Worth the Cost

I read a book recently written by a woman, who along with her husband had raised her children abroad. Over 5 countries and 20 years, she raised Americans that really never lived in America until at the age of 18 or 19 they returned to the States to attend university. She discussed some of her challenges and while some were very different than the one’s I have experienced, there were some I so clearly identified with. She had me laughing, crying and shaking my head at the irony. Here are a few we had in common:

-You move to a new country and your husband is nowhere to be seen. Let it be known, that just because you move to a new country for your husbands job, does not necessarily mean that your husband will work solely in the country you moved too. This seems true with at least 85% of the expats I have come in contact with. Moving half way across the world does not eliminate travel, or even minimize it. It just shortens the length of the plane ride. A few months after arriving in Riyadh we bought some bedside lamps for our bedroom. You can pull out the fixture at the top and fill the innards with whatever you please. Mine is slowly filling with seashells collected from our travels. Wade’s with ticket stubs. He tries to save them all. My guess is about 65-70% get saved.

The guy is on the road a lot…

-When the husband is on the road, some crisis will happen at the house. Like, an air conditioning unit will leak water from the ceiling. And you will not notice for days because it is dripping into a plastic basket a top your laundry room shelf. When you do notice, you’ll call a repairman who comes to your house, looks at the ceiling, then at you and without so much as opening up the ceiling tile tells you it’s going to cost 10,000 dhs (approx $3000). So you call another repair guy. Because the first one either picked up on your English accent and pale skin and therefore has determined you’re made of money or he’s smoking crack. The next guy shows up, opens up the ceiling tile and tells you something in a poor combination of Urdu and English. You stare at him, he stares back at you, you nod your head and then start gesturing because you have not the slightest idea what he just said. After awhile, he nods, then turns and walks out of the house, gets in his car and drives away. And you’re left standing in the hallway saying, “What just happened?”, out loud. But fear not, he’ll show up again the next day, and the following few days after that un-announced to repair your leak, clean up the huge mess he made and charge you 350 dhs (approx $90). And after he’s gone, you still won’t know what happened. I was having a conversation with Wade one day on the phone when they were here. They said something to me and Wade asked, “What is he saying?” and I, while looking right at the guy and smiling say, “I have no idea. These guys are a real trial in my life right now.” Wade laughs and the Pakistani, looks back at me and smiles and says, “Ok madam. Here, fix, ok.”

-Navigating school systems totally unfamiliar. Along with registration forms, applications, assessments, waiting lists, a pile of required documents and tuition fees. It’s enough to make your head spin. It’s recommended you assess at at least three different schools, put your name on at least as many waiting lists, which all require a fee of 2000 dhs (approx $500) just for the privilege of having a spot on the waiting list. Non-refundable by the way, should you not get in. We were lucky and got Bode into the same school Tessa attends for next fall. But I have a few friends that have not been so fortunate and will be doing two pick ups and two drop offs 15-20 minutes apart from each other. There is no such thing as your neighborhood elementary school.

-There are the more faith testing challenges too. The ones that make you question that you are indeed in the right place, doing the right thing. Like this day for instance.

I took this photo of myself in the back of Iqbals car, probably last May, a year ago now. I don’t know what prompted me to take the photo, or why I never deleted it. I’ve returned to it a few times in the past year, looked ay my beaten down self and closed it again. Not knowing what to do with it, but not willing to let it go. It speaks a great deal more than I could ever adequately describe about the place I was in when I took it but  I’ll give it my best go. I had just found out I was pregnant. Unexpected, unanticipated. A pregnancy, that I am ashamed to say now, but nearly devastated me. I had barely, just barely gotten to a place where I felt like I had my head above the sand. I was doing it. I was donning an abaya like it was regular ware, I was hopping into Iqbals car twice a day to drive 30 minutes across town for school drop off and pick up. I was getting into the DQ once a week for ballet, where I could run through the park with my kids and to the Arizona compound once a week for swim lessons, which would usually turn into an all day swim session, just because we could. I was driving through 3 checkpoints to attend the gym a few times a week. I was doing it. I was doing Saudi, I was figuring it out, I was going to be fine. I was managing. And then I got pregnant and my head got shoved right down under that sand again and I couldn’t see light from day. I was so defeated. I could not do this. Not this. This, I would fail at. When this photo was taken, I was nauseous, car sick, unable to even move to the front seat if I wanted to and hot. It was over 100 degrees outside.

We all know now that I did do it. That I kept moving through the darkness until I climbed out. The jury is still out on whether I’m failing but thus far I have survived. A lot in part to the fact we are in Dubai, that my sweet baby is a miracle and joy beyond measure and that I found my gumption.  But I’ve looked at this photo a few times recently and then at myself in the mirror and think, ‘Blast Katelyn, it’s not far off.’ I am so tired. Wade has been gone 24 of the last 31 days. I have 3 children under the age of 5 and have not slept through the night since October. When one of the three wakes up crying in the night, for the second, third or fourth time, sometimes I cry too.  I do not have a Relief Society army waiting at the gates. Or family that can swoop in for a weekend. And it’s 106 degrees outside. Which, I promise you makes everything worse.

There are costs to this life we have chosen. Our children will not grow up with neighborhood friends that they carry all the way to high school. They will not go to prom with their best buddy from 6th grade and Wade and I won’t attend the wedding of that best buddy either. We will not be fixtures in a ward. We won’t get to join the Ragnar team, or cheer on a group of friends at the Ironman. Good friendships are forged and then those friends leave a month later, because this is the life of an expat. Transition. We will miss out on loads of family gatherings and will have to work much harder to maintain those relationships that are meaningful to us. We’ll continue to get lost in translation and pay too much for school. Wade will put in longer days and weeks and so will I.  Wade and I have a conversation every few weeks if we both feel like these costs are worth the life experience we’re having. If the costs are sustainable. We get asked often how long we will be here, how long until we return to the States and our answer is always, “We don’t know.” It’s not a cop-out answer, we really don’t know. We initially committed to two years, our two years are up the end of this month and we aren’t going anywhere. For now, the costs are sustainable. For now, the life and cultural experience is making greater deposits than the costs are making with drawls. Someday, surely sooner than later I will sleep through the night and that will probably fix everything. But for now, we’ll keep calling ourselves expats. We’re sticking here for awhile.

I write these things down to remember 10-20 years down the road when the bad memories move to the back ground and allow the good ones to move forward, as they do and as they should, that it was not all sunshine and rainbows. The great trips and days at the beach and engaging cultural interactions were at times fought for and bought with long days and sleepless nights, sweaty foreheads and legs and dusty bodies. We have the perspective to know that it will not always be this challenging, that Wade will not always work 75 hour weeks, that sustainability will come in a more welcoming form. But for now, as I said, we're sticking around and fighting for the moments to be rememebered and cherished.