A Chilly June Morning

I'm sitting in the kitchen of my family's house in the midwestern suburbs.  It is 7:30 am and the light is still thin, the air is still cool, the house is still quiet. 

This, I love. 

This, I have missed.

We spend every summer with our family in the American Midwest.  And every time we return, I am always struck by something new.  Sometimes I am able to anticipate what will strike me.  I have been looking forward to a morning like this for months now.  Days in Indonesia are the same - temperatures always in the mid 80s, with humidity always in the mid 80s. The sun fills the house by 6 in the morning every day, and noisy children invariably follow its trajectory.  The only question is whether or not it will rain, and then for how long.  I didn't mind the Indonesian heat when the U.S. was buried in snow, but I began to miss seasons when spring hit the midwest and Facebook posts showed friends in jackets on back porches enjoying the warm evenings with a chill in the air.

I have missed that chill.

Life in Jakarta is good.  It took the better part of our first year, but I feel like I've found my footing and am living a life beyond just keeping myself and my family afloat.  I am looking forward to a more outward focused second year.  So, returning to the U.S. does not have the pang of homelessness that it sometimes does.  It just fills our family with joy, in so many expected and unexpected ways.

Things said by my children over the past few days:

I don't think I've ever seen such green grass in my life - and so much of it!

The sky is so big, so blue, and so bright!

Target!  Oh my goodness, this place is amazing!

Do you know where my jacket is?

You've got to try these strawberries!

This burger tastes way better than Carl's Jr!

I wish we lived here, so we could see our family every single day.

We are filling our summer with family and friends, loads of fresh fruit and plenty of burgers.  We are driving fast, with the windows down and our sunglasses blocking the glare of that bright sun.

The Two Income Family

I've been working for a week now, and I'll admit it.  Its kind of awesome.  I'm loving being in an office, on a good team and with a real responsibility.  I came in with experience, and people treat me as if I have something important to contribute.  I'm not kidding myself - my job only has limited importance.  Still, it is so nice to feel qualified and valued as a contributor.  After 10 years, I feel experienced as a stay at home mom, learning how to keep my family healthy and balanced, safe and happy amid eight moves.  That is not nothing, and it builds my confidence.  What also builds my confidence?  Walking into an office with a job to do, and getting it done well.

Okay, that well part hasn't happened yet.  I have yet to finish a day of work feeling that I finished my work, and did it well.  I know that will come, but at this point I'm still working on balancing my family's time verses my office's time.  Even though I'm only working 20 hours per week, this balance is proving to be a greater challenge then I had expected.  When the school called me this afternoon telling me to come pick up Annika immediately, I had 20 minutes left on the clock but not even 50% of my work completed.  After a quick chat with my counterpart, she took over my project while I flew out the door.

And then spent the next 85 minutes crawling through traffic to reach my neighborhood.  A drive that can take as long as 3 hours in extreme traffic, the commute has so far only taken me 40 minutes.  Living inside America, those numbers likely make no sense.  In Jakarta, they are routine.  The 3 hour commute only happens under extreme weather, but the drive can easily vary from 30 - 90 minutes with no explanation. 

I needed to hurry, because the school had lost power and canceled school, effective immediately.  Without a housekeeper to call and pick up Annika, she was left sitting at the school until a friend could turn around and retrieve her.  They arrived nearly an hour after they picked up their own child.

There are so many successes in this story.  My co-worker easily picked up where I left off, and didn't question my racing out the door.  My driver focused on the traffic, so I could focus on calling and texting and getting Annika out of the closed and powerless school as quickly as possible.  My friend canceled her lunch plans to return to the school and bring Annika home with her.  Even though I arrived late, I still arrived home before the older girls got off the bus.  All success.

If this had happened on my first day of work, I would probably be writing this in tears.  After a week, I'm willing to chalk it up to life in Jakarta, where school can be cancelled immediately, where I can easily be over an hour away from my child, where everyone else has a nanny to pick up the slack.  And where I can lean on a friend I've only known for a few months.

And bonus - now I've got a paycheck coming to compensate for my lost time!

Back to Work

Today begins the next phase.  I am out the door in an hour to begin my new job at the embassy.

The job will go well.  Its a good team, interesting work, a good fit for me personally and for my experience and talents.  I'm not nervous at all.

The house and the family make me cringe.  Is this the right time and the right choice?  Should I be so worried about not being home when my kids climb off the bus?

It is certainly no coincidence that last night I felt painfully homesick.  Homesick for Virginia, where we lived in a house and a neighborhood and walked to school every day and felt like comfortable and cozy members of our community.  We have never felt like that in Jakarta - not like comfortable and cozy members of any community.  At least not yet, and we know that Jakarta is a hard nut to crack.  People go at least a year, if not more before they stop feeling overwhelmed by this city.

