On Being Thankful

All November, I’ve been reading people’s “30 Things I’m Thankful For” posts on Facebook and around the web. I thought it was a nice way to celebrate Thanksgiving but was a bit gimmicky and just not for me. That is, until I read the “(remaining) thankful” post on a blog written by a remarkable woman I attended graduate school with.  She posted her 30 Things as a single list rather than spreading it out over 30 days, and every thanks she had was for a person in her life.

Is it obvious that the 30 things we’re most thankful for are all going to be people? I think not, because while every list I saw this month contained spouses, children, parents, there was also a lot of non-people thanking. Of course not everyone couched their list as a “Top 30,” and I’m thankful for Fall colors, too, so I don’t mean to judge anyone else’s lists. It’s just that the “(remaining) thankful” list was the one that stopped me cold because—here’s my confession—it honestly never would have occurred to me to make a list of people.

For instance, my list would have included “the time I spent in Italy” and “being employed,” which can both come off, I’m afraid, as a bit “neener-neener” or “look how lucky I am.” That’s not what would have been on my heart as I wrote my list, and I truly am thankful for what I learned as an expatriate, but if being away from my home country taught me anything it was the significance and value of the people I was no longer seeing on a regular basis.

So thank you, B, for your thankfulness post. It reminded me to take the time to give thanks and reminded me what I am truly most thankful for.

30 People I’m Thankful For this Thanksgiving Season

1. J – for wanting to be with me in spite of me, for his gift of generosity, for being a wonderful father and husband.
2. G – for teaching me daily a new and bright outlook on the world.
3. Mother – for raising me mostly on her own, for teaching me to be an adult, for demonstrating friendship and hospitality, for being such a willing travel partner.
4. Dad – for days in San Francisco, for symphony rehearsals, for teddy bears and my first gold necklace, for dragging me to car dealerships (where I learned how to haggle for a car), and most especially for that talk when you told me it was okay with you that you were going to die—though, for the record, it’s still not okay with me.
5. Elizabeth – for cooking, for exchanging first drafts, for meeting us in Trento our first day there, for Hawaii after my father died (I know she didn’t plan her wedding for the same week, but I’m still grateful it worked out that way).
6. Heidi – for still being my big sister, though I always hated being the “little sister,” for demonstrating daily what dependence on God looks like. Also, no one can leave a voicemail quite as long as Heidi can, except perhaps me.
7. Denise – for showing me through her devotion to family and work that no obstacle is too great for God:  my sister is a pastor’s wife raising 3 children while working full-time with brain trauma patients, and I try to appreciate her as much as she deserves.
8. Chris – for being a wife to my father in health and in sickness, and for counting me as a daughter.
9. Ellyn – we couldn’t be more opposite, but she’s never made me feel unaccepted or unworthy to be her son’s wife.
10. Bruce – for raising my amazing husband as another son and accepting me wholly into his family.
11. Christiana – my first friend, for her generosity of spirit, bravery, and dedication to God’s calling, for still being silly, for taking phone calls from Italy, and for taking time for old friends during her short furlough in the U.S. 
12. Chris – for being both friend and brother to J, for the example he sets as a father and husband, for his open pursuit to learn and grow in God.
13. Kathi – for making it clear from the start that she wanted to be my sister, not just a sister-in-law.
14. Allison – my first niece, for every moment of her life, including her willingness to talk Breaking Dawn with me at Thanksgiving this year, despite all the disgust and eye-rolling from the peanut gallery.
15. Laura – for so warmly embracing me as a sister, for Pensacola beaches and late nights talking over Ouzo, for taking so many health-related phone calls (Here’s a secret: she’s one of my favorite people.).
16. Charles – I had four hours to get nervous on the drive to meet J’s step-brother-in-law and family. Then Charles handed me a margarita when I stepped through the door and to this day I am so very grateful.
17. Jessica – a friend for nearly 25 years, for being someone I can laugh over very old jokes with and for taking me as I am as well as as I was.
18. Cheryl – for letting me force friendship on her in Jr. High, for trips to Vegas, for the Winter Olympics, for lots of Mulder and Scully.
19. Sarah – the first person I could talk on the phone with for hours, for the friendship we had then and the friendship we’re re-starting now.
20. Tatiana & Brane – for befriending their way-in-over-their-heads American neighbors, for long talks over coffee about the history of Serbia and EU politics. Please visit us in the US!
21. Carolyn – the first American I met in Italy, for extending support to a stranger over the internet and for a butternut squash soup I will never forget (ie, thanks for Thanksgiving 2010).
22. Ilana, Jessica, i-Jen – for bringing some English friendship back into my life–so, Jenn, what did you do in Italy? Oh, I lunched with these fellow expat women from the U.S., Canada and Ireland. We sat in the piazza at noon and drank spritz or Hugo–also, I am forever indebted to i-Jen for finding G and I in the hospital in Bolzano and for bringing a children’s abecedarium that said “C is for cacca” with a gorgeous brown illustration of poop.
23. Curt – for raising an incredible son, for taking my attitude and throwing back some of his own. I think we understand each other.
24. Michele – for welcoming J as a son, for always making room for us at her table.
25. Clare – for her example as an academic and mom, for her positive view of the world and acceptance of all people as they are, for her gift for introducing friends.
26. Austin – for being his un-inhibited self, for loving people where they are, for being an involved father and husband, for letting me read all his novels in progress.
27. Beth, Kay, Liz – I can always call on these women for prayer, for support, for just listening. Beth, for starting this Bible study. Liz, for staying in contact through so many moves. Kay, for being the face I still know at MPPC.
28. Grandma & Grandpa – for raising my mother, for passing on the family traditions, for being an example of how to love and live together for 70 years, and for those incredible genes that will hopefully enable me to live forever.
29. Joe & Gina – for Firefly and popcorn, for teaching generosity through example, for turning every “like” into a passion, for taking on an 8-month pregnant couple as new friends.
30. Aunt Kathi – for essentially raising my dad, for family history, for the example set by raising a family and not giving up on her talents, for reaching out when I so rarely reach back.
31. God – for creation and never leaving me alone but specifically, today, for speaking to me through a blog.

