The Leaves on our Trees

Every once in awhile, if you’re lucky, you get a teacher who changes your life.

I’ve been fortunate to have had a few over the years, notably my cello and orchestra teachers, without whose influence I would be a very different person. But I also had one very special English teacher in high school: a wonderful lady by the name of Penny. All of her senior students got to call her by her first name, and I was looking forward to earning that privilege upon completing her class at the end of my junior year. It was the spring of 2004, and I had loved her English class. It was hard work – Penny didn’t take crap from anyone, and she also didn’t accept any late work. She demanded and received responsibility, attention, and excellence from her students. Through literature, poetry, and essay writing, she got us to think critically, to examine the deepest parts of ourselves, and to develop empathy and compassion for others. Imagine my dismay, then, when she told my class that we were to be her final students – she was retiring.

Not to be deterred, I struck up a friendship with Penny after she left teaching. I had connected with her on a deeper level than most kids find with their high school teachers, and I didn’t want to lose that bond. She seemed to value me too. When Penny, who had long been a single mom, got married in 2004, I was the first student at school that she told. It hadn’t been a big to-do of a wedding, and it hadn’t even occurred to her to announce it to her students. But she felt like she should tell someone, so she confided in me one day after class. Being a self-absorbed 16-year-old, this didn’t make much of an impact on me at the time and I had almost forgotten about it. But years later she reminded me of this fact and shared what it had meant to her to have a student she could trust with the details of her personal life.

Autumn foliage in Oregon

So what was Penny’s influence on me? She didn’t teach me to write. I was already pretty competent by the time I got to her class. Although she did, however, help me refine and examine my writing, and taught me the value of using writing as a means of self-reflection. She didn’t teach me to appreciate literature, either. I was already a bookworm. I read some great stories and poetry in her class, but I could have done that on my own. What Penny did was she told me I could be a writer. 

She didn’t just say it once, either. She would write it in her comments on my school essays. She would write it in her emails about my blog posts. Over the course of nineteen years, during which we kept in touch and would get together when I came back to town, she never neglected to encourage me to become an author. She said that whenever I got up the courage to write a book, she would gladly volunteer as an editor. During that whole time, outwardly, I was enjoying my career as a music teacher. But deep down, I really wanted to write.

Admittedly, until recently, I never seriously considered ditching my music career to become a writer. I had invested too much time and energy into teaching music to even fathom giving it up. And besides, a healthy dose of realism and pessimism prevented me from thinking I could ever succeed as an author. But Penny planted that seed in the fertile soil of my mind twenty years ago, and finally the first tender sprouts are springing forth. The specter of failure still sits with me every time I sit down at my writing desk, but I’ve found the courage and the confidence that Penny always knew were there.

I last saw Penny in person around Thanksgiving 2019. I brought my then three-year-old daughter with me to Penny’s house and Penny was absolutely delighted to chat with me about books, films, and travels and to play hide and seek with my daughter behind the cushions of her overstuffed couch. We had a lovely time together, but I could tell that something wasn’t quite right. When we had knocked on the door, Penny opened it still wearing her bathrobe. She had forgotten about our meet-up. No problem though; she quickly changed and we sat down to a cup of tea surrounded by the many wonderful paintings on her walls. We had a lively conversation, but I noticed her occasionally repeating statements and questions that she had said only a few minutes earlier. This forgetfulness was new to me – I hadn’t seen any evidence of it before, and it was pervasive enough that I started to feel a tiny crack in my heart when we left. This was more than just her getting older. Her memory was slipping away from her. 

A few months after our last visit, the world began its quick collapse under the weight of Covid-19. Consecutive lockdowns, coupled with our move from Hawaii to England made it highly unlikely that I would see Penny again any time soon. As the months turned into years, it became more and more difficult to get in touch with her. Not because of her memory, but because of my fear. Penny had such an incredible mind - sharp, inquisitive, insightful - that I couldn’t stand the idea of her losing those powers of thought. I decided it would be too hard to see her diminished in such a cruel way. So when we finally came back to Oregon, nearly three years later, I made the rather cowardly decision to not get in touch with Penny. How I regret that now.

I’m back in Oregon for my first Thanksgiving since 2019. I decided to become a full-time writer in September, thanks in no small part to Penny’s persistent encouragement for more than half of my life. So at this time of gratitude and reflection, it felt only right to contact Penny and thank her for never giving up on me. I didn’t know how she was doing, I wasn’t sure if she would respond, but I needed to try. I emailed her and waited. A week went by. With each passing day, I felt more certain that things had gotten much worse for her. Finally, I saw an email from her in my inbox. My heart leapt for a moment, only to be crushed in the next when I saw that the response was from Penny’s husband, offering to call me with an update.

