4/4/25 - Limbo in an Alternate Universe

Friends, I’m sorry it has taken me so long to write. That “$85” blog post seems like a lifetime ago. I started two different blog posts in the last two days but both seem horribly out of touch. Today (Friday), with everything continuing to happen in the world, this blog post seems so trite and petty. And yet, I want to give you an update so you don’t think we’ve fallen off of a cliff.

Before I go any further, I need to say a profound “thank you” to all of you who sent cards or messages to Addie for her birthday. My hope is to reach out to you personally in the next few weeks. Thanks for your patience with me. All things considered, she had a pretty good birthday, especially thanks to all of you. On her actual birthday, we were in the car for 12-ish hours and she spent the first part of the journey opening your cards and gifts in the backseat. We gave her the cards in the morning with a donut (and birthday candles) from the hotel breakfast bar. As expected, she was very surprised and very touched. Thank you so sooo (!!) much for your kindness.

What an incredible outpouring of love! Thank you!

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Why were we in a car for 12 hours on her birthday?

Steve and I knew we needed a break. We also wanted to get the engine and other boat work done as soon as possible. We had the boat towed to a boatyard where all of the work could be done. We knew it was going to take a week or two for the new engine guy to get to our job. We also knew that living in a boatyard (like living in the parking lot of a mechanic shop with nothing else around) without a car for an undetermined period of time would be less than ideal. We decided to rent a car and get out of town for a while.

About a week before we made this decision, however, I talked to my brother, Adam. Coincidentally, he and his family had planned to go to North Carolina for Spring Break. We, of course, were supposed to be deep in the Caribbean islands by this point and there was never a thought that we would see each other. We made plans to meet up at Carowinds, an amusement park in Charlotte and the home of Fury 325, the “tallest, fastest and longest giga coaster in North America.” We love roller coasters (just not the emotional kind). We planned to surprise the kids and their cousins by “accidentally” bumping into them.

But when we had the demoralizing engine day when I screamed into the wind, Steve and I decided that our family needed a real break. What could we do? We decided to go home to St. Louis and stay with my parents. That would be good for our souls.

We then realized that a small group of close family friends were going on a Spring Break trip together the following week and asked if we could crash their party. All three families immediately responded with an enthusiastic “yes” (that felt so good!) and we quickly made plans to meet up with them in Arkansas. Their AirBnB was on a lake. Maybe we were finally going to break out the swimming suits!?!? (Spoiler: It snowed on one of the days.)

While we initially planned to keep all of these plans a secret, the kids needed some good news. We sat them down and told them our plans. They were sooooo excited! Lots of happy tears at the thought of seeing family and friends.

Here was our plan: 1) Drive to Carowinds in Charlotte to hang out with Adam’s family. 2) Drive to St. Louis for a day to say a quick “hi” to my parents, catch our breath and do some laundry. 3) Keep driving to Arkansas to relax with friends. 4) Head back to St. Louis to spend time with family until Layla was ready for us. We figured we would be in St. Louis for a week or so.

We did the plan and, for the most part, it was wonderful. I think I almost cracked my niece and nephew’s ribs from hugging them so hard when we saw them at Carowinds. The joy when we arrived at my parents’ house late on that first night was electric. Mountain biking, hiking and museums in Arkansas along with just hanging around the house with friends was healing for all four of us. When we got back to St. Louis, we were able to better connect with my parents and various members of our extended family. It was truly wonderful to see so many people we love.

At Carowinds, an amusement park where you can straddle the border of the Carolinas.

This is what greeted us when we arrived at my parents’ house our first night in St. Louis. My dad made the signs and my mom made a German chocolate birthday cake. Thanks, Mom and Dad (for EVERYTHING)!

Sid loves chess and has played since he was four. In Bentonville, there was a guy with a table and a sign that said “Beat me and win $1.” It was a quick and fierce timed game that drew a crowd. At one point, the man said “I might have to give away my first $1.” Sid gave him a great run but ultimately lost. I’m proud of you, Sid!

At the Crystal Bridges Museum of Modern Art in Bentonville. This “We the People” United States Constitution piece is made from the shoelaces of Americans from all different cultures.

The best, most fun game of Monopoly ever. Sid won (as he likes to remind us).

And then it was time to head back. The engine was fixed and the boatyard mechanics had completed the other projects. All they had left was a bit of work on our oven.

**sigh**

I don’t know if this will make sense, but honestly, none of us were super excited to get back to the boat. Ugh. It sucks to write that. But it’s the truth. The luster had worn off and we had learned that it is a difficult lifestyle, especially when we weren’t getting any of the benefits of the boat. We had had to pick ourselves up off of the ground so many times that the thought of returning to the potential hamster wheel of frequent disappointments was tough. The steep boat life learning curve that still awaits us (there’s so much more to do/know when the boat moves……….or so I’ve heard) just feels colossal when we are, at most, going to see a small fraction of what we planned to see this season. That’s the boat piece. Then there’s the “home” piece. My stomach felt sick (always feels sick) at the thought of saying goodbye to my parents. Not to mention the creature comforts of sitting on a couch, having a car and easily reaching into the fridge for some milk.

