On Sept. 9, 2011 we moved from Silverdale, WA into a small rental
condo in Bellingham, WA on military orders
to the area for three years. Since I had
just completed my Associates transfer degree, (first two years of my bachelor's
degree in Anthropology) it was a perfect opportunity to transfer to a Four year University and knock out those last
two years of school. Not to toot my own horn or anything, but when I applied I knew I was a shoe-in since I was an honors
graduate. On the morning of September 29, I received the official acceptance
letter to Western Washington University as a transfer student, where I would happily
continue my adventure in higher learning. I was looking forward to finally
taking the classes I had so far worked so hard to get to for my major in
Biocultural Anthropology. I was ecstatic about finally being able to focus in
on my major and getting to the really fun classes: Osteology, Forensic Anthropology, even the more wacky and less
relevant ones like Cyborg Anthro. (Do
they really have a class for trekkies like me to study Data!?). The day after I
received my acceptance letter was the same day my husband received the most
heart breaking email of my life.
I was in the
kitchen cooking fajitas for dinner, our almost three year old son was in the
living room playing, and my husband sat literally 5 feet away from me at the
computer desk to read me the email he had received a few minutes earlier via
his blackberry while he was out on a hike with our Boston terrier, Frank. My
husband had been preparing to leave on a short deployment with his Naval squadron
that was based out of NAS Whidbey Island in a few weeks and was starting to
correspond with the ship's crew for details. The guy he was corresponding with
basically and as casually as possible mentioned that we shouldn't get too
comfortable because we'd be in Japan by April...and that was all the email
said. We were left completely in the dark about any details.
After my
husband read me the email, I felt a literal shifting in the planes of existence
as I knew them...and with the realization of what that email meant for me,
tears I could not control starting pouring out of my face. Tears were falling
down into the frying pan of chicken, peppers and onions I was robotically stirring. Looking back on it, it
seems like an out of body experience...almost as if my very being took leave, if only for a moment to look down
at my body spiraling below. I managed to
finish dinner for my hungry boys and serve it to them, then everything from
there is fuzzy. I don't know if I ate, but I remember my bed and grabbing a
roll of toilet paper to blow my profusely snotty nose into. I was in our bed between
sleep and crying for two solid days and nights, mourning the loss of my college
education and the future I had planned...and all the while the universe was
spiting me...taunting "I thought I taught you not to plan for the
future...the future is not in your hands"...but that was really just my
sub-conscience reminding me of a lesson I had let myself naively forget.
Life has this funny way of letting you think everything is on track, and just when you've got your future plans laid out before you, BAM! You take a sharp turn. Sometimes it's the loss of a someone we love dearly, and sometimes it can be as simple as having to move out of the country you need to be in for your plans to happen. Losing my opportunity to finish college was as heartbreaking for me as if my own mother had died. Seriously. I LOVED college, and when I say that I loved it I mean it. I loved the work, I loved how one day of learning something new could change my entire perspective on humanity, which for me is everything. I drank in the knowledge like a starving child, because up until that point I had never felt I had a purpose on this earth and education gave me a sense of worth. Coming home from an hour long class and having to close the blinds, and lay down for a mental break for an hour or two just so my brain could process thoughts without the light of day interrupting was a kind of high I had never felt.
Life has this funny way of letting you think everything is on track, and just when you've got your future plans laid out before you, BAM! You take a sharp turn. Sometimes it's the loss of a someone we love dearly, and sometimes it can be as simple as having to move out of the country you need to be in for your plans to happen. Losing my opportunity to finish college was as heartbreaking for me as if my own mother had died. Seriously. I LOVED college, and when I say that I loved it I mean it. I loved the work, I loved how one day of learning something new could change my entire perspective on humanity, which for me is everything. I drank in the knowledge like a starving child, because up until that point I had never felt I had a purpose on this earth and education gave me a sense of worth. Coming home from an hour long class and having to close the blinds, and lay down for a mental break for an hour or two just so my brain could process thoughts without the light of day interrupting was a kind of high I had never felt.
I knew
nothing about Japan, aside from the fact that Tokyo is a huge city with lots of
technology (i.e. robots)(I wonder how many times I can mention robots in one
blog post that doesn't have a thing to do with actual robots!) and there were a
lot of weird American kids totally obsessed with Japanese pop culture and anime ....also I like
sushi. Needless to say after we received
the news that we would be moving to Japan there were a lot of quick and
stressful decisions to make. From what do we do with our dog and our cat, to
how can we afford new furniture that isn't being held up by a cement brick so
it will actually survive the journey across the Pacific. When my husband left
for his deployment, I decided there was no better time to spend with my family.
