erika. And any exotic, hard to find items go to my foodiest of foodie friends - Dana (props to Norma, Meredith and Kristen though). Despite her creativity with food as well as other media, I have no idea what she will do with rose petal preserve!
When we arrived, as we started to de-compress (our nerves and our stuff) I found myself caught in this contradictory meltdown. First, "there is no storage space here - where will we put our special jumbo muffin tin?"...and then a minute later, " doh, I forgot my electric pepper grinder" or "aw, I wish I HAD brought those rice paper wrappers after all". Now, I longed for the rose petal preserves and all the stuff we left behind....anything to anchor me here, to make me feel like I was just here on vacation and that this year of drinking hormone injected milk and pee-pee coloured, weak beer would fly by in a flash like the choppers Gavin would soon be piloting.
We all felt disconnected - suddenly with no sense of place - vagabond like in our bottom of the barrel clothes we were left with while everything else waited in the laundry basket. We felt tattered and homeless especially during those first few days during the unpacking phase. Gavin and I might glance at each other tacitly agreeing not to dwell out loud on this feeling. 'It will pass' we thought.
Only Luca acknowledged the elephant in the Florida room. I don't know if he was referring to the little rolling Travel-pro luggage we used every time we checked into hotels - or as he was calling each inn - Luca's hotel house. Maybe he was talking about the little case with a handle that he got for his toy cars for Christmas from his cousins, Noah and Tyler. But when we asked him as we walked about the condo complex of our new home on our first day there, "where is Luca's house?" he pointed to our building and said in his adorable, squeaky voice with its upturned inflection at the end making everything sound like a question, "...black suitcase(?)".
Sunday, February 6, 2011
the prep - the trip - the border - PART II
The barometer for our sense of control over this odyssey was Luca's mattress. Before we left, we gave Luca's crib away but felt a desperate attachment to the mattress. Luca had been successfully sleeping through the night and for really long naps in the afternoon on this mattress. Besides, what better symbol of home is there than a bed? ...a good night's sleep; a place to lay your head to rest. So, we thought: it'll fit - we know he likes it - why mess with a good thing? Now it was the final item to be packed - perched (initially...and then eventually tightly strapped and bagged within an inch of its life) to the top of our roof.
I humbly amend Lao Tzu's famous quote, "...to become learned each day add something. To become enlightened each day, drop something." by adding, "...to en-lighten your car enough to reach the minimum speed on the interstate, leave the toaster oven (and any number of other household items easily purchased at Target at your destination) at home! To make sense of the task of packing the car that had become an advanced, life-size game of Jenga, Gavin enlisted the help of our friends: the spatially skilled and vertically endowed Gilad and Jason. I left the capable crew of three scratching their heads in the midst of what looked like a cargo hold's worth of personal belongings strewn about the car on the floor of the parking garage. Three hours later, the team emerged thirsty and bleary eyed but triumphant. I went down with Gavin to look at the car and saw a house of cards: simultaneously precarious and beautiful in it's engineering. I was so proud of them and impressed. I wanted to immortalize this success...this show of efficiency. I wanted to gaze at it, photograph it and explore it. I moved to open the back door to get a better view of everything stuffed (artfully) in there. Gavin lurched at me, " I wouldn't do that if I were you!"
We left Monday morning, our collective mood uncertain and fragile. After finally surmounting delays related to forgotten sippy cups, missed exits and a final fix of Commons' coffee (decidedly out of the way but so worth it!) we were on the highway. After a few minutes of coasting we looked at each other no longer able to ignore the high decibel flapping sound coming from outside. Gavin pulled over and got out to investigate. He returned a few moments later, "...it's the mattress", he said. "I am going to have to pull the straps out from the bottom of the trunk, double bag it and tighten it to the roof". Ah - so just as for the mattress, we too would have to search inside ourselves, the deepest part of our "trunks" to find whatever tool we had that would tighten our resolve; that would make us unflappable for what lay ahead.
After just a few hours of driving we reached the border - the apex of this road trip. This was the point after which, we thought, everything would be actually and metaphorically - coasting. The following dynamic is universal: it applies to everyone crossing a border and to every officer presiding over every border of every country. WE are supposed to be nervous; THEY are supposed to feel omnipotent. This is the way it is supposed to be and should not be tampered with in any way. WE simply have to remain nervous until we survive this uncomfortable (at best) interaction. THEY have no choice but to behave omnipotently because backpeddaling and being magnanimous might get them fired and - worse - mess with the natural order. So, we sail through.....to secondary inspection where we get through a series of challenges. First, the officer does not want to allow myself, Luca or our stuff entry. Then after agreeing that we would be entered as Gavin's dependents (ironically allowing us more time than if were were there as carefree tourists) he peruses the paperwork and we all discover that Gavin was issued the wrong visa by the consulate! So, the now helpful officer waives the visa, agrees to let everybody through and is poised to stamp the final stamp in all of our passports.....then......he realizes...that we haven't paid some fee that was meant to have been paid after the visa was issued. So, of course we agree to pay the fee immediately especially as that is the only thing keeping those double doors under the EXIT door closed to us. But....the fee can only be paid online... and.... there is no internet access in the processing room.... and.... they are not allowed to help us in any way including jumping online for us. So, we are given special permission to use the otherwise restricted cell phone to call someone who has internet access to go to the site and pay the fee for us.....get a receipt number to plug in....to get a confirmation...to fax to the officer who is standing 30 inches from us.