At the same time, we weren’t at home. We were guests in my parent’s home and no matter how much love exists in a house (and my goodness there is a lot of love in this house!), everyone has their own ways of doing life and I think all six of us were ready to get back to our normal routines. In Bentonville, when we were having our spontaneous guitar/amateur ukulele jam session, one of our friends said one of his favorite songs is “I Am…I Said” by Neil Diamond. This was a bit of a shocker to me (I mean, my generation is not typically known for our love of Neil Diamond…), but I confessed that I also absolutely love that song. It resonated with me deeply and I played it almost nonstop when I was living at my parents’ house in 2002 in the transition weeks between my move from South Carolina to California.

“LA’s fine but it ain’t home; New York’s home but it ain’t mine no more.”

I have always (thankfully) felt very loved and extremely welcomed when my parents open their doors to me (and now to my family—thank you Mom and Dad) but I do not feel “at home.” In my limited experience, it feels strange and disorienting and even a bit nostalgic and melancholy (?) to live somewhere you once lived again. And it should—life has moved on. Things change and, naturally, that place is no longer the same as it once was, just as you and the others living there are no longer the same people you once were. Life continually molds people and places into new shapes and adjustments are made accordingly. Kids grow and change, relationships evolve, perspectives shift, etc. On a very basic level, the people who once made me eat vegetables are now the same ones constantly peddling donuts and ice cream bars to my kids while I’m fiercely advocating for veggies. :-) With Steve being an immigrant, he has done a fair amount of casual research on the concept of “home,” as he rarely feels at home in any specific place and has adopted a concept he found called “persistent immigrant homesickness.” He describes it as a specific nostalgia that is linked to your home place at “the time before you left.” The remembered vision of your home rarely matches what it was really like, and now gives you an ever-present feeling of being a stranger wherever you happen to be, either at “home” (your old home/country) or at your “new home” (where you reside now, no matter for how long).

Ugh. I’m tangenting. Sorry. What’s my point? No matter how much we love each other, and no matter how sad we were to say “farewell” we were as ready as we were going to be to part ways for now.

We planned to leave St. Louis this past Sunday. But…..then there were going to be bad storms so we decided to leave on Monday. But….then there were no one-way rental cars on Monday, so the earliest we could leave was on Tuesday. And then Tuesday came.

After a rough night of sleep, my dad and I headed to Enterprise to pick up our rental car. We were all packed and ready to go with the exception of final toiletries and cell phone cords that Steve was readying back at the house. We would leave for NC and the boat as soon as we got back with the car. Dad and I were sitting in the morning rush hour traffic on 270-North when I got a phone call from Steve. There was no way this was good news.

“John from the boatyard just called. They installed the burner kit for the oven (after trying to install a new thermocouple and discovering that didn’t fix the problem) and the oven still isn’t working. He said that they could spend a few days continuing to work on it but all of the labor charges will essentially add up to the same amount as a cost for a new oven.”

No. Not again. I’m not ready for this ride again. I don’t have the stomach for this….

Steve: “What do you think?”

Me: (brain racing and stomach plummeting) “I think that if we need to order a new oven it’s probably not going to be delivered, much less installed, by tomorrow when we arrive so it seems like a bad idea to leave today.”

Steve: “I agree.”

(Pause)

Me: “Okaaaaaaaay….I’ll guess we’ll turn around and we’ll see you at home in a few minutes.” I hung up with Steve. My dad was already exiting onto Highway 44 to turn around. “Dad, did you hear all of that?”

Dad: “Yes.”

Me: “I think I already know the answer to this but I have to ask. Can we stay with you a little longer….?”

Dad: (with genuine kindness) “Of course. You don’t even need to ask.”

So here we are. In St. Louis. Stuck for another week. Again. Just like January. Feeling like we want to hide and cocoon ourselves. Again. The constant stopping-and-starting with emotional goodbyes is a lot to handle. As for going out, it’s tough to have conversations with well-intentioned people who don’t know our full story and see us and enthusiastically say “What are you doing here??? How is the Caribbean????” or who try to make us feel better by reminding us that everything happens for a reason. (For the record, I would likely be saying these exact same things to people in our situation, so if you have said this to us in the past few months, no worries! We feel your love and support.) In any case, we are very much hiding out and keeping to ourselves these days. When I told Addie that I was going to unpack the bags she said “NO! Please do not unpack the bags! I need to feel like we are moving forward.”

**sigh** Indeed.

Laying low. Checkers in the basement with Sid. I won. :-)

And so it goes. We don’t know where we will be this time next week. We don’t know where we’ll be in a month and we have no idea what we’ll be doing in a few months. Given all that has happened in our world in the last few days, what is happening with my family of four and our little boat is a piece of cake and we are trying to keep that in perspective. Keeping an eye on the news, Steve and I continue to think and overthink our plans. What is best for the kids? What is the smart thing to do? In the short-term? The long-term? The puzzle pieces keep evolving and changing both in our tiny family of four and in our global family of eight billion. I’m feeling quite paralyzed these days. Everything—everything—seems very much in limbo.

In the meantime, we continue to be generously hosted (hosted = tolerated) by my parents, living out the oft-cited lifelong dream of living in my parents’ basement. The rain continues to fall. We plan (ha) to leave on Wednesday.

Luckily for me, Steve just sent me a priceless video of him doing his best Gene Kelly “Singin’ in the Rain” impression. Amateur choreography included.