The CEO of Urban Mattress and his wife, Allison, were in San Francisco this past week. Todd knew they were coming and of an invitation to go to dinner with them, if Todd could make it back in time from his cross-country trek. Todd worked hard (smart, but really hard) and managed to get into town with enough time to make the dinner date. I'd never met either of them before so I didn't really know what to expect. As happens when people get together who have never met, many questions were asked.
I felt in good company. Allison and I both have a hard time leaving our children in anyone else's care, and neither of us see this as a major personal fault or defect. She has six children, the youngest being 9. I was able to ask a lot of hands-on questions that come with raising a larger family. How do you manage that many car seats when even a mini van really isn't equipped for it to be actually hauling the number of people it was built for. *Side note to all you car makers out there: For future consideration, if you are building a car specifically designed to primarily be used by young families, don't put an analog clock on the dash that has a button which changes the time so easily a one-year-old can manage the task. (Sorry, that's been in there a long time!) Over the course of the night, questions came up about how long we'd been together, how we'd liked living abroad, and so on. Towards the end of the night, Allison says to me: Wow ya'll have been to a lot of places.
On the ride home, Todd and I were talking about it. From my perspective only, I didn't see anything particularly "exotic" or "romantic" or "adventurous" about what we've done. We've lived the life we believe was designed for us, for our family, for our hearts. There was nothing exotic about finding out I was allergic to chocolate and air in Santiago, Chile. No joke, that was the actual diagnosis, allergic to air. Nuh-thing. But at the same time, I was on Pinterest and I stumbled across a travel website with the Top 12 Places to Visit in South America. I realized I'd seen three of them, and all the others were in countries I hadn't been to. Better still, I agreed with each estimation. The colors and vibrancy of Valpariso, Chile are unrivaled still, even after all the places I've been to between here and there. The majesty of Cotopaxi, Ecuador on a crisp and clear day is truly one of God's great wonders. Picturesque and noteworthy.
So it all got me thinking about what makes an "adventurous" or "exotic" life. I started to google and pin my home town, the cities I've lived near, and my country of origin. Have you ever done this? Have you ever stopped to actually look at all the places near where you live? Places tourists pay serious money to see? Places that you'll find on Instagram and Pinterest, but places that are (potentially) so common to you it doesn't register as adventurous or exotic?
My life here, even in freeloader purgatory somewhere between employed and with a permanent address and still mostly broke and without a place to call my own, let alone stuff to put inside said place, looks very similar to my life in South Africa. Key points are missing, like an oven I understand because we've duked it out for years and I came out victorious, familiar grocery stores and remembering that I can turn into traffic even if the light is red. Those things are missing. But I still wash my diapers every second night. I still fight the good fight against laundry and tantrums and sweets and the necessity to wear sunscreen and why it's not okay to hit. I still have that nagging feeling that the dishes multiply while I'm otherwise occupied and I still have a creeping suspicion my children think they're smarter than me. I'm still stopped by complete strangers who comment on how sorry they are that I have my hands "so full with so many" and I still get to battle the grocery store which seems so full and yet never seems to have what I need before my child/children have a complete melt down because he's touching the exact place I want to touch! All those mind-numingly crucial daily details of my life are the exact same.
I see the validity in what may seem crazy exotic or fabulously romantic or noteworthy or that life there is somehow more important than life here... but in the end, I just don't see it. My heart doesn't miss the romance of a Home Affairs visa line or the adventures in pothole dodging, especially when those potholes could and would swallow my mini van whole if given a fraction of a chance. My heart misses people. My heart misses the beauty of place that you love, that you call home, that you hold and cherish in your soul. Looking back, I realize that Joburg with my pokey little flat, well below street level so anyone walking or driving by could have a picture-perfect view of my backyard and living room was my Green Gables. It was the first place I allowed myself to put down roots in a way I'd never done before. In a relatively short while, I had three babies, celebrated the births of scores of others, helped myself and helped other women learn how to mother without the voices of guilt and shame and doubt screaming louder than the voice that says this is good, this is right! And I think I've come to realize that the friendships you build "in the trenches" of whatever war you're fighting- addiction, depression, parenting, newly wedding, recovering, whatever, those friendships are irreplaceable. Because you'll never go back and need someone else in the same way you needed those people you barely knew when you showed up with a 17 month old and a 2 month old and were in throws of shell shock.
