More Wonder Years To Come

I'm not sure if "the wonder years" is the right term, but I'm referring to those years your great aunt remembers even after she's forgotten who you are. The years sometime in the past where we were Somebody, when we were idealistic, when Amazing Things Happened, and Before the Children. For example, for my grandfather, I think it was the years when he was in Italy during WWII. On the one hand, I think it's innocuous for us to have those years and those stories. But I think sometimes a sense of nostalgia can be matched with a sense that the best things have passed, at least for Me As An Individual.

Although traveling with a baby has been hard and much quieter than travel before Noah, the travel has really helped me to get rid of the sense that some of the (common and less common) disappointments of my twenties represented a loss of The Best Years, even as I can't go back to the idealism of past dreams. Those dreams turn out to be less central.

Please do not be horrified by the frequent appearance of The Stroller in the following photos. We are still aspiring Hippies.

Part of this was seeing my Atlantic College roommates and houseparents. I have often looked back on AC- when the future was wide open, where we shared quite deeply of ourselves, and where I fell in love for the first time- and wished I could go back. Being together with Anna, Lia, and Kate made me feel as though we've all grown up and made choices, but that even better things are in store for us. My roommates (and Ray and Angie) only became more kind and more generous in the past years. It seems like our personal dreams are less important than I thought.

Part of this was traveling itself: Leaving our comfort zones, quitting my job, and traveling slowly. In our closing months in Boston, I felt so hopeful because we experienced that we actually do change- weird quirks and past hurts can actually start to feel better. By grace, I find that a pretty incredible thought.

Noah is preparing for The Worst.

And lastly, a big part of this is tied up with returning to South Africa. Returning to South Africa was one of the idealistic dreams of my late teens and early twenties. When I let go of it as something-I-absolutely-needed-for-my-life-to-be-ok, it somehow happened all at once that we moved. At the 12 years (and five of marriage) don't seem very long now that we're here. The intervening years weren't just waiting, they were Something.

On Boat Trips

[A sidebar: I am developing serious amounts of aggression as everyone tries to pet, tickle, play funny games with, pick up, or take my child by the hand. And Noah is getting less and less friendly as he feels more and more threatened, hopefully not permanently. Even as I understand that each person on their own is just being sweet. The price of having the only baby on board a boat.]

We've been on the boat 14 days, with 4 days to go. I've been hesitant to write about the experience, because as you may know I get very judgey very fast. So maybe I'll start there. Because we're usually most judgey when we're most insecure, right?

One of the main callings in my life has been a call to justice, broadly defined. This includes a call to generosity and frugality (while believing this should always allow one to continue to feel God's abundance- like in Milan when our friends treated us to the best meal of our lives). Generosity and frugality can also be translated fairly broadly when one has a spouse and a baby and another baby half-way grown. My personality makes me extremely cautious with budgets and such, to the point of keeping resources we don't really need because we're thinking retirement or loss of limbs or moving back to the U.S.. So there's the contradiction.

Enter an 18-day cruise, which is firmly a form of transportation for us. It's also part of this picture of abundance, where we are given gifts at surprising times that made this the best and most exciting way to get to SA.

Two weeks in, I'd say cruises are probably not part of the life I hope for. With a small son, staying on a boat for 18 days is hard. Environmentally this cruise was better than flying. Eating from the buffet is likely about the same environmentally as cooking at home, except we find ourselves eating more meat and wasting more food. We use about the same amount of water, and we're in a small space. I'm not entertaining any guilt over being on the cruise-- which I think we absolutely should be on-- just reflecting.

But inequality and racism is never more stark than on the boat. Cleaning and maintenance staff are from Madagascar and Mauritius and India; wait staff are Indonesian and Eastern European; beauty staff Cuban, entertainment staff W. European and South African, and captains and supervisors are white men- mainly Italian but some white South Africans. Everything is designed to make you spend money on alcohol, or even just soda or ice-cream or internet or DVDs about your experiences.

I've really enjoyed the day-long stops, mainly because our choices were greatly simplified by our tiny son who wants nothing more than to swim (even in the freezing cold). I never realized how big the world is, and how vast the ocean (air travel is deceptively fast). Boat travel requires incredible planning on the part of the crew- how many fruits to buy, what kind, how much water to stock, when to cook what, how to keep people happy when there's 7 days between stops. And The inequality and wealth we see on the boat is a reflection of the world.

So I'm finding it a good moment to be reminded of what we are called to, and to the ways we're not quite sure of how our calling should be lived out, only what our very next step should be. It may include hotels and traveling (I very much like hotels, at least right now) or it may not. But it'll be good.

The Perfect Space

The last few four or five weeks we've been living out of two suitcases, more or less. There's a car seat beside the bed, gathering dirty laundry and random baby books. I'm pretty sure we need more space, even with our 25 items of clothing each.

For just over 3.5 years, Eug and I lived in an apartment that's not much bigger than our cabin on the boat. And it was perfect for us. We had a very large cupboard for storage, and we were actually able to host about 12 people on a couple of occasions. We moved because the large downstairs apartment became available (we take almost all opportunities like that), even though I wasn't sure if it was necessary until later in Noah's life. We moved again, to an even nicer space, but by this time we were giving away our stuff and never quite settled in. On the ship, the challenge is not only the transience of it all, but that the space is not designed for a small, very active, child.

Soon we'll go from this extreme to the something amazing: a little house of our own. Our property (erf)is 90m2 (about 1000sqft), and the house has two levels (which is unusual for Observatory).

Which started me thinking about how to make a good space for three- almost four people. Along the lines of "Your Money or Your Life", I tend to think small and central is a good choice, because it doesn't make sense to pay for space we don't absolutely need. But I have a grey zone, because I'd love to have a space for chickens/quail and a space for friends and family to stay for months on end. One solution is to have a space that can be rented out on Air B&B when we don't have visitors. Which may happen, one day, but likely not for a few years.

I think this tension- between having enough space for us and having enough space for who we'd like to be- highlights the challenge of making a so-called "perfect space". So maybe it's ok to just toss out that term, and say that it's ok to settle for mediocrity (at least when it comes to living space) and embrace some of the tension of living in the present while hoping for exciting things in the future. And perhaps it's possible to take small steps towards becoming good hosts and urban homesteaders- even with a space that's just right for the four of us.