Penny is now in a memory care facility. She was moved there about nine months ago and her husband visits her several times a week, taking her out to lunch, and bringing her back home for a few hours. But every time he takes her back to the facility, she gets upset again, which must be absolutely heartbreaking for him. Nonetheless, Penny’s husband kindly offered to take me to see her. He was hopeful that she might want to go out for coffee, or at least chat with me in the cafeteria. I, on the other hand, had no idea what to expect. Would she remember me? Would she want to talk to me? Would any of the teacher that I loved and respected remain?

The answer: I’m not sure.

Perhaps due to some side-effects from her medicine, Penny has recently been sleeping for most of the day. When we visited her, she was tucked up in bed, unable to stay awake for more than a minute. She hadn’t had breakfast, hadn’t gotten out of bed at all that we could see. She was so drowsy it seemed like she was struggling to come out of general anesthesia. When she briefly sat up, I could see that her gray hair was longer than she used to keep it, and was unusually untidy. She looked old and depleted, not the petite firecracker of wit and wisdom that I was accustomed to.

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But when she saw me, for a brief moment her eyes lit up, her wan face transformed with a radiant smile, and it was just like old times. Her husband asked if she remembered me and her response was a quiet but enthusiastic “Yes!” I felt replete with hope, my heart so happy to see her smile.

Then, just as suddenly, she flopped back down on her pillow and closed her eyes as if we weren’t even there. After a few more attempts to wake and engage her, Penny’s husband went to the cafeteria to procure a bit of food for her breakfast. When he returned, she and I shared a small chuckle when, with a sassy shake of her head she replied “ppfft” in response to an offer of strawberry yogurt. It was a very Penny-esque gesture, and I felt a moment of relief that some element of her was still there. 

But that was as much as we got from her. Not long after, she wanted us to leave so that she could sleep again. With tears in my eyes, I walked away from my dear friend and mentor, leaving her to waste away in a place that projects a false cheerfulness to hide the profound sadness of the inmates who are experiencing memory loss.

A good teacher leaves indelible marks on her students, helping them to grow and to overcome the obstacles in their path. Penny achieved all of this and much more in her decades of teaching. I only had one year in her class, but was lucky enough to get nineteen years of her friendship. I am beyond grateful for her love, encouragement, and support, and would give anything to take away her present afflictions. But even now, I’m still learning from her - learning how to have courage and strength in the face of difficulty. And of course, she’s still inspiring me to write too. 

Here’s to you, Penny. Thank you for everything.

359 Days in the English Workforce

They say when one door closes, another opens. I just didn’t expect this door to slam in my face quite so soon. My journey into the British workforce lasted only 359 days. I didn’t even make it a full year. My final contracted day was last week, and as I left the Sage after returning my laptop and key card, I paused for a minute to look at the building that only a year ago, I was so excited to be calling my workplace. 

The Sage Gateshead

It’s a very unusual building, iconic. I think it looks like a shining, silver patchwork chrysalis for a gigantic caterpillar that’s resting along the quayside. The inside is just as marvelous. There’s no hint of a transforming butterfly–just massive, beautiful concert halls and exceptional views of the River Tyne, including the plethora of imposing yet graceful bridges that straddle the water, the nearly 900-year-old keep of Newcastle Castle, and all the amazing old buildings, spires, and clock towers that still make me marvel that I live in England. I felt a childlike excitement every time I beeped my way through the stage doors and into the front of house, always secretly expecting someone to stop me and ask what I was doing there. 

Newcastle quayside

Before we even moved to England, when Rory was just applying for the job at Newcastle University, I found the Sage after some quick googling and instantly knew that I wanted to work there. It’s not just a concert hall, but also provides a very robust community music education program. And the program I was most keen on being a part of was In Harmony. Similar to El Sistema music programs around the world, In Harmony is about transforming kids’ lives through music education. In Newcastle, it operates at two schools in the culturally diverse but lower-income West end. Every child at the school receives his or her own orchestral musical instrument as well as two to three hours a week of music instruction. All for free. It was the perfect fit for me, working with In Harmony, or so I thought.

The thing was, I knew, after fifteen years of teaching music, that I was done being a teacher. I had suspected that I needed a career change about eight years ago, but I persisted in music teaching because that’s what I had trained to do. Since I was a teenager I had wanted to teach music, and everything I did after high school prepared me to follow that path. So even though I knew, deep down, that I should find a job that aligned with my true self, where I wouldn’t have to put on an extroverted façade all day long, it felt too scary of a prospect to up and leave. That’s where In Harmony came in. 

