Why Do We Travel? – Thoughts from New Zealand

Why do we travel? I’ve been wondering this quite a bit lately because I’ve found myself feeling remarkably homesick. As we walk through fields under the shadow of snow-capped mountains, I long for Montana, Wyoming, Colorado and even the not-so-snow-capped hills of South Dakota. Every time I’m reminded that Christmas is approaching, I am sad that there is no snow or soggy brown leaves underfoot.

I do appreciate New Zealand for all that it is. We’ve been here for a month, and I’ve realized that it is many things: it is beautiful white sand beaches; it is hillsides covered in grazing sheep overlooking blue ocean; it is happy people from around the world drawn by its uniqueness; it is a young country who are proud of their heritage, proud of their native cultures; it is a small country of individuals who respectfully disagree about everything; it is a volcanic disaster waiting to happen, and an earthquake recovery still underway; it is a country of young people, some given unlimited opportunity, some bored into crime; it is a Sweet As country of jandals, Hokey Pokey, rugby fever, tradition, innovation, frustrating toilets, the kiwi bird, the kiwi fruit, the tui, the extinct Moa, of whales, dolphins, porpoises, whales, sharks, fish, coral reefs, blue and emerald waters, jade stone, paua shells, black iron sand beaches, and Pak’n'Saves.

It is all these things to me, and I love every day we’re here for that. But I also love it for reminding me of what is at home.

Thanksgiving was a couple days ago, and I found myself wishing I was home eating turkey and mashed potatoes in the cold autumn air, on a cloudy day threatening snow, where we’d all wear coats, hats, mittens, and scarves. And it reminded me that we’ll miss Christmas, too, on another cold, snowy day, in a warm house with family.

There are simple, material things I miss, too, like being able to run to Walmart for a cheap… anything. Or simply having a home to live in—grocery shopping for longer than a couple days’ worth of food—my bed, my pictures, my music, my computer, paying for internet by the month instead of by the minute. And Netflix!

But I suppose most of these things are just a part of traveling—in New Zealand or anywhere. So, why do we travel if there are so many things to miss?

I think we feel the need to leave because we don’t fully realize what we have. We feel we are lacking something, and maybe we’ll find it if we leave home for a while. And that’s true, but I don’t think we actually find what we’re looking for in another country. In other words, we could go to any country, and still find the same thing, because what we’re looking for is inside of ourselves. We find out what it is that makes us happy. It’s not that I’m realizing that America is the perfect country and that it will always make me perfectly happy. It’s that I’m realize what things in America are meaningful to me and why.

It’s home, I suppose. That’s perhaps the easiest explanation. But even new places are significant to me; Vermillion, where we lived for only two years; western South Dakota, Seattle, Montana, South Carolina, North Carolina, Florida, California, Iowa, Wisconsin… Places I visited even just for a moment. It isn’t the places as much as the feelings they produced within me. I want to share those feelings with my baby. The Romantic Poets talked about a moment of genius followed by meaningful contemplation. I want to teach my baby this skill: going out and living, and then coming home and thinking about experiences in a meaningful way. I always had a home to come back to after visiting these places, and although I will always want to leave, I’m realizing now that I will always want to come back.

America will always be home. It isn’t a perfect country. We have a depressing history of hatred and violence; we continue to fight and discriminate; but when the day comes that we agree, it is bittersweet, and we remember that there is always hope, even when we forget. We stayed at a hostel in the far north called the Endless Summer Lodge. It was a beautiful place on the beach, and the idea of a never ending summer may sound appealing at first, but I don’t know that I would appreciate summer without the Midwest winters to remind me of what I’m missing. I want my baby to experience all seasons, to learn to recognize ignorance and appreciate thoughtfulness. I’m excited to see the South Island for the next two months, to meet more new people and see more new things; but deep inside I’m the most excited to go back to America and find a new home for Chris and me and our baby. I’ll still want to travel, especially with our little one, but now I know I’ll always want a home waiting for us to come back.