Add in the new job with the new commute and the new need to have my hair look nice in 55 minutes...

Fifty-two minutes?  Holy cow!  I'd better get started!

Bahasa Indonesia, part dua

I wrote yesterday's post about my lagging language skills with the intention of a follow up today.  But within the past 12 hours, circumstances have changed.

I planned to write about a dilemma and a fear.  You see, I've gotten a part-time job with the embassy.  I'm excited about this job, not only as an interesting position in an interesting office.  But also as a perfect entree back into the working world.  It smooths out my resume beautifully. But I also have an exciting volunteer opportunity.   Kampung Kids is a yayasan in my neighborhood.  It is a non-profit that teaches kids from the kampung, literally the village but colloquially the little village style neighborhoods within the city, with very small and simple homes, often prone to flooding.

The teachers are volunteers and build their own curriculum, but they focus on school readiness.  In Indonesia, kids begin school at 7 years old.  Kampung Kids essentially teaches preschool - colors and letters and numbers.  Many of the teachers are expats and the students and families are excited to participate. 

I volunteered to bring my music classes to Kampung Kids on a weekly basis, and felt so excited at the prospect.  This is my dream life - maintain a schedule flexible enough to be at home whenever my children need me, to study the local language and to volunteer in a significant way.  Teaching at Kampung Kids would serve bullet points two AND three.  Boom!

But as it so often happens, these two points in time collided.  The point in time where I could volunteer significantly in my local community, and the point in time where I need to go back to work. 

This was a dilemma yesterday, as I waited for my security clearance.  It could be December before I receive my security clearance.  Do I commit to teaching at Kampung Kids until it comes through?  Or do I assume that my clearance will come quickly, and not make a commitment I am unwilling to keep?

I decided - clearance will take months.  I will volunteer.

Coupled inherently with this opportunity yesterday was fear. Teaching my music classes to families from the embassy community has been challenging.  I've been pushed to explore marketing in new ways, to commit much more time than planned, and to up my game as a teacher.  And so far, I only teach people who speak and understand English.  Teaching in the kampung, I would be the only person in the room who speaks English.  I would also be the only person in the room who does not speak bahasa Indonesia.  Also, I would be the only person in the room old enough not to cry when I'm frustrated.  What if I can't control the class?  What if a child cries and I can't comfort her?  What if I thoroughly fail? 

Dave convinced me that fear of failure is hardly a reason to avoid living the life I want to live, so I resolved to begin teaching next week.  And then I checked my email, and found a message from human resources at the embassy.  My security clearance is complete.  I go back to work in May.

I know - you need a good resolution to the story here.  So do I.  I'm left conflicted.  Phew - I do not have to face this crazy high chance of failure, as a teacher and as a language learner.  Hooray!  I get to begin this cool job soon, and start earning a paycheck.  Damn - At the first true opportunity, I am selling out.  Thus is life, I suppose.  But I must admit, I'm excited about where I'm going.

Bahasa Indonesia

I've been studying bahasa Indonesia for 12 weeks now.  I take a weekly class, so I've logged a whopping 18 hours of local language study since 2015 began.  I've been feeling a bit stalled in my past few classes - like I should know the word, but it just doesn't come to my head.  My teachers tell me I need to practice.  I answer that with so little vocabulary, it is difficult to practice.  They look at me like they can't comprehend what I've just said.  I realize I'm offering excuses and we all move on with our day.

Knowing that they are correct, I resolved to speak in bahasa Indonesia (the Indonesian language) whenever able this week.  I went to the grocery store and placed my order at the meat counter in the local language.

Me: Mao ini.  (I want this)

Guy at the meat counter:  How much would you like?

His meat counter English is pretty good.


Me:  Um, darn it, how do you say 700?

Guy at the meat counter:  tujuh ratus

Me:  Oh yeah!  Tujuh ratus grams Australian minced beef.

It was labelled in English.  No need to further complicate things.

So then I walked to the other side of the meat counter, feeling confident.  This time I tried for the deli ham, kept in its own case because pork belongs in hidden corners of Indonesian groceries.

Me:  Mao ini.  (Remember?  I want this)

Guy at the other meat counter:  How much would you like?

Me:  (with confidence)  Etam grams.

Guy at the other meat counter:  Sorry?

Me:  Um, darn it, how do you say 4?

Guy at the meat counter:  Enam.

Me:  Oh yeah!  Saya mao enam (I want four).

Guy at the meat counter:  Enam ratus? (four hundred?)

Me:  Yeah.  Enam ratus.

See?  I've totally got this.

