Homesteading

Thanks to each and everyone of you who pinged me with your thoughts on geographic relocation. I appreciate your thoughtful comments and e-mails so much. Many of you mentioned that the goods of being close to your parents outweighed the bads, and that encourages me. I also appreciated the wisdom that relationships are ever-evolving... The part of this decision that is weighing heavily on me is something that many people would probably say we should have seen coming. I married outside of both my race and the religion in which I was raised. I married into a culture that is different from mine in nearly every noticeable way. I left the church that my entire family is a part of to take on a new denomination and with it a whole set of lifestyle changes. This decision or set of decisions affects every holiday, every family visit, and myriad conversations Loverpants and I have with our family. I oftentimes find myself envying friends who don't seem to have all these wrinkles to iron out with their parents, who don't need to translate or try to find the equivalent of an aphorism in English with a comparable one in Korean.

But we've all got our bag of nails, don't we? We've all got so much in our family dynamics that require nailing down and which still becomes rusty or unhinged.

One more thought before I close this chapter on the Hypothetical Move -- I don't want to start over. I don't want to have to find out when and where the story hours are and which parents are the ones that freak when you try to share your non-organic bunny cookies with their kid. I don't want to move from my neighborhood where my kid hears 3 different languages spoken on a 10 minute walk to the train. I don't want to be suburban bound. I don't want to be offered a salary below $25K and accept that that is the going rate in other parts of the country for a full-time candidate with a master's. I don't want to move. I want to stay here!

But that's just Kendra thinking about what Kendra wants. What does Baby Girl want? And Loverpants? I'll have to let them weigh in here sometime...

*** A few snaps from our trip to Frankenmuth, MI (sniff sniff! family time!):

I can honestly say that I am now as big as a house. A gingerbread house.

And look at these cuties all dolled up for the Christmassy sabbath!

Visiting our friends Aimee and Aileen in Detroit...

And notice how Curious George still makes it into every family photo?

Ready or Not

I am listening to Loverpants talk over the phone with one of his parents as to how to set up video chat on Gmail. Logging on to the website alone has taken minutes. Many minutes. His tone is growing frustrated and yet not resigned because at the end of this conversation, we will hopefully be able to see his folks on our little laptop screen and they us, coming to us live, from Michigan, in living color. A part of me feels great about this connection.

Another part of me wonders if we are just biding our time.

I started out the week feeling heart-heavy miserable about leaving my family in Ohio. About leaving the Mid-West in general and trekking back to the land of no family, to overpriced housing, to Masshole driving, to a place where we are effectively freaks for attending church more than once a year.

I felt disgruntled about Why We Are Still Here for a good portion of the week.

I felt it when I suddenly had to celebrate Take Your Toddler to Work day after friends were running way late to watch Baby Girl and I had to bundle her in monkey footsie pajamas and attempt to teach a 4 hour composition class with her crawling through my legs. It eventually worked out, but I was panic-stricken for a good hour. I felt it this question pecking away at me a million times since we've returned to our home with spotty heat vents and one mysteriously leaking faucet and the mice that always flirt with our sense of nighttime peace.

But then I listen in on this phone conversation between Loverpants and his parent and I wonder, "Are we ready to live closer? Or is it already too late?"

I'm not one to think it's ever too late to do most anything, but we've been hacking it on our own, Loverpants and I, for over ten years. We made it through the first two years of our daughter's life without much parental interference, and now we're about to ride further on this continuum with another little passenger. We're pretty untethered here, and, frankly, it's all we know. Our weekends are claimed by church and work, and while sometimes we feel as though we don't choose those claims on our time, we ultimately do. We've gotten to choose so much without the input of our families. Where we live, where we attend church, where we work, what we do, when and to where we travel, and whether or not to take the call when we see "Mom-Cell Phone" on our mobile screens.

Moving Back Home would most likely mean a move to Michigan. Loverpants' parents could use our help and we could use theirs. Their lifestyle is more aligned with our own and I absolutely love the town in which they live - a diverse university town with great parks and a more progressive appointment than most mitten state villes I've known.

But I just wonder if we have already waited too long to try and graft our family to theirs in a way that is more permanent and in-your-face. We are such classic firstborns, Loverpants and I. We're going to figure it all out by ourselves, thank you, and so what if there's no roadmap. Will we be quick to resist advice, support? Will we expect too much of family? Will they expect too much of us? Will visits no longer seem special and will holidays be times when we feel stuck rather than gearing up for eatfests and lovefests and novelty gold?

I know there are no hard and fast answers, and this is all a cost-benefits analysis when it comes down to it.  Is what we would sacrifice in our independence be rewarded doubly by what we gain in family support, close in proximity?  That's what I want to know now before the For Sale sign is up, before the friends we have made - the precious friends we have made here - are mere penpals, or the people we now visit come holiday breaks.

Your thoughts?

Grumpsgiving

I must admit that I spent a great fraction of yesterday wearing my pouty-pants and had Loverpants been inclined to sell me on QVC (which totally would have been within his rights to do, so miserable of a living companion yesterday was I) I cannot even imagine how many freebies he would have had to thrown in - cashmere slippers and Flobees and boxes of Swiss chocolates - to peddle me off to the highest bidder. I love holidays in my mind. In my mind, there is garland hanging from every doorway, a potpourri of delicious smells wafting throughout our home, my family's countenance: pure joy. In reality, I wake up each holiday that I am away from my extendeds in a state of panic. I didn't plan any traditions! Why is my husband watching videos about Google Wave and why is no one else watching the parade with me?

So I end up taking a 3 hour depressive nap and waking up and eating a roll of OREOs and hating my holiday inadequacy and willing the day to pass so we can get back to regular life with my regular expectations thereof.

Much of this has to do with my parents and especially my father being a bona fide holiday freak, counting aloud the days until the next holiday, giving us permission always to sleep in, pig out, and make like the freaking Griswold's whenever the calendar called for it. And then my parents split and the holidays never felt the same because they never were the same and so I am forever trying to get back to reclaim my rightful holidays since I didn't ask for this and call me Veruca Salt but I want my childhood back NOW!

The other part of this has to do with marrying someone who is a pilgrim with no homeland. My husband is an immigrant, true, but he also grew up assimilated (see also: The Accidental Asian by Eric Liu). He does not have a memory of Korean traditions because he did not grow up in Korea. He does not have memories of American traditions because his parents did not grow up in America. Does anyone know what this is like? Does anyone know what it feels like to not want to have to fault your partner for his lack of traditional novelty, but also to not have to explain why you want certain things to just be automatic? Why you want to feel the special-ness of a day without having to put so much energy toward making it extraspecially special?

***

I went for a long walk yesterday afternoon and thought about my stocked cabinets and my beautiful daughter and my gorgeous husband and my bathroom that smells like baby pee and I truly was grateful for all of it. I decided that this would be my starting point in the future, that holidays would be a time for me to take stock of my blessings and to try to bless others in special ways.

That being said, I've got 10 of the 30 stockings claimed so far. I don't suppose you'd like to sponsor one, too? :)