Note: I use initials on this blog for the sake of privacy, but with the exception of J and G, who appear regularly here, I’ve decided to use first names above. If you see yourself on this list and want to be called something else or initialized, just let me know.

Full disclosure: I thought I’d written 30 people down, but I miscounted. Also, if you count the people I grouped as individuals, it’s a list of 38, but whatever.

An American Holiday

I was sad last October in Italy when I realized that, while we would get to participate in many rich European holiday traditions, having Halloween was prettymuch an impossibility. Sure, I could dress up my daughter in costume, but who would give her treats when she knocked on their doors?

Creative Decor: We didn't take G to this house, but I had to run across the street for a closer look. Impressive.

This year we are, incredibly and inexplicably, back in the United States. The holiday season has begun, and while next month I’ll be nostalgic over mulled wine and Christmas markets, I was head-over-heels thrilled about being here for Halloween. J and I did the “adult” aspect of the holiday by attending a masquerade ball thrown by a friend, with J decked out in a rented tux and me actually re-using my wedding dress (who gets to wear their dress more than once? I do! I do!). Then, Halloween night, my daughter got to dress in a many times handed down strawberry costume, and we went trick-or-treating with my sister’s family. The two younger cousins, aged eight and four, raced ahead to each new house with the other children in our group. The oldest cousin, though, is in sixth grade now and she played big sister to our G, taking her slowly to each door after the crowd of other children had cleared.

Ten days later, G has a lot to say about Halloween and none of it revolves around the candy, though she got plenty of that. She talks about her strawberry and her cousins and jack-o-lanterns and wants to be very certain that it will all happen again next year.

Celebrating Halloween this year, in particular being a parent now, I have to say I’m impressed. In fact, I’ve begun to suspect that Halloween represents some of the best of American culture. First, it’s fun and creative:  from handmade costumes and jack-o-lanterns, to front yards transformed by scarecrow witches and cotton cobwebs. My favorite part, though, was noticing and participating in the community celebration. It was uplifting, even joyful, to see children and parents walk the streets of their neighborhoods, greeting and giving to one other.