Three hours later we are "landed" in our new home. We have been through the wars and we have the wounds - and the spoils - to show it. We decided to make that travel day short given the stress we had been through and the commensurate pallor of Gavin's face. We check into our hotel still too far north to see any dramatic changes in the weather. That night - in the darkness that falls too early this time of year - from the window of our hotel, as the snow begins to fall gently, Gavin's shadowy form can be glimpsed atop our car. He is repositioning the mattress and securing it tightening it and tightening it with a focus that is visibly unshakeable . He had found the straps - that mattress wasn't going anywhere.
I humbly amend Lao Tzu's famous quote, "...to become learned each day add something. To become enlightened each day, drop something." by adding, "...to en-lighten your car enough to reach the minimum speed on the interstate, leave the toaster oven (and any number of other household items easily purchased at Target at your destination) at home! To make sense of the task of packing the car that had become an advanced, life-size game of Jenga, Gavin enlisted the help of our friends: the spatially skilled and vertically endowed Gilad and Jason. I left the capable crew of three scratching their heads in the midst of what looked like a cargo hold's worth of personal belongings strewn about the car on the floor of the parking garage. Three hours later, the team emerged thirsty and bleary eyed but triumphant. I went down with Gavin to look at the car and saw a house of cards: simultaneously precarious and beautiful in it's engineering. I was so proud of them and impressed. I wanted to immortalize this success...this show of efficiency. I wanted to gaze at it, photograph it and explore it. I moved to open the back door to get a better view of everything stuffed (artfully) in there. Gavin lurched at me, " I wouldn't do that if I were you!"
We left Monday morning, our collective mood uncertain and fragile. After finally surmounting delays related to forgotten sippy cups, missed exits and a final fix of Commons' coffee (decidedly out of the way but so worth it!) we were on the highway. After a few minutes of coasting we looked at each other no longer able to ignore the high decibel flapping sound coming from outside. Gavin pulled over and got out to investigate. He returned a few moments later, "...it's the mattress", he said. "I am going to have to pull the straps out from the bottom of the trunk, double bag it and tighten it to the roof". Ah - so just as for the mattress, we too would have to search inside ourselves, the deepest part of our "trunks" to find whatever tool we had that would tighten our resolve; that would make us unflappable for what lay ahead.
After just a few hours of driving we reached the border - the apex of this road trip. This was the point after which, we thought, everything would be actually and metaphorically - coasting. The following dynamic is universal: it applies to everyone crossing a border and to every officer presiding over every border of every country. WE are supposed to be nervous; THEY are supposed to feel omnipotent. This is the way it is supposed to be and should not be tampered with in any way. WE simply have to remain nervous until we survive this uncomfortable (at best) interaction. THEY have no choice but to behave omnipotently because backpeddaling and being magnanimous might get them fired and - worse - mess with the natural order. So, we sail through.....to secondary inspection where we get through a series of challenges. First, the officer does not want to allow myself, Luca or our stuff entry. Then after agreeing that we would be entered as Gavin's dependents (ironically allowing us more time than if were were there as carefree tourists) he peruses the paperwork and we all discover that Gavin was issued the wrong visa by the consulate! So, the now helpful officer waives the visa, agrees to let everybody through and is poised to stamp the final stamp in all of our passports.....then......he realizes...that we haven't paid some fee that was meant to have been paid after the visa was issued. So, of course we agree to pay the fee immediately especially as that is the only thing keeping those double doors under the EXIT door closed to us. But....the fee can only be paid online... and.... there is no internet access in the processing room.... and.... they are not allowed to help us in any way including jumping online for us. So, we are given special permission to use the otherwise restricted cell phone to call someone who has internet access to go to the site and pay the fee for us.....get a receipt number to plug in....to get a confirmation...to fax to the officer who is standing 30 inches from us.
Three hours later we are "landed" in our new home. We have been through the wars and we have the wounds - and the spoils - to show it. We decided to make that travel day short given the stress we had been through and the commensurate pallor of Gavin's face. We check into our hotel still too far north to see any dramatic changes in the weather. That night - in the darkness that falls too early this time of year - from the window of our hotel, as the snow begins to fall gently, Gavin's shadowy form can be glimpsed atop our car. He is repositioning the mattress and securing it tightening it and tightening it with a focus that is visibly unshakeable . He had found the straps - that mattress wasn't going anywhere.
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