Just before we found out we were leaving South Africa, I purchased an artisan necklace from an amazing market in downtown Joburg. It was the shape of Africa with a tiny heart over Johannesburg. It was hand oxidized and it matched another friend's... two sentiments in one I figured. Zora recently broke the chain on this necklace so I took it to the family jeweler here in town that sorted out my wedding rings, my 18th birthday jewelry, all my mother's jewelry and a few things from Todd over the years. Somewhere between me explaining to the lady there and her explaining on a ticket which went to the master jeweler, the "oxidized on purpose" part was lost. When the store called to say I could pick up my necklace, I was thrilled. I'd felt a bit naked without it and more than a little nostalgic and homesick, because without realizing it had somehow become a security blanket of sorts. When I went to pick it up, the company had diligently worked to buff out the 'imperfections' of my silver pendant and the artisan oxidation, which I had spent over an hour picking just the one I liked, was gone. In it's place was a shinny, silvery outline without depth or soul and my heart, for the four-hundred-and-ninety-seventh time in the last 7 months, audibly cracked and formed a crevasse. I left bruised and defeated, feeling alone and like somehow, my time in South Africa would always be chaulked up to just a "good visit," an "exotic trip," a "romantic time" in my life and that, just like my necklace which had labored and born countless exhausting physical changes to get it to the beautiful state it was when I bought it, somehow all that could be polished out, the creativity and sweat buffed and forgotten. Who wants tarnish and etch marks and imperfections anyways? Who wants baggage of a person whose life isn't all together, who is still holding on to a few things that used to be? Who has time for that??
I don't think my life has been extraordinary. I think my life has been completely and perfectly mundane, totally without any more or any less high points, fabulous pictures, amazing stories to tell around a camp fire of Remember that one time? Maybe I'm a bit jaded by all the media here, maybe I'm just a bit cooky. Either way, I think every life is exotic and every story romantic and every person full of adventure with unique moments of plot twists and cliff hangers and long-awaited loving embraces... because every life is totally individual, totally yours. I don't want any life other than mine, not because I cherish the stamps in my passport or the pictures on the wall, but because I cherish the people I met, the lives who changed me. I'm going to stick my neck out here but I honestly think it's true. I think I'm always going to miss those trench friends I had in Joburg. The ones who were there when I needed, I mean really needed people. My necklace, which is still in rehab but I've given up hope of it ever being what it was, has been replaced by a cross that a fellow Tantrum Fighter gave me. It reminds me of her and her fight against society to let her kid find his path to toilet trained victory. It reminds me of exhausted, crumpled playdates at Papachinos because I needed the coffee and sugar boost... and the additional witness of a friend because my children were driving me batty. It reminds me of the thousand big and small moments that made up my backup platoon-- that time I moved you in and you couldn't get past the guard gate and our one-year-old girls learned the words "open" and "closed" by jumping their legs open and closed by said guard shack for almost an hour. That time we went to the bird sanctuary and had 6 kids to our two adults. That time you counted down from 35 the days to your husband's return but you still made me a meal because you knew I needed it. That time when you made spaghetti bolognese when Zora was days old and Todd was away on business and it changed the way I make spaghetti for life. That time you trusted me to make your kid's first birthday cake and I had to fight Harper tooth and nail to make it happen, and it nourished my soul to be included like that.
My life isn't exotic, it's real. Messy, mundane, diaper-filled and real, here or there doesn't matter. And I'm so incredibly blessed by the women who shared in that mundane, that mess, that diaper-filled void of sleepless nights and endless amounts of baby spit up and developmental milestones that often gets reduced to a picture of perfectly flat-tummied mamas holding sweet, plump little babes in perfect lighting who, no doubt, smells amazing. I know that those pictures, the ones of those mamas in that moment of beauty and the ones of that moment of outdoor adventure in an exotic locale is just that: a moment. It's not the whole story, it's not even a significant portion or even a fraction of it. I know that and I touch my necklace. My cross given by another Tantrum Fighter. A Tantrum Fighter who needed me and opened herself up to make space enough for me... and my neediness... and my mess... and my kids' mess... A Tantrum Fighter who declared allegiance to the same platoon of other tantrum fighting mamas who had gone before us. I touch my necklace and I'm thankful for the incredible gift of knowing so many who fought, are fighting, or will fight with all the bravery and valor and passion described by Shakespeare. Because at the end of it, I'll remember the names of each, and I'll consider myself blest to be able to show the mothering battle scars, the etched places, the scratched and dented, discolored and not-so-shiny silver places that brought me from there to here, gave me a flavor and depth and soul I couldn't have manufactured. I miss my comrades. I miss our trench. I remember. I know you by name. I pray over you by name. My mammahood isn't cheap, it's come at a cost, a high cost, and I'm glad you helped make it so valuable, so meaningful, so worthy of the fight.
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse;
We would not die in that man’s company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is call’d the feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam’d,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say “To-morrow is Saint Crispian.”
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say “These wounds I had on Crispian’s day.”
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words-
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester-
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb’red.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.
-Henry V, Act IV
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