J turned to me as the evening was winding down and said, “We should walk around our neighborhood more. Even at night. We don’t go out enough after dark. This is nice.” Part of that niceness was greeting the myriad other families on the same night-time stroll, and of course the streets were lightened by glowing jack-o-lanterns at nearly every house, but he’s right. We should all be out in our communities more, participating and living. Call that an early resolution for the new year, for our year of repatriation.

In a first draft of this post I wrote a rather lengthy pro-Halloween treatise addressing some of the common complaints about the holiday (it’s pagan, it’s dangerous, it’s bad on kids’ teeth), but I think I’ll leave things here instead, with that warm pumpkin scent in my mind and the gentle threat of winter in the wind.

Brave Beginnings

Dropping a comfortable and stable life for expatriation, whatever one’s reasons, is a brave thing to do. It’s also reckless and more than a little stupid.

My first experience abroad was as an au pair the summer following my freshman year of college. I was picked up at Charles de Gaulle airport—jetlagged and grasping my first ever passport stamp—by an elderly couple who didn’t speak a word of English but had volunteered to pick up their grandkids’ American babysitter. I did my best to say bonjour and politely accept food and smile a lot before drifting off to sleep at their home. The next day, as we drove to meet the family I would sit for, I first saw France’s green hillsides topped with ruined castles—plural, castles!—and I thought this is gorgeous, this is amazing. I tested the words with my tongue and then sat, silent, terrified to get it wrong.

I don’t know if I came off as aloof or stupid, but by the time we arrived at our destination, the Parisian grandparents were ready to let the extended family know how much they disliked the new au pair. Have you ever met Parisian grandparents? The summer did not go well.

Every miscommunication and cultural misstep made my hosts more suspicious of their decision to invite me into their home and concurrently pulled me further into myself, a journal, and a handful of books. I boarded that return flight shaking with let-down and relief, while the mother of the children I’d been watching, dear Dominique, drove away equally disappointed, equally content with my departure.

For a long time before and after this, I considered shyness my greatest personality flaw. I once took an online personality survey that told me what I already knew (which is what online quizzes are for, after all):  95 percent of respondents are more extroverted than I. In Italy, though, that doesn’t stop me from going to the grocery store or saying ciao to other parents at the park. As a nineteen year old au pair, my weakness wasn’t introversion but perfectionism and its evil twin:  fear of failure. I failed as an au pair because on day one I was afraid of the mistakes that are an inevitable part of learning.

I studied in Austria a year later and travelled in Europe many times in the decade following, but that first failure abroad more sharply impacted my psyche going into our Italian endeavours than any later successes:  I knew that the greatest liability to my success as an expat was always going to be myself.

This time, I hadn’t studied the language before arrival, I didn’t have a deep-rooted love affair with la bella vita (whatever that means), and I’d never particularly wanted to be in Italy. And this time, I am proud of my expatriate experience. I didn’t let fear keep me from living my Italian life. I learned the language to the best of my ability and shrugged off the confusion I caused by speaking nonsense or shifting into French in a panic. In the few instances where a shopkeeper, waitress, or that horrid doctor in Bolzano were rude because they didn’t want to deal with a foreigner, I let myself be angry and moved on. I made friends the expatriate way (oh, you speak English? wanna hang out?) and the old-fashioned way (with neighbors, through our children playing at the park). I’ve even established a part-time business for myself, working as an editor through contacts made locally and online. In eighteen months, I’ve built a life here, which is the fastest move-to-feeling-like-home transition I’ve ever had.

In two and a half weeks, we return to the United States, and we’re going to stay. J was offered an engineering position with a Silicon Valley company and enthusiastically accepted. We crossed almost every hurdle of expatriation, but the Italian university system was a barrier we weren’t prepared for.

The advisers J came to work with—who we both gave up jobs and moved across the world for J to learn from—became adversaries, and we never were able to fathom how or why that happened. When your opponent is playing a different game than you, there’s a short time frame in which to learn the rules or walk away.