After Four Years of Trying, It’s Our Baby!

We saw our peanut today! It is about an inch long. You can see the umbilical cord on the left; the big round part on the right is the head. The circle at the top is the yolk sac.  It was incredible to hear the heartbeat! I cried all during the ultrasound and more in the bathroom afterwards. Chris held my hand as we watched our baby make tiny, sudden movements.

It looks like a baby. It is a real baby. We’ve waited four years for this, and this year might be an insane time, but more and more each day it feels like it’s the right time.

 

The Year I Lived Someone Else’s Life

Ever since we moved from South Dakota back to Minnesota, I’ve felt like I’m not really living my life but some kind of ghost life. It has felt like once this year is over, everything will go back to normal. We’ll have a home again; I’ll see my things. I’ll grocery shop for myself, decorate my house, work a normal job, clean my house, snuggle with my cat, stay in bed all day with my husband.

At the beginning of the summer we moved in with my parents. We left a nice town, and I left a good job, in order to save some money so that we could travel to New Zealand and eventually move so I could go to Grad School. Sounds simple enough, but what it turned into was not:

1. New Zealand: This meant finding jobs that paid enough so we could save for the trip. This meant researching, shopping for, and purchasing equipment and clothing. This meant researching for the trip, where to go, what to do, where to stay. This meant six months of worrying, wondering what it would be like to be homeless, to live in a tent, not to know where we’d sleep each night or eat each day. This idea was very exciting, but also very unnerving.

2. Grad School Application: This meant studying for and doing well on two, count them two, GRE tests-the general test (i.e. MATH!) and the English Literature test.  This meant spending several hours of each day studying, creating flashcards, memorizing flashcards, practicing math problems, writing practice 30-minute essays. This also meant asking three former professors for recommendations and organizing folders for each of them that would remind them of what an outstanding student I was and why they should write me a stellar recommendation. This also meant organizing writing samples, a (scanty) curriculum vitae, gathering information and transcripts from all four institutions from which I took a single credit, and writing the accursed Statements of Purpose (customized for each program). In addition to all of this busywork, this also meant underlying dread which manifested itself physically, in my stress-induced IBS and my neck pain that had to be treated by a chiropractor. Any one thing could ruin my chances of getting in to Grad School; so many people I knew applied and got rejected. This was (is) a constant source of stress.

We moved in with my grandparents at the end of August so that I could take care of my grandma. We are being compensated very well, and it is nice to live on the farm where it is peaceful and not too stressful. I was beginning to see the end in sight. New Zealand was a month away; we would go and then come back and find an apartment and move in and everything would be back to normal.

Nope.

3. A surprise. A baby. A baby! We have been married four years, and we have been trying to have a baby for as many. I was always haunted by the idea that we might not be able to get pregnant. That I might be broken. Then WHAM! A month before we leave for New Zealand, I become horribly sick at every mealtime. I can’t stomach the sight of a slice of bread. I feel something heavy inside me, like a bladder infection or some kind of tumor. I went to my mom’s house to sleep and she brought home a pregnancy test. I was reluctant because I had taken many of these in the past and they had always been negative. There was no chance.

Then we saw two lines. I couldn’t believe it, so I took another one. Two lines again. In a daze, I stopped at Target on the way back to Grandma’s to tell Chris. He was very happy and even a little teary-eyed. We remained in shock and some doubt until the next day when we went to confirm it at the doctor’s. Positive.

Why now?! We have no insurance! We have no home! We won’t move until after the baby is born! I don’t have my own kitchen to cook in, my own bed to sleep in, I’m not surrounded by my things and my cat, life is not the same right now. This isn’t my life, why is the baby coming now?

Maybe this ghost me is more fertile than regular me. Maybe this is just the only way we’re allowed to have a baby. While living someone else’s life.

