Citizens Of Somewhere

My immediate reaction to the bombshell exploding, was to cope, cope, cope.  "Right, we're not going to have a place to live or jobs, let me research and plan where we might live and what jobs we might have..." It's how I attempt to protect myself against the horrible feeling of grief; the anger, the despair, and the sadness. It doesn't make it go away, it just makes it happen in more manageable bites. Because after my coping and planning, when I do turn the corner in the spiral staircase I am climbing OUT of this misery, when I return back to the place of such pain, I am at least another flight up, a little further away from the original site of the blast.  In this way, when I have a period of sitting with my grief, when I feel it lying heavily on me as I wake up in the morning - at least I have a plan, at least I'm not falling without a net. That said, it's still hard. I woke early this morning and couldn't get back to sleep again, I dozed and trie...

This has been the coldest, wettest American May I can remember; but this is a nice sunny Sunday and I'm tying this on my phone, on a park bench. I just spoke to another mother who got her green card 6 years ago, and was horrified about my story. Every now and then I wonder if I should be fighting harder, calling more lawyers, something like that.  But the fact is, just because no one can believed this is happening to us, doesn't mean that it's not legal.

My husband has pneumonia. Last year, after he'd got his students through the AP exams with the kind of jitters I recall from my own A-levels, he got bronchitis. A doctor told his this morning, somewhat tartly, that pneumonia is what you get when you don't go take your bronchitis to the doctor. He's been 'meaning to go' all week. This morning, he went because I called the surgery and handed him the phone while someone was speaking. "This is why married men live longer than single men." I was smug. I'd earned it. "I am extending your life right now." I also made him a big sour hot udon bowl. And I've had carrot and ginger soup in the crock pot all day with the rather elderly end of a 5lb bag 'baby carrots' from last week.  (It came out lovely). So, there's a lot of soup. Soup will save us all.  Tomorrow is American Mother's Day. He has to wear a mask so he doesn't infect us all, and he looks like a murderer/kind...

I've finally reached an age where I finish lipsticks.  I've just realized I'm about to finish this lipstick (Clinique Butter Shine: 413: Raspberry Rush, if you're interested, and L'Oreal Glossy Balm: 206 Vintage Rose for the days when I don't want such colour coverage).  This is remarkable: I don't know if I've ever actually done that before. I've lost tons of lipsticks, or got bored with them and thrown them out, or decided they don't suit me and thrown them out - but I don't think I've ever stuck with one and used it up before. The 'feeling accomplished and grown up' moment was realizing that this lipstick really works for me, my wardrobe, my day-to-day lipstickery needs; and when I DO finish it, I'll buy another.  Not blithely try the ones on sale, not buy ones I've read about - I'll buy this kind, because it works. I have found my 'everyday' lipstick, people! Therefore, I'm an accomplished grownup la...

It made really tasty pizza. I semi-hopefully wondered if the sick hopeless feeling of my new reality would make me thin. Not looking likely. Infact, I swing between no appetite and ravenous. And tired. Very tired, often.

I do.  I tell myself over and over that we're the incredibly fortunate ones. We are not fleeing anything. We are not returning to a dangerous place. I teach Elie Wiesel's Night as part of a World Literature class and in the past two years I have seen other refugees ' images and faces as I read the Wiesel's description of the things taken and the things left, the things dropped and stolen, the lives lost.  I read about Syrian refugees and I cry at my desk. I donate money. I email politicians. I worry. I get on with my life. I repeat. Whenever we go, we will have a place to live and enough to eat and plenty of nice, developed-world things. Wherever we go, our boys will go to a good school and live in safety. Wherever we go, our children end up in university and we end up retiring, unless we get sick and die first. First-world problems.  We will stay developed-world lower-middle-class and we're going to be fine. We have already won the lottery of life, and I know...

Considering I moved here with only two suitcases in 2005, I have a hell of a lot of things now. I moved to America as a postgraduate student, to go to Columbia, to write a PhD. Which I didn't actually write. But being ABD ("All But Dissertation", "Almost Bloody Done", "Ah But Didn't") suits me fine and I don't regret it. Actually, perhaps I should regret it. I wonder if I were Dr. Yaffle, rather than Ms. Yaffle, it would be easier to persuade the UK to hire me as a teacher. I don't have the Holy Grail and Must-Have teaching certification in the UK, the P.G.C.E. - but perhaps Dr. Yaffle would have more of a chance being hired by a British private school than Ms. Yaffle does. . . that kind of regret is entirely pointless, but it's an old 2-am friend, this week.  But that's a post for another day, I can talk hiring woes and certification and experience and school systems later. This is a post about our stuff. As I type this, in my...

I feel straight-up guilty about how sad I feel. It's very sad. I feel sad like one of the women in mythology, who cry and cry and cry and cause waterfalls or lakes or oceans. And no one has died. This part is really important so I'm going to type it again, no one has died; my boys are fine and my husband is fine and no one is dead or sick. In fact, I type this on a couch in a suburban, toy-filled living room, while my boys watch Alvin and the Chipmunks for the second time and play and climb on me, in robust health. I want to cry all the time (and I do cry, at the drop of a hat, at a sentimental children's book; at random objects in my house) because after 12 years of building a life in the USA, my green card application has been denied and there's not enough time on my husband's work visa for us to get far enough through the application process before he has to leave. Before we have to leave. I've lived here since 2005 but, as of July 2018, I can't li...