An In Harmony program assistant job opened up last summer, and given that the program runs at my daughter’s school, and I would be working close to our neighborhood, it seemed like the perfect opportunity for me. It was a purely administrative job, not a teaching one, and it was in the music education field, so I would still feel right at home. Or, mostly anyway, because music ed in England is not the same as in America. But we’ll come to that later. I worked out of the two schools, doing mostly simple tasks like printing music and setting up chairs and music stands, and I could be as introverted as I wanted to be. There was very little stress involved, no work in the evenings, no sleepless nights agonizing over how to deal with difficult students. After two years of pandemic- and baby-induced stay-at-home momming, I was grateful to be out of the house and having conversations with adults again, even if the majority of my skills and training were not being put to use and most of my music teacher colleagues had no idea that I was actually one of them. It was a job and I was getting paid for easy work.

But this was my first foray into UK working life, and it was the first time since moving to Newcastle that I was surrounded by non-family British adults all day long. It was eye-opening. Although everyone was welcoming, more or less, I never quite got over my feeling of otherness. It was little things: having my colleagues offer me a cup of tea multiple times a day (nice, but strange), hearing different music terminology and pronunciations (see below), and not understanding 90% of the interactions I had with the school caretaker (US: janitor) due to his Geordie dialect. 

On one memorable occasion, I was talking with my boss and some of my colleagues, and I learned what I thought was a new British term. New to me, anyway. They were describing someone and feigning surprise at the person’s actions. “Shakara!” my boss said. Shakara? What the heck does that mean? I thought. Perhaps it was a word with roots in one of Britain’s former colonies, like pukka, or pundit. I pondered it the rest of the day, and when Google didn’t help elucidate things for me, I asked Rory if he was familiar with the word. He was puzzled too. But later that evening we had a breakthrough. Turns out I hadn’t learned a quaint new English word. I simply couldn’t understand my boss’s accent. It wasn’t shakara, it was shock horror. Oops.

British music terminology also required a lot of learning. It was strange to be working in the same field as I’d always been, and yet to not know the right words for things. Take rhythms for example. In the US, rhythms are described using a logical fraction system. A long, four-beat note is a whole note. A shorter two-beat note is a half note. One beat is a quarter note, and so on. In Britain, logic is nowhere in sight. Rhythm terms are random, and admittedly, rather comical. 

• Whole note = semibreve 
• Half note = minim
• Quarter note = crotchet (how do people say that with a straight face?)
• Eighth note = quaver (also the name of a cheesy crisp)
• Sixteenth note = semiquaver
• 32nd note = demisemiquaver
• 64th note = hemidemisemiquaver (you’ve got to be kidding me) 

Perhaps it seems a small thing, to have to use new terminology and to not always understand what people are saying. But it’s those little things that cement the feeling of not belonging and shatter the illusion you create for yourself that you’re at home, doing what you’ve always done. They make you realize again for the thousandth time that you’re a foreigner. You’ll never quite fit in here. That’s life in the immigrant lane, I guess.

You may be asking yourself by now, what happened to the job? Why did it end? Surely Talia couldn’t have been so incompetent at setting up chairs that she was fired? (Yes, thank you for the vote of confidence.) Well, as with most things in the arts sector, it came down to money, or a lack thereof. The Arts Council England, a government agency that provided two-thirds of In Harmony’s funding, suddenly pulled the plug this year. I guess they decided that ten years of changing kids’ lives with music was quite enough. They left us with one more year of funding as a transition year, but starting in August 2024, the Newcastle In Harmony program will be decimated. As the last one in, I was the first one to be let go. It’ll only go downhill from here.

I’ve seen first-hand the difference that In Harmony makes in the lives of the children and families who participate. It transforms communities, it brings people from wildly disparate backgrounds together in one common endeavor. It gives children with minimal hopes for the future the tools and attitudes they need to overcome the innumerable obstacles in their path.

And it’s going down the drain.

In Harmony Newcastle will still exist after 2024. At least, in some form. Maybe not in both schools, maybe not for all the children, but a shell of In Harmony will remain. Yet it will never have the same impact as it does now, which, frankly, pisses me off. All the more so because my two kids should have benefited from this program throughout their primary school years, and now that’s been snatched away from them. Through In Harmony, my daughter started learning the cello in school, twice a week, from age five. My three-year-old son is going to have musicianship classes in his nursery (US: preschool) this year, taught by an excellent, qualified music teacher. That’s freaking remarkable. How many schools do you know that provide that level of music education? I’m willing to bet the answer is none.

And given the government’s disregard for the value of arts education, I expect there soon won’t be any schools left in England embracing music on the same level as they currently do with In Harmony. For me, as someone who has dedicated my entire adult life to teaching music, this is heartbreaking. I was only with In Harmony for a year, and all I did was make copies and stack chairs, but it’s been hard to leave this program, hard to see its foundations crumbling, and hard to say goodbye to my first British job and colleagues, even if I didn’t always understand what they were saying.

But when one door closes, another door opens.