Well, we’re still going to New Zealand,  but we changed our flight so that we’re only staying for three months. I’ll be about 27 weeks along by the time we get home, with only about a trimester to go. This is definitely not how I thought I’d spend my first (or any) pregnancy: homeless in a foreign country. It’s scaring me to death right now, but it is also still exciting. What a way to start a new life as a family. What a story we’ll have to tell our son/daughter. I’m just keeping my eyes forward, watching that apartment filled with our new family creeping closer and closer every day. Soon it will be my life again, and I’ll get to keep the baby.

Learning to Let Go…

There’s thunder crackling above my head, and soothing summer morning birdsong is floating in through the patio door.

I think I have finally reached the turning point for this part of my life. Until now I have felt extremely emotional, maybe even depressed, about leaving Vermillion and moving in with my parents. Our plan was to live here for the summer and then move to New Zealand for six months, but no matter how many times I repeated this mantra, I still felt dread and nausea. Within the first week of moving here, my neck began to severely hurt. I’ve been seeing the chiropractor, who informed me that tight muscles can pull vertebrae out of alignment. Unfortunately I waited a month to see him, so it is a longer and more painful process than it needed to be, but once I realized the physical toll the stress was taking on my body, I decided I needed to retake control of my emotions.

Yoga is too painful at the moment, but I’ve been focusing on deep-breathing exercises and simply stopping and having honest conversations with myself. Why was I so stressed? Life at my parents’ is easy and relaxed; we all get along and have fun together. I am looking forward to our time in New Zealand. My job is laid back, and I’m able to study for my GREs. So what’s the problem?

The problem is I can’t control everything all the time. People who know me say that life seems to come easily for me, that I don’t have to try hard to make good things happen. But the truth is I (more like my mother than I ever realized) must feel like I am in control of everything going on in my life. And this summer, there are more things out of my control than in. I can’t force a job to come along for Chris. I don’t know that I’ll get into any of my graduate schools. I don’t know how I’ll do on my GREs. I don’t know if we’ll have enough money to stay comfortable in New Zealand. I’ve never been on the other side of the world before. I couldn’t hold onto the first job I really loved (beside the one where I got to be mommy to the two sweetest boys on the planet for a few hours each day!).

So once I got to the bottom of this, once I realized (with the kind help of Christopher-my ever loving husband) that I am a control freak and that need to let go, my muscles started relaxing and I’ve begun to feel more optimistic. I can’t control life; I can make plans and work to achieve my goals, but in the meantime, I just have to trust that everything will work out.

I’ve begun focusing on planning our trip, which is making me more excited for the future instead of feeling depressed about the past and present. Chris has a job interview next week, and I just had one for a weekend/evening job that went really well. Life usually works out, and even when it doesn’t seem to, it does. I just can’t always be the one to make it happen. Sometimes I just have to sit back and relax.

Just Another Graduate School Applicant’s Anxious Vent

I’m getting closer. I’ve asked three of my former professors for recommendations, and have been received enthusiastically. I’ve finished Statements of Purpose for each of my schools. Now I’m studying for the GREs and having sporadic mini-panic attacks. I pretested into the 98th percentile on my verbal, but the highest score I’ve gotten so far on the Literature Subject Test is in the 55th percentile. I don’t even want to think about Math yet.

There’s a lot of material to study for the Lit Subject Test, but I’m glad I’m doing it. It’s forcing me to get really familiar with things I will need to know at any of my schools-of-choice. I just have to stay religious with my study habits: something I have not succeeded in doing yet.

