Writing this blog post after many months absent is so challenging, how do I explain where I’ve been? My answer is ‘I've been re-acquainting with gravity’. This latest mission of ours has been the hardest ever: re-entry into our homeland Australia.
Baby No. 2 is due any day now so I have little else I am capable of doing except put my feet up and assess how readapting to life in Oz has been; the operative word to describe it is ‘groggy’.
You see, this pregnancy was very different from my last; each trimester was marked not by morning sickness, nor measured by developmental milestones, but rather, now many miles we covered to get to home base.
I experienced three trimesters in three cities: Beirut Lebanon, Bern Switzerland, and Brisbane Australia.
We travelled in a way that can only be described as hard core. The first move involved six weeks deliberating between ‘should we go?’ and ‘off we go’. We reluctantly bid farewell to Beirut and onto Bern shacking up with hubby's folks thinking we’d settle in Switzerland but it turned out to be twelve weeks negotiating between ‘can we stay?’ and ‘where to live.’
Out of the blue, we found out days before deciding to go back to Beirut that we were returning to our homeland for an opportune work position offered to Mikey. At rocket speed we broke through the Southern stratosphere and landed with a thud in Brisbane.
Dizzy? Sure. Boring? No way!
It feels like I’ve just stepped off a roller coaster; re-adaption of my emotional and cognitive balance system is only just re-aligning.
But when you live like this, as expats, you live not only with the culture shock and confusion, but also live with endless possibilities and excitement. You’re learning something by gathering new experiences. Whether it's a new city, new food to taste, there's something different to uncover. Even if it's not to your taste or it’s boring, it’s a new taste, a new boring
Along with my insatiable pregnancy sugar cravings, after three moves in nine months, I am also craving the concept of stability.
You’d think moving back to one’s own country is the easy part "Oh I'm just going back to where I came from, I know the ropes, too easy!" Let me tell you IT AINT.
Re-entry is more stressful with more unexpected consequences than a transition into the unfamiliar. I’ve never felt so alien and uninspired after the exhilarating social, family, and career experiences we had abroad.
What exactly are we coming back to? For a start, I’m a Sydney gal, I’ve never lived in Brisbane it may as well be like landing on Mars. I have no family, friends or an old neighbourhood to return to.
The only thing I could latch myself onto was the familiar taste of a double-shot cafe-latte to kick-start some homecoming enthusiasm; but all I felt was the gravitational pull of my baby’s kicks to get me out of my meteorological misery.
Even family members are finding it hard to place us, realising that we are not exactly the same people before we left. My son is no longer the cute gurgling baby in my grandparent’s eyes but a rambling hyperactive toddler speaking in tongues that I even find hard to decipher.
The lesson being, former familiar grooves no longer have a holding place, which can be a blessing and a burden when memories mixed with expectations aren’t being met.
Even through all the stresses of setting up a house into a home, getting my son into playgroups and nurseries, setting up antenatal and mum’s meeting groups (…the list goes on and on…) I do feel like I am coming out of that jaded re-entry stupor a stronger person.
And thankfully, Brisbane is opening up for us, giving us everything we’d hoped for: a warm climate, outdoor adventure and cross-culture vibrancy.
To top it off, yesterday I made a giant leap at our local café when the barista asked off-hand “the usual for you Ann?” At last! a recognition that I belong, a return of equilibrium that says “yes, that's why I'm here, I'm meant to be here.”
As I’m about to head down that familiar parental path once again, there really is no preparing for the birth of a baby: it really is an out-of-this-world experience. It doesn’t matter where you are, motherhood doesn’t work in locations, it's about the journey.
When a baby is born a mother also comes of age. She too has to grow and develop through the process of time. It's taken me a few months of looking back to realize that at this pivotal point, I have my hands full, my family is what it's all about. We can be in another galaxy for all I care - the force of motherhood will always be there.