There is one upside to my newfound lack of employment. Thanks to the financial security provided by my wonderful husband, and the free preschool childcare provided by my kids’ school, I now have the time, freedom, and mental space to try full-time something I’ve always wanted to do: writing. The ultimate job for the introverted. You may be seeing more blog posts from me soon. Stay posted.

Two Years in England

I had a delightfully English experience as I washed the dishes the other night. I was rewatching the final episode of season five of Downton Abbey, where the Crawleys attend a shooting party at the fictional Brancaster Castle. I was scrubbing a frying pan and suddenly had to lean in to get a closer look at my phone, because on the screen was a decorative wall chock-full of several-hundred-year-old pistols and swords arranged in swirling patterns at the entrance to the castle. You know, just your average wall of weapons to welcome your guests to your home. As you do in England. 

Downton cast in the Alnwick Castle library

Except that this was no mere set for a TV show–I had seen this very same wall only a few hours before when we visited Alnwick Castle in Northumberland. Built in the 11th century, Alnwick (pronounced “Annick”) Castle is the second largest inhabited castle in England after Windsor Castle, where the Queen’s family lives. The Duke of Northumberland and his family live at Alnwick, and it’s very strange to see current family photos and squashy bean bag chairs around a flat-screen TV juxtaposed with the centuries-old portraits and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves in the library. The castle was also used as the Hogwarts castle in the first two Harry Potter films, so go back and re-watch those if you want a sense of the grandeur of the place.

Castle visitors taking a broomstick flying lesson

Back to Downton Abbey. As the Crawleys walked up the stairs from the weapons wall and into another lavishly decorated room, I recognized two black and gold cabinets that Rory had pointed out to me earlier that morning. He told me that the absurdly ornate cabinets were purchased for the castle a few hundred years before from the palace at Versailles; they were apparently considered tacky and out-of-date, which is why the French royalty were keen to sell. Naturally, an English aristocrat bought them. I would have loved to delve further into the fascinating history of the castle and its many curiosities, but our tour through the place was at a very brisk pace, owing to the need to keep toddler hands off of priceless works of art.

Little bulldozer enjoying the castle grounds

It is experiences like these that highlight one of the many charms of living in the UK. Namely, that history is at our fingertips. One need only drive a few miles before a medieval castle pops up. And closer to home, the house that we bought in December is one hundred years old, which is fairly typical here. We were amused to find that in the original deed to the house, it said we weren’t allowed to build stables in the back garden or there would be a five pound penalty, which really dashed our hopes of opening a ranch. And a little ways down the street from us is part of Hadrian’s Wall, which was built by the Romans nearly two thousand years ago. We haven’t stopped to look at it properly yet, as it’s next to a busy road near the highway. And also, it’s just a pile of rocks. Historically significant, sure, but not all that interesting. Nonetheless, living in England gives us the opportunity to engage with history, even ancient history, in a very real way that wasn’t part of my upbringing in America. 

Speaking of ancient history, it has already been more than two years since Rory and I moved our family from Hawaii to England. The anniversary of our early-pandemic 7,000 mile journey came and went without me even noticing it this year, perhaps because I’ve grown so accustomed to living here, or more likely I just forgot due to my motherhood-induced brain fog. But now that this country is coming out of the pandemic, I’m beginning to see it in a new light. We’re able to travel around more and visit fascinating places, and we’re finally getting to know our neighbors and make lasting friendships, all of which make this foreign land feel a bit more like home.

In less than a week, however, I’ll actually be going home. We’ll be making the trek back to the United States to visit my family in Washington and Oregon, most of whom I haven’t seen in three years. It will be our toddler son’s first transatlantic flight and his first time meeting his aunts, uncles, and cousins in person. And our nearly six-year-old daughter has been in England so long that she has no memory of America, so I can’t wait to see what she thinks of the place. Fingers crossed for a smooth and joyful trip back to the land of the free.

Thanksgiving in England

Thanksgiving has been billed as the end of an era in my family this year. My parents are hosting the family dinner in their Oregon home for the last time before they sell their comfortable, spacious house and downsize to a one-level place. At least, that’s what they keep telling us. Speaking from recent experience, I can confidently say that buying and selling a house takes longer than you think it will, and knowing my parents, I wouldn’t say with certainty that they’ll be out of theirs before next November. Still, that’s the plan, so my three brothers and their spouses, my six nieces and nephews, plus my two cousins and their two kids will all make the journey through the evergreen forests to converge on the warm and cozy Huntington Drive house this week with silly amounts of delicious food to share.

I won’t be there. The home I lived in from ages thirteen to eighteen will be filled with everyone in my family except me. But I’ve been to enough Lindsley family Thanksgivings that I can envision how the event will go. The dining table and card tables will be set up with elegant autumnal table cloths and centerpieces. The natural wood buffet table in the kitchen will be laden with an indecent number of pies of every variety imaginable, including a “mystery pie” designed to test the taste buds. Scents of sweet potato casserole browning in the oven, fluffy potatoes being mashed, and a huge smoked turkey sizzling away will permeate every corner of the house and make tummies rumble.