So I took my three little boys (human, dog and cat) back home to Wisconsin to
spend quality time with my side of the family from just before Halloween
through Thanksgiving. It was much needed quality time, and a good distraction
from the big changes in store. In that
time I was able to say goodbye to my last surviving grandfather, reconnect with
my father, and catch up with other family members I had not seen in many years.
Sometimes
good things come from dark places...in my personal loss of opportunity, I
gained back some good things. Didn't Gandalf say "There is always light in
dark places"? Ok, it wasn't him...but I got that from LOTR(Lord of the Rings). It's true
though, with everything in life there is
a trade-off of good and bad. or the Ying-Yang...and is something I believe in
whole-heartedly. I returned home to Washington with only my human child in tow after
saying the most heartbreaking good bye of my life...to Our 7 year old dog Frank (a.k.a. my first born, who
is in the loving care of my sister in Chicago and will probably never want to
come home to us).
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| Frankie, as happy as can be on the Beach at Lake Michigan (photo by: Amie Sell) |
For the next
few months...in between doing productive and necessary things by day, I mostly sat around on my crusty old broken couch, wearing
sweatpants in my own misery/ boredom watching Downton Abbey and other various
selections from the British Romance genre of my Roku. As miserable as part of
me was, the other part of me was starting to come around and look forward to
aspects of living in Japan. I was also reading a
lot of books about Japanese culture, food and history which really helped me
become more comfortable with the inevitable. The more I learned, the more I
started to look forward to it as a new chapter in our families adventure. In March,
we left Seattle and after about 24 hours arrived to our new hometown in
Kanagawa, Japan nestled in the countryside between Mt. Fuji and Yokohama. (You can see my other blog posts for
more info on our new life in Japan.)
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| "Oh Matthew...!" |
Here it
is just over a year from the day we received that email. Our family has
been in Japan for about seven months,
three of which my husband has actually been home. Life is decidedly more
difficult on a daily basis than I care for it to be. I don't really have a simple
answer as to why. Mostly, I think it's
because my son is having an especially hard time adjusting to life with his
Daddy being gone on a ship, not having his grandparents around, and at times
some general culture shock and anxiety. Dealing with what this does to his
behavior and general disposition takes up
most of my time, and every bit of
effort I can muster. His behavior has even effected my social life. Truth is, it's been a bit of an adjustment for me not having my incredible husband around to help out. Navigating the social circles around here has its
challenges as well, as you can imagine,
living on a base in a foreign country requires making friends that you can
trust as though they were your family. You find out pretty quickly who is
worthy of that trust, and who isn't.
Living
in a community where most of the women are part-time single moms is practically
a battlefield! It is much more of a political game, then simply making and
keeping friends. In college, you easily become pals with you Bio lab partner,
or befriend the nicest, crazy-smart older dude in your anthropology courses because you share
the same interests. I quickly realized that in a community such as this many other
women do not have the same intentions, opinions or perspective as you do. This is true in any community, but is
especially difficult for those of us who, like me, stray from the norm in the
subculture of military families. I do not see the world through the same perspective
as many of my peers. I quickly realized that there are certain personality
quirks that just don't go over well with some people and you kind of have to hide
part of what makes you you. Let's face
it, not many military wives get all dorky about things like human evolution,
biology, and the anthropology of death and dying as I do, or can spurt off Jeopardy-like trivia
in quite the same way...my dark, yet silly sense of humor also rarely mesh's
with other people in my community. To be
very general, most of my peers are Christian, listen to country music, conservative
and Patriotic...and I am about as opposite of the corresponding stereotypes
that go with those labels as humanly possible. Love it or Hate it...that's me,
it's who I am.
I see
humankind as a continuous entity. At the end of the day, we're all connected,
and we are all the same creature. Our cultures, religious beliefs, or non-beliefs,
the foods we eat, and the laws that govern us are different, but at the end of the day we
are all still just Homo sapiens sapiens
(except for the androids). We all feel,
and think, and have the ability to love (or hate). I still sometimes think about where I would be
if I was in Bellingham, toting my backpack through the woods on my way to and
from the University every day. The truth
is, it still hurts a bit that I'm
missing out on that. I could keep going on in some melodramatic fashion...but
it's been over a year since we received that earth shaking news and I'm trying
to move on. Frankly, it doesn't matter anmore...I'm still standing, still
waking up every morning and actually finding real joy in my new life abroad. And guess
what...I'm still learning.