It’s difficult to consider not getting accepted anywhere. It’s, obviously, a very likely possibility. Much more likely than getting accepted. My professor told me, even if I don’t get in, I should keep trying, and that the real tragedy would be to let one round of rejections stop me. She said if I’m serious about graduate school, the passion should be something that they (the universities) will have to beat out of me. And I do feel like that. I can’t think of anything that suites me like studying Literature does. It’s like I’ve always been ready, I’ve always had ideas or feelings that I couldn’t express. Then when I read others’ words say the things I felt, it was like lightning; like we were talking in person, agreeing, ours minds were completely in sync, even if the words had been written three centuries ago. And the beauty, to me, in Literary Criticism, is the creation, the insight that critics must have to see these moments, to pick out the meaning or the idea and put it together like a puzzle for others to read. It’s like looking at a beautiful painting, taking all the colors and shapes and shadows, changing them, and creating another beautiful work of art that others might never have thought to look for. It is, for me, a moment of conversation with the author and with myself, and with anyone who will read what I’ve written. I can’t articulate everything I feel about it, but it’s so intricately inside of me now, that it’s become not just a profession that I would enjoy, but a purpose to my life-the culmination of who I am and what I’ve always felt and tried to say.

But even with such devotion, I could still get rejected. And that’s Ok. I’ll just keep trying, and someone will let me in eventually. My aim is high now, but I believe I have half a chance. At the moment, everything is working in my favor, and I just have to conquer the GREs. So, I’m going to buckle down and make a study schedule, and succeed unabashedly! General Test in August, Subject Test in October. I can do it. I just have to remember to inhale.

Our Final Days in South Dakota

Four days until we move, and my chest hurts. Yesterday I said “Goodbye” to school, the kids, my coworkers, but it was the hardest saying “Goodbye” to my little boy. We’ve done so much together over the year.  For those who don’t know, I worked in special ed this past school year, as a one-on-one with a 1st grade boy with Asperger’s. At the beginning of the year I spent a lot of time reteaching lessons and developing behavior modification plans. Now, at the end of the year, he’s reading at grade level, he can spend the entire day in the classroom without me, listening to lessons and keeping up with his class. His bad behaviors have decreased; he has learned how to modify his own actions in order to avoid consequences. I’m so proud of him, and it was the most difficult thing to let him go. I feel like I’ve really made a difference for him, and I hope he’ll continue to make progress throughout the rest of his life. Working with him showed me so much about life and experience that I took for granted before. The questions he asked made me really stop and think about why humans do the things we do. I think, wherever I go, his questions will pop up and make me think clearly about the people and places around me.

About four months ago I was truly hating Vermillion. I was sick and tired of the snow and cold, and I just wanted to move away. Now summer’s back, and I’m devastated. I’m terrified that we’re making a mistake in leaving, that we’re taking a step backwards moving back to Minnesota. According to our plan, I tell myself, living with my parents for the summer is just a means to an end: No rent until New Zealand. This will be my mantra for the summer. I’m not exactly sure why, although I’m fairly certain it is a universal thing, but I don’t get along with my family for any real amount of time. A few hours at best, and then we start getting mad at one another. So, you can imagine why I’m feeling so stressed about moving in with them.

But it will only be for five months. And during this time, I will have other stressors on my mind: the dreaded GREs. I’ll have lots of preparation time on my own. I’ll also need to find a job so that we can save money for New Zealand. I’ll be busy and out of the house, hopefully a lot.

And then, after the GREs are over, I’ll worry about actually getting accepted into a program for another five or six months. Of course, during that time we’ll be in NZ so, I shall have other things to occupy my thoughts. All in all, it’s turning into a very stressful year. Of course, I’m not complaining. All of these stressors I’ve brought on myself because they’ll take me to where I want to go in life. If I wasn’t willing to push through the bad parts, I would never get to the good parts. And life is too, too short not to get to the good parts.

Anyway, this has been a good vent. I’ll miss Vermillion, I’ll miss my job and my coworkers. I’ll miss the friends I’ve made here. I’ll miss the freedom of being on our own. And, perhaps most of all, I’ll miss the natural landscape of South Dakota, East River and West River. I know we’ll come back and visit, and maybe someday we’ll come back for longer, but for now I have to say, “Goodbye. I love you. I’ll miss you. I’ll be back.”

a poem

I found this poem I wrote some time ago (no idea when).

As through a heavy, wet fog
You appear, walking away from me

Leaving me cold and alone.