The absurdly long remodeled kitchen will be bustling with my mom in an apron and some variety of her daughters-in-law, with the occasional appearance by my brothers. My dad will be as far away from the action as he can manage, likely outside in the shop. The younger kids will be chasing each other around the downstairs, or playing music on the drums and xylophones, or playing games, while the tweens are ensconced in the squishy tan sectional that borders the family room, staring at their phones and ignoring the world around them. My siblings and cousins will be catching up with each other’s news. Despite all living on the west coast, they don’t see each other that often, and they will be sharing how jobs are going, how the kids are doing in school, and what new sewing or DIY house projects they’re tackling. It will be pleasant and comfortable, with only a light dusting of chaos, now that most of the grandkids are older and that my two rambunctious children, one and five years old, won’t be there.

My son, a toddler with a sense of humor and his own agenda, has never been to that house. Born a few months into the pandemic, and shortly after we moved from Hawaii to England, he was eleven months old before he even met my parents in person. He has never been on an airplane, has never been outside of the UK. My brothers and their families are just moving pictures on a screen to him.

In contrast, my five-year-old daughter has been on about thirty airplanes in her short life, traversing oceans and continents, and last visited my parents’ house two years ago. But Covid and time have obliterated those memories for her. Even her previous home of Hawaii is more of a feeling than a memory now--just warmth, fragrant breezes, and contentment. Oregon is a foreign concept to her, just like the holiday of Thanksgiving itself. She doesn’t remember her last Thanksgiving in Oregon as a three-year-old, drawing pictures on the kitchen chalkboard with Grandpa, who made it down onto the floor with her. Or reading If You Give a Mouse a Cookie with Grammie in the floral armchair. Trying to emulate her big cousins who were very sweet and patient with her. As etched into my memory as those events were, the relevant synapses in her brain have already been pruned and discarded. So this week I’ve been trying to explain to my daughter what Thanksgiving is about. A budding English girl, she remains unconvinced of its importance. 

“But it’s not a real holiday since I won’t get to stay home from school,” she told me yesterday. Admittedly, she has a point. Thanksgiving doesn’t feel quite the same living in England, when no one else is snug at home on a Thursday, cooking up a storm, and gathering with family to celebrate. There’s a sort of inertia that washes over you when celebrating something by yourself in another country. When the only turkeys you can find in the stores are frozen ones set out early for Christmas, and when you have to order canned pumpkin from Amazon because it doesn’t exist elsewhere. When British people look incredulous and slightly disgusted if you mention pumpkin pie. It’s tough to be an American abroad on Thanksgiving. It’s a holiday that revels in the concept of home, with comforting rituals of food and family to encourage you to reflect on the beauty and bounties of your home and family life. Yet because you have made your life in a foreign country, your whole understanding of what constitutes home has acquired so many shades of complexity that nothing and nowhere quite feels like home anymore. Try as you might to approximate those rituals, you simply can’t evoke the sentiments in the same way. Instead of togetherness, you feel more alone. 

But I wouldn’t want to abandon my family’s traditions and give up on Thanksgiving. Given that my family doesn’t celebrate Christmas together, Thanksgiving is the one holiday of the year where we acknowledge the beauty, vitality, and quirkiness of the now much-expanded Lindsley family. Where we overcome our introversion and ineptitude at polite conversation for the sake of building unity amongst our selves and our spouses and our children. It’s also where we remember our loved ones who have passed on, by sharing stories about them and keeping their traditions alive. Before my family eats their Thanksgiving meal, for instance, they will undoubtedly circle around the kitchen holding hands (or touching elbows this year, perhaps) and chant “yummmmm” in the style of my aunt Maya, whose peaceful and loving presence will be missed again this year. Thanksgiving allows us to see how beautiful the foliage is on our family tree, and the falling leaves outside remind us of those who have already floated away from our branches. 

As I thought about Thanksgiving this year, my second year in a row of not physically being with my family, I reflected on the purpose of the holiday and its place in my life. Thanksgiving isn’t just about catching up with relatives and stuffing our faces with food. And as I’m realizing more with each year I spend outside of the US, it also isn’t about relishing the coziness of my parents’ house and feeling comforted and loved by the people I grew up around. I live 4,750 miles away from my parents and siblings. If I focus on the distance between us and what I’m missing out on because of it, I’d much rather skip Thanksgiving altogether. It hurts too much. Besides, if my parents do manage to sell their house before next November, I won’t have a familiar home to go back to anyway. So I have to let go of those ephemeral desires and focus on what Thanksgiving is really about.