Repatriating is the right move for our family and for our careers, but for the last several weeks I’ve been mourning the loss of what we had been building here in northern Italy, the life I had been envisioning. Perhaps because of the moves we’ve hazarded in recent years (Tuscaloosa, Sacramento, Trento), I don’t do change easily, and the idea of starting over yet again at times makes my stomach churn. Readers can expect many posts about this in the months to come – about loss and rebuilding and the fast approaching “reverse culture shock.”  Don’t worry, though, because all those life in Italy topics that I’ve been intending to write are still on the menu, too – our road trip to Paris, some confusion about edelweiss, and the oft promised chestnut post to start.

When the fever doesn’t end

A week ago Monday, my husband left for two weeks of job interviewing in California, but this posting isn’t about that.

When we knew that J was heading to the States, I was both supportive and a bit whiny about the whole thing. Yes, of course he needed to take this interview and see our families, but two whole weeks taking care of G by myself in Italy — and especially those two weekends of just her and I alone together — I just wasn’t looking forward to it.

Have I mentioned that G is two? She’s sweet and cute, but recently she’s also been very two: the tantrums, the saying no just because she’s decided to say no for awhile, throwing food across the table just to check out mom’s reaction of the day. I wasn’t looking forward to it, and I let J know.

I said, “I’m not looking forward to it.”

And then, a day before he left, G came down with a fever that quickly rose to 104F, even 105F. Assuming that this was a recurrence of a Urinary Tract Infection from May, we started her on antibiotics right away rather than waiting for a doctor’s visit on Monday (why do children always get sick on the weekends?). In any case, the amoxicillin should kick in and G would be back in asilo nido by Tuesday or Wednesday. No problem. Just a slight glitch in the plan.

So J left on his plane, and G woke up still feverish Monday morning. And Tuesday morning. And Wednesday.

On Wednesday afternoon when G’s fever spiked close to 106F (41C), the doctor sent me to pronto soccorso at the local hospital so that she could have blood drawn right away, be examined by a pediatric urologist (as we were still suspecting UTI), and hopefully get a diagnosis. Pronto soccorso is similar to the emergency room or urgent care in the United States with one major exception:  in Italy, it’s free. After four hours at pronto soccorso, the pediatric unit sent us home. After some paracetamol drops, G’s fever had declined to 101F, and although the bloods tests showed an infection, the doctor thought it best to give the amoxicillin another day or so to work. I was told to return on Friday if she still had a fever and then they might take a chest x-ray or do an echo of her bowels.

If you’re still following all the boring details, you’ve noticed that G had been spiking fevers to 105F for FOUR DAYS despite also being on an antibiotic for FOUR DAYS and the local hospital sent her home with just a few drops of aspirin.

When the pediatrician saw the blood test results the following morning, she was livid. Apparently they showed a very high level of infection. She said G should have been admitted right away and started on a new antibiotic. She said more tests should have been done. She said that if G had a UTI, there could be kidney damage after so many days without improvement. She told me to drive immediately to the pronto soccorso at the Ospedale di Bolzano, about 45 minutes north in Alto Adige. “They have an excellent pediatric department,” she said, “and I’ve called, so they’re expecting you.”

A drive, more blood tests, a urine sample and an x-ray later, G was formally admitted to the pediatric unit at Bolzano Hospital with an IV for fluids and a new antibiotic. The next day we had a diagnosis:  pneumonia. The chest x-ray had been key in diagnosing the pneumonia, since fever was truly her only outward symptom.

There are no “Child Life Specialists” in Italy, nor other programs that I could tell for hospitalized children. A parent is required to stay with the child at all times. With J in the States, this meant that G and I were together in a hospital room in Bolzano (an hour from friends or a change of underwear) for five days. The nursing staff and a complete stranger conspired to give me four hours leave to come back to Trento on Friday for clothes, toys and a shower, and one Trento friend actually took a train and a taxi to come visit us on Saturday for a few hours. We also had many long phone calls with J in California. So I can’t say we were alone, and yet we were very much alone.