Again you were here, with me.
Again you came back.
And again, you are gone.

My hands, lonely,
Can't keep me warm in this autumn wind.
With you, leaving me - 
My will to survive,
To endure the cold winter.

She looks at me, keeps my gaze,
Challenges me to give in and sleep.
I wonder, search under my covers,
For the warm repose of escape - 
For infinity to end, or begin.
                  -rmlford

Saying “Goodbye” to a Place…

…when it feels like you just said “Hello.”

We moved to Vermillion, South Dakota, in August 2009. It has been less than two years, and it feels like it. So much has happened, and yet it really does feel like just last week we moved here.

I remember, as I wrote about in previous blog posts (like this one), feeling lonely, missing my family, grappling with living more than six hours from my family. But I also remember the feeling of independence, of maturity, of beginning something amazing… the rest of our lives, I suppose you could say.

I remember, when we were little, my parents telling me and my sisters about the places they lived and the things they did before we were born or before we could remember, and I wanted to do those things, too. I wanted to be able to tell my kids about them, someday, too. It’s funny to think about how badly we want to be like others when we’re little (or at any age, really). At school, I work with a little boy with Asperger’s who often says things out loud what other kids would just think silently. He often says out loud how he wants to do things that other people get to do, like take trips across the world, be a teacher, get married. I remember thinking these things when I was little, too.

Why is it we yearn so badly to be like others? Why do we all feel the same desire to try out identities through make-believe? In one of our in-services, the speaker noted how important it is to include role-playing in learning because it is such an essential part of the development of our brains.

Even now, I have an image of who I want to be someday, where I want to be, what I want to be doing. These images are partially fluid and malleable, but the general concept is clear enough: Myself and Chris, kids (biological? adopted? foster?), house, job at university/college, traveling, making some sort of difference in the community… It’s hazy, but it all revolves around certain constants. This identity is no longer really shaped after another individual. Maybe it is a conglomeration of influences. But mostly, I think it’s me.

The last year and a half in Vermillion has changed me: I’ve learned how to keep plants alive, how to eat right and exercise. I’ve learned that I can cope with hardships on my own and I don’t necessarily need to run home every weekend for support, that all Chris and I really need are each other. But I’ve also learned about new cultures and new aspects of my own culture, like the rich white college students/professors, the poor side of town, truckers and construction workers, drug addicts, people with special needs, teachers trying to make a difference in a corrupt school district, in a corrupt university, poverty-stricken corners of the state filled with crime and violence… This is probably the saddest thing about life that I have come to realize living in South Dakota. One minute you are in a town of rich affluence, tourism dollars pouring in each season, gaudy billboards and attractions. The next minute you are driving through a field watching dilapidated trailers pass, one after another, some with only a few walls left standing, most still inhabited. Here there are few towns and even fewer jobs.

On a smaller scale, Vermillion exhibits the same conscious blindness. I have actually heard some people say that there is no poverty in Vermillion, and yet there are trailer parks throughout the city filled with trailers that are falling apart, trailers that house families of five or six, that are home to numerous families with parents who have issues with drugs and alcohol. Many children I know from school have been in foster care at some point in their short lives.

Universities tend to have this effect on a town. There would, in fact, be no town without it. Half of the population is students. Many more make up the faculty and staff. These families are in a comfortable income bracket, the university builds new fitness centers and dormitories, enters a new “level” of sports. Six or seven families not related to the university own the rest of the city’s businesses and development. So where does the city’s money go? To the rich, to the entrepreneurs, to the same people every year. And isn’t this the same thing we see in South Dakota? In America? One percent of the population controls half the country’s wealth.

How is this “progress?” How is this “moving forward?”  And now as the government looks for ways to cut spending, we consider shutting down programs like Head Start and Planned Parenthood, programs whose target users are disenfranchised, poor families? These are the people we need to take from? Why aren’t these the people who we need to give to? What happened to, “We take care of our own” ? Aren’t we all part of the same community? Aren’t we all in this together?