Thanksgiving is about gratitude. That’s what I told my daughter anyway. She quickly latched onto the concept and started listing things she was thankful for. “I’m very thanksgiving for having such a wonderful loving mum,” she said, before hugging me with a warm smile. I managed to keep a straight face at her misuse of the word “thanksgiving”, and then cringed inside just a little that she called me her mum instead of her mom. But I let the moment pass and listened to the rest of her gratitude list. It was sweet and thoughtful, a beautiful reflection of her five-year-old mind.

And reflection is needed if we are to look deep enough within ourselves to feel a genuine sense of gratitude for all of the twists and turns that life throws at us. What a marvelous and unexpected journey I’ve had that has led me to this place. From Washington, to Missouri, to Oregon, to Ohio, to Paris, to Hawaii, to England, I’ve taken with me the love of my family, my husband, and now my children wherever I go. Thanksgiving gives us the opportunity to reflect on the meaning of home and family, and when I think about the manifold blessings I’ve received, gratitude wells up within me, threatening to leak out as tears. This time of reflection, this appreciation for life’s bounties, this thankfulness for the people in our lives is what I want to pass along to my children by sharing my holiday with them.

A first Thanksgiving for my Scottish in-laws

I hope that one year we’ll make it back to Oregon in November, perhaps when my son can sit still for more than thirty seconds and can handle fifteen hours on an airplane. But in the meantime, we can still contribute to our family
unity by celebrating Thanksgiving in England. In the words of my dad, “We live in two worlds at the same time. In the one there is distance and in the other only nearness. To travel on the wings of love in this world you just have to move your thoughts to your desired destination and there you are!” I’m right there with you, Dad. 

P. S. Speaking of homes, Rory and I have just bought our first house! We get the keys tomorrow! 😄

Travelling During a Pandemic, Part 1

It’s a strange world we live in. After the relative normalcy of Hawaii, where, despite the stay-at-home order, we still regularly chatted with our neighbors outside, and many stores and restaurants were still open if modified, it was eye-opening to go travelling around the world and to see how the pandemic is playing out in other cities. 

As you’ll recall from my last post, our goal was to move from Honolulu to England. My visa allowed me to enter the UK only between April 24 and May 24, so we had a limited window in which we could travel. Rory’s US visa also expired at the end of June, as did our American health insurance (important to have when one is pregnant!), so we felt compelled to proceed with our moving plans despite the plethora of uncertainties facing us.

In late March, as Hawaii started to implement stay-at-home orders and Rory and I began working from home, we were ecstatic to have found decent flights for all three of us for a measly $1500. That’s about a third as much as they usually cost. Maybe this pandemic won’t be so bad after all, I thought. Maybe we’ll be able to stay under our budget for moving costs. By mid-April, however, Rory, checking the status of our flights, reported that certain legs of the three-flight journey had disappeared from our itinerary. I started feeling nervous. They’ll find other flights for us, right? We’ve paid for the tickets, so we’ll get there somehow, he kept assuring me. But towards the end of April, the whole itinerary was gone. The flights just weren’t running anymore. 

I often project a calm demeanor in the face of difficulties, but this stressed the heck out of me. All of our moving plans revolved around actually leaving Hawaii on May 7. What if we couldn’t get to the UK? What if we bought more plane tickets, only to have them disappear too? Rory called United Airlines multiple times, but the best they could do was get us on terrible flights that would end at London’s Heathrow Airport. We considered various ways of getting north from London to Dumfries (where Rory’s parents live), or Edinburgh (the airport closest to them). Neither a seven-hour train ride nor a six-hour drive sounded appealing after two days of flying. We thought about buying a plane ticket with a different airline just from London to Edinburgh, but we didn’t want the hassle of gathering and re-checking our many suitcases and paying for them a second time either. What to do?

We bought new plane tickets, that’s what. The options were limited by this point, and a four-flight, 35-hour journey with American Airlines was the best we could get. Instead of $1500, (which was not refunded) it now cost closer to $4000. There was no guarantee that these flights would run either, so we just crossed our fingers and kept packing.

Our house in it's mostly-emptied state.

Fast-forward to Thursday, April 30. The movers came at 8 am and packed up a portion of our belongings to put on a boat. Over the next five days, our friends and neighbors took all of our furniture, appliances, and warm-weather accoutrements (goodbye, snorkel gear and beach umbrella), and left us with a nearly empty apartment. We packed our suitcases and cleaned our house. We turned in our keys. On May 5th and 6th we stayed at a hotel near the Honolulu Airport. Rory continued to check on our flights and thankfully, they still appeared to be running. Finally, it was May 7th, the day to fly. After eating leftover Vietnamese food in our hotel room for lunch, we hauled our three large suitcases, my cello, my violin, three backpacks, a carry-on roller bag, a snack bag, and my purse to a taxi and drove to the airport. And so began our journey.