I keep thinking about the food, which was wonderful, or the odd schedule we kept of early waking and long naps, of puzzles suitable for much older children and the Lego house that was brought to our room for G’s endless enjoyment. Outside our window, there was a tree with dark leaves lined in bright pink and G would squeal when she saw a bird take off. There was a doctor who told me I shouldn’t have questions and another doctor with kind blue eyes. Everyone spoke German and Italian, though Italian only with us, and they giggled when I slipped and said “ja” instead of “si,” but mostly they were exasperated, I think, by the interloper American who needed more help than she could ask for and didn’t have enough words for thank you.

We were released on Monday evening and at G’s insistence made ourselves a feast of chocolate chip pancakes, which we ate via Skype in front of my mother and several nieces. I miss having healthy 3-course meals brought to me, and I hate coaxing the new oral medicine into G’s twisting, protesting body, but I don’t miss anything else, and I’m pleased that she’s strong enough to push me away.

J returns on Sunday morning, so we’ve got five days to go of just G and I alone together. This wasn’t what I expected it to be, not at all, but I think I can handle it now.

90 Minutes in America

I’ve been following enough expat blogs to know that when a blogger abruptly stops posting, something is up, so I look at my own month’s absence and wonder:  did malaria rage through our household? did my boyfriend cheat on me? did we move to Tunisia?

No. But it has been a busy four+ weeks and I intend to fill you in, most likely in reverse chronological order. First off  (by which I mean last), we took our first family vacation since I don’t know when and the entire trip—excepting a 3 hour traffic jam outside Stuttgart—was just what we needed as a family: de-stress, reconnect. I highly recommend a road trip that start with the alps, includes a B&B in the French countryside and concludes at Disneyland Paris. This trip should be taken in late May when the fields are lined red with poppies.

But to really start at the end, I need to delay my discussion of driving the limitless autobahn (though I know that’s what you really want to hear) and delve for a moment into the 90 minutes we spent on American soil thanks to my cousin and her husband signing us onto to the U.S. military base in Stuttgart.

These are the spoils of our excursion:

As you can see, we didn’t go crazy—we’ve survived just fine in Italy without the niceties of American packaged goods—but some ghosts of grocery stores past still call to us. Cheerios, for instance, and Ziploc bags. We made a short list before going, so we’d be sure to remember important things like cheddar cheese and baking powder. Once we arrived, however, we realized how many items we’d forgotten even existed, like goldfish crackers and mint Milano cookies.

I’ve noticed that my attempts to describe what differs between America and Italy tends to dissolve into rambling, but after this trip to the Patch Barracks Commissary, I think I’ve narrowed it down.

At the Commissary, I was reminded that in the United States there’s an entire aisle for chips. America could be the ultimate manifestation of consumerism and conspicuous consumption, or we could call it the land of opportunity, the land of choice. One paints a bleak picture while the other is too rosy. Shopping at the Co-op in Povo is simple. I ask the butcher for ground beef:  he hands me ground beef. If they’re out of tomatoes, I don’t eat tomato this week. Potato chip or corn chip? Simple.

Simple isn’t the same as easy, and simple isn’t always better. The selection of chips at the grocery isn’t a big deal (and I don’t like chips anyway), but there are a lot of choices that I think Italians don’t have. The choice to leave a job and start over in a new city or a new career comes to mind. The choice of what to watch on television, since most networks are owned by the Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, whose penchant for half-naked girls carries over into Italian programming. There’s a lot to love about Italy and there’s a lot that makes me sad.

The Italy that makes me sad is the part that, it seems, contrives to limit choices. I realize my distaste for this is derived from my American-ness, and that’s okay. It’s culture shock: the intersection between my normal and another normal.

I’ve read that one aspect of reverse culture shock is to be overwhelmed by the realizations of the tiny ways in which one has changed while abroad. With the United States in particular, repatriates can be overwhelmed by space and by excess: too many choices. At the Commissary, I got to the baking aisle and stared at the frostings. In Trento, there’s a single frosting option for cake and it has to be purchased at the larger grocery store downtown. At the American Commissary, there were 2 frosting brands and a dozen flavors, half of them variations on “chocolate.” I didn’t know what to do.

“It’s not a difficult question,” I said to my cousin, “but I really don’t know which to get.” She told me she liked cream cheese frosting and her husband always gets milk chocolate. I chose milk chocolate. Once choice down.