I don’t have any answers. Living in Vermillion has only given me more questions. Good questions. Questions that everyone should ask. Questions that I now know to ask no matter where I live. Questions that will not only keep me aware and informed, but that will equip me with the opportunity to make a differences when I can.  Nothing is worse than ignorance, except conscious ignorance and refusing to listen to the truth. I’m proud to have lived here because I now know that I will never be one of those people.

What can I do? In a world like ours, the task just feels too big. I am just too small. So I have to think smaller. How can I make this community better? How can I help this family? How can I use what I have to help someone? The world might be big, but our roles in others’ lives might turn out to be even bigger.

Graduate School Anxiety!

New Zealand Countryside

So, once again, our plans have changed. But this time, we think we are going to stick to it! With this new plan, however, has come increasing levels of anxiety.

Here is the New Plan:

1. Apply to Grad Schools for Fall 2012. (Which means, study, take, and pass GREs, both the general test and English Literature subject test)

2. Move back to MN (in with my parents, but only for the summer, after which we will…)

3. Move to New Zealand! (Travel, Work, Play for probably seven or eight months)

4. Come back home and move to Wherever Lets Me Into Grad School, USA.

Now, about the anxiety.

I am applying to the PhD programs at the University of Virginia and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (yes, that’s right; I’m sick of these Midwestern winters). I’m also applying for the PhD program at the University of Washington in Seattle and the MA program at Purdue University in Indiana.

I’ve started to revisit my expository papers from my undergrad, and they are pretty good – better, even, than I remember. So I’m not too concerned about them. My grades and GPA are solid; no real concern. My experiences have been relevant-ish… working in education.

What’s really started to give me stomach ulcers is this Personal/Academic Statement. I have to talk about myself, my life, my experiences, my education, my future goals, how wonderful I think the school is, why I deserve to get accepted… Never have I had such trouble producing two single-spaced pages in all my life.

I have, however, finally gotten smart and sought help. My mentor from my undergrad days has agreed to read my draft over and give me feedback. That will help So Much! Usually I don’t let things get to me, but there just does not seem to be enough time in the day to exercise this anxiety out at the gym!

These programs are fiercely competitive. At the University of Virginia, they accept 12 new PhD students per year. Twelve. Out of the whole world. Just thinking about that makes me run for the Tums!

And people I know have recently applied to grad school and been rejected by all their schools. Given, their areas of study were vastly different from mine, and their schools were smaller and probably more competitive, but I still think about how easily that could happen to me.

But then, Chris reminds me, even if I don’t get in to any of the programs, I can always try again somewhere else. I want to teach at a college or a university. I do. And I know that I will not stop until I have achieved that goal (or until I’ve heard something else calling my name, I suppose). So, I really don’t need to worry. I’ve never worried about anything for too long; I always realize that there is no such thing as “failure” or “success.” Only paths that work out and ones that don’t. And no matter which path I take, I have my husband, my family, and my friends beside me. As long as they’re there, any path I take will be the right one.

[Besides, if I don't get in, we can always extend our stay in NZ!]

Europe 2011, An Update

Florence, Italy

Five months until our trip.  Hopefully.  As long as everything goes well, in terms of saving money, ordering/updating passports, and saving money (oh, did I already say that?).

Our original budget (from a post in February 2010) was $6,500.  This was for a two-month trip where we would backpack, tent, couchsurf, wwoof, and generally meander our way through Europe, from Ireland to Greece.  Today we have about $4,600 set aside.  We are still waiting for Tax Returns, as well; and it would be smart to have some other money saved as cushion for when we get back.

So… we’ll see.

We’ve thought about reducing our trip a little; maybe buying a cheaper Eurail Pass.  But the biggest expense is really the flight there.  So we figure once we’re there, we ought to make it worth while and hit as many places as possible.  I’m going to have to do some more research and get back to you.  Whoever “you” are… more like me.  Get back to me.

Yep.