With our luggage on the airport curb, I looked around at the familiar surroundings one last time. Half-completed parking garage up ahead, confusing green road signs indicating the way to Honolulu and Waikiki, and palm trees lazily swaying in the distance. It looked as I remembered. Except that everything else was different. No cars weaving in and out of lanes, no people hurrying to the check-in counters, no garish aloha shirts worn by tourists with lei (flower necklaces) around their necks. It was desolate. Rory pulled out a camera to capture the complete lack of activity. Instead of the usual excitement tinged with sadness that I often felt at this curbside at the start of a journey, I felt hollow, afraid. We were alone.

In Part 2 of this post, we’ll share about our journey through the Honolulu, Los Angeles, Dallas, and London Heathrow airports. 

Goodbye, Hawaii

Sunset over Waikiki.

Our blog, Turnbull Travels, has been dormant for two years. After the initial shock of moving to Hawaii wore off, and the prospect of potentially living here forever set in, I felt less need to document all the exciting quirks of life in Hawaii. Also, parenting and work took over our lives. But now our stay in Hawaii is coming to an end and a new adventure awaits us.

It has been almost three years that we’ve lived in Honolulu. While Rory has happily continued with his assistant professorship at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa, I’ve had a variety of teaching jobs, ranging from being a full-time orchestra teacher at a Catholic all-boys school (I often needed those Hail Marys), to starting a violin program with the Hawaii Youth Symphony for underprivileged predominantly native-Hawaiian students. We’ve developed fulfilling relationships with friends and colleagues while making progress in our careers.

Our beautiful daughter has become an articulate and quirky blonde three-and-a-half year-old, flourishing under the warm sun and palm trees. She’s attended two preschools here and has made plenty of friends, though she still usually prefers the company of her stuffed animals and her imagination. She gets excited when it’s “cold” enough to wear a jacket. To stay connected to family, she Skypes weekly with her grandparents and likes to send them long strings of emojis on Whatsapp. By Rory’s calculations, she’s been on nearly 30 airplanes in her short life.

Hawaii has been good to us. If you have enough money, it’s easy to live here. Throw out half of your wardrobe, buy a good pair of slippers (flip flops), and you’re basically set. It is undoubtedly the most beautiful place I will ever live in. I wake up to lush green mountains every morning and they still take my breath away. We’ve also had the chance to see three of the other Hawaiian islands besides O‘ahu -- Kauaʻi, Big Island, and Molokaʻi, and all of them have their own incredibly unique landscapes and flavors. Hawaii has provided us with amazing adventures and a home that is easy to love.

View of the windward side of Oahu while hiking.

Sadly, it was hard for us to visualize ourselves living in Hawaii long-term. We’ve been fortunate to live in subsidized university faculty housing, making our two bedroom apartment reasonably affordable. But as we approached the end of our allotted time there, the prospect of buying a house began to loom large. With average home prices in our neighborhood of nearly a million dollars, we had to consider the possibility of moving out to the suburbs, where houses are only slightly less absurdly expensive, and commute times are disheartening. We also began to think about the Hawaii education system as our daughter gets closer to kindergarten. Underfunded, low-quality public schools push people towards $22,000-per-year private schools, making Honolulu the second highest metro area in the nation in terms of private school enrollment. Being hugely in debt for the next 20-30 years was not what we were looking for.

Then there’s family. Rory and I have lived far from both of our families for the last eleven years. We are the only ones among our siblings who do not live within driving distance of our parents. Though we try to visit family at least once a year, the 30 hours of travel required to get to Scotland from Hawaii makes it a difficult journey. The eight hours to my parents’ house in Oregon feels like a quick hop by comparison. So as much as we loved Hawaii, in the back of our minds, we knew that if a good job came along near one of our families, we would seriously consider it.

That opportunity waltzed in our door last September. Rory was offered a permanent position at Newcastle University in the north of England, which is only a two-hour drive from his parents in Scotland. Given his narrow linguistic specialization, there are few professorships that Rory would qualify for in a given year, and hardly any in the UK. We didn’t expect to see such an opportunity to be close to family coming around again for a long time. So we jumped.

Before the movers arrived.

And now here we are, with three days left in Hawaii, frantically trying to pack, sell, and give away our belongings. We have had seven months to plan this move, and the complexities of it have been daunting. Spreadsheets and shared Google Docs have been our lifeline. I spent months (and more than $3500) working on getting a UK visa for myself, not knowing if I would receive it in time. We were given a £5000 allowance for moving expenses from Newcastle University, which sounds like a lot, until you consider that we’re moving 7,200 miles, or almost ⅓ of the way around the earth and our stuff has to cross two oceans and a continent. For a moving company to ship even a small fraction of our household belongings, with no furniture whatsoever, was going to cost at least $5000 and take two plus months to arrive. And of course, flights from Honolulu to the UK usually cost a minimum of $1000 per person and require somewhere north of 24 hours of travel time. This will be Rory’s fourth intercontinental move and my third, so we know the ropes, but the complexity of this one has been at times overwhelming.

Loading our stuff into the moving truck.

Then you add in a global pandemic. Things that we take for granted suddenly became nail biting uncertainties. Would the UK’s borders be shut? (No.) Would we have to self-quarantine upon arrival? (Possibly.) Would our flights be cancelled? (Yes.) Would the airlines still serve food? (Not sure.) Would we be able to find a hotel that wasn’t closed? (Yes, after our first booking was cancelled.) Fortunately, our friends and neighbors have been a great help, happily lending us things and buying our belongings from us (who would have thought that we’d be eager to see masked strangers coming to our door to take away our stuff?) Everyone is stressed out right now, everyone feels overwhelmed with uncertainty, but carrying out an intercontinental move during a global pandemic? My cortisol levels are through the roof.

Still, as I keep telling myself, we’ve nearly made it. The movers came last week and packed up our shipment. After today, all of our furniture will be gone. Tonight is our last night to sleep in our house and we fly out this Thursday. Things are going more or less according to plan. But there’s one other twist in this story.

I’m five months pregnant.

Time flies when you have no seasons

The island of Moloka'i, where we visited in March

It's been six months since I last wrote a blog post. We have now lived in Honolulu for eight months, but I have to say, it doesn't feel all that long. The funny thing about Hawaii is that the seasons give you little indication of the passage of time. It was not uncommon for me to think this year, “What a lovely summer day!” and then realize it was February. It's disconcerting. Only the greener color of Diamond Head Crater hints at the presence of winter. Trees seem to flower year round and mid-winter beach trips are the norm, so it's easy to forget what time of year it is. Although the months have slipped by without me hardly noticing, when I reflect on how much my daughter has developed over the last eight months, I realize just how much time has actually passed.

We moved to Honolulu right before Maëlys turned one. She hadn't started walking yet—she was still doing her funny one-legged crawl. She didn't understand most of the words we said to her. I was feeling guilty for not throwing her a first birthday party, but we had no furniture in our apartment and few friends to celebrate with. She didn't mind—she enjoyed opening presents from her relatives, and then lost interest and moved on to something else. She was changing rapidly, but still firmly in the baby category.

Maëlys at 20 months

Now Maëlys is four months shy of being a two-year-old. We're on the verge of starting toilet training with her, she's playing imaginatively with her stuffed animals, she goes to a toddler gym class and can climb, jump, and slide with ease. She can only say a few recognizable words, but she understands and responds appropriately to complex sentences. She teases people, laughs at jokes, and demands back rubs for herself and her toys. Our baby is a baby no more.

In our eight months here, France has also quickly faded into the background. Now, a dream-like fuzziness blurs the edges of my memories of Paris. My French accent sounds atrocious. I have not kept up my French skills as I had wanted to, unfortunately, and it's surprising how quickly my vocabulary has dwindled, only to be replaced by long Hawaiian words that I frequently mix up: Kapahulu, Kaka'ako, Kalawao, Kapiolani. I still keep in touch with a few friends from France, and we send occasional Maëlys photos to our sweet former landlady. But for the most part, our lives have become firmly entrenched in Hawaii and France is now just an anecdote that makes me sound cooler than I really am.

Still, every time I watch a movie set in Paris, my heart skips at the familiarity of the simple things: the blue and green street signs on the corners of buildings, the bright neon vests of the sanitation workers, the sound of the doors-closing alert on the métro. It feels as if I'm still there and need only open a window for the smell of cigarette smoke to waft upwards, for the blaring of car horns and sirens to punctuate the usual low rumble of noise. I miss it. Something which was so frightening and unfamiliar to me for so many months now feels like home. Never mind that in Hawaii I can go to the beach any time I want. Never mind that I can see tons of constellations from my balcony, not just an occasional star or satellite. Never mind that I can breathe clean air and feel safe in my neighborhood. I miss the character of Paris. I miss the feeling of power that comes from crossing a busy street with a throng of other pedestrians. I miss addressing people as monsieur or madame and knowing that I'll hear “Merci, au revoir” when I leave a store.

I'm certain that when I look back on my life, our time in Paris will be two of the best years I ever had. Perhaps two of the hardest as well, but certainly two of the best. That's not to diminish the wonderful new lives we're building for ourselves in Hawaii, of course. I'm constantly in awe of our surroundings--Rory and I get to live in a gorgeous place that most people only dream of visiting, and we both get the chance to work and do what we love while raising an incredible daughter together. Hawaii is full of aloha.

But there's something special about Paris. A certain je ne sais quoi...