So, having clearly displayed my language skills, I was emboldened to try again.  The next day, I walked to my music class.  Class is very close to my house - I just need to walk through a manned gate.  Usually I drive because I bring so many instruments and materials with me, but our car was busy that day.  So I just planned to walk half of my instruments to the gate, leave them with the guards, and then return with the other half of my instruments.  Then I'd do the same thing at the other side of the gate.  The gate would serve as my midway.

As I approached the gate with my three bags of books, CDs and dancing scarves, the guard began to open it for me.  Beloum, I called out.  Not yet.  He closed the gate and I set down my things.  One minute I said, and I walked away.

When I returned with my boxes full of instruments, my bags had moved into the guard shack and the contents had been spread across their desk in a clearly puzzled fashion.  It seems I somehow implied that I was delivering gifts, rather than simply setting down my bags.  Surprised, I packed everything back up and carried it back out.  Maaf, I said.  Sorry!  I had no more vocabulary, and I felt bad for embarrassing them. 

The guard replied, in perfect English, No problem.  I'm sorry for the misunderstanding.  Would you like me to help you carry your things?

Yes please, I replied meekly.

Exhausted

I recently saw this headline in the Washington Post: Exhaustion is not a Status Symbol.  I saw the headline, but before I could open the link I dropped my iPad because I realized I had not finished packing the lunchboxes and I did not have the time to sit and read the newspaper that morning. 

Of course, the author is wrong.  Exhaustion is a status symbol in America - especially in northern Virginia.  Stress is highly correlated with success - you can't relax and succeed!  And multiplying the necessary stress for the success of five people places a lot on the calendar of a family of 5.

True - plenty of people are bragging when they share how busy they are.  (Also true - the author talks about Blackberries and getting ahead in business, and not about families and after-school activities. I did skim the article, later.)  Counterpoint - many people are just busy, and normalizing their condition by talking about it.  I am only sharing my experience when I tell you that I am tired this morning.

We had to let our housekeeper go on Monday morning.  This made both Dave and I very sad, and kept us up late on Sunday night discussing our plan.  We woke up at 4:30 on Monday morning to speak with her as soon as she arrived at our house, with our teeth brushed.  And I have not sat down since.  After nearly ten years of mothering, it still surprises me how much work it takes to manage a household of five people.  I speak with authority that our family creates over 2 hours of dirty dishes every day that we eat at home.  Within two days I began wondering, how do I manage the household without help when we live in the US?  One answer is not very well;  another answer is with the help of an automatic dishwasher and the occasional boxed dinner kit.

But the true answer is simply that my life, after 8 months in this country, is planned around leaving the housework for someone else.  And what a joy to have the flexibility to deign my time more worth walking Annika to and from school every day, the long way;  sitting at the table at snacktime and helping Sophia with her homework;  joining Lilly for soccer practice, and for the hour before soccer practice where she reads or snacks or tells me about her day; more worth these activities than folding the laundry and vacuuming under the table again.

We will replace her, but likely not on a full-time basis until this summer.  My parents will arrive as our houseguests in a few days, and they may have to make their own bed every morning.  The household will undergo a sea change as we grow to 7 people, see the culmination of yearlong projects such as the school musical and final soccer tournaments, and sometimes scrub our own toilets.

In a fun addition, I've been spending a lot of time marketing my music classes to grow to two weekly sessions next month.  And I received an email last night informing me that the embassy was beginning my security clearance.  I edited this in my head to read: Congratulations!  We are excited to welcome you to the world of working moms!  Assuming, of course, that we don't discover any nasty and traitorous secrets about you.

I think I need a nap.

A Working Mom

We arrived in Jakarta in August.  I ran some free classes in September, but as it turns out, opening a business within a few weeks of arrival in a large city is not so simple.  I made a big marketing push in November, and opened one class in January.  My first session has almost finished, and it has been loads of fun.  I'm in the midst of my next big marketing push, with the goal of running two classes next session.

Jakarta has proven a tough nut to crack.  Spreading the word has not been as simple as telling a few moms about class and watching my rosters fill up.  So this marketing push has me focused on building my networks, and bringing my classes to as many moms as possible.  It has been a fun month, and I've enjoyed stretching myself as a small business owner, too.

Life has been busier with teaching and directing my music classes every week, but also more manageable with Annika in school part-time.   As an exciting addition, I interviewed for a part-time job earlier this week.  I expect to learn whether or not I got the job by the middle of next week.  And if I get the job, the time continuum would fall into a very different balance in our household.

I've spent the past 10 years working independently and maintaining full flexibility for our family.  Carving out thirty hours every week for my own projects would make a big change in how our household runs.  But it has been exciting to grow my business, and it was encouraging to put together an impressive resume.  I've known that this transition was coming - I've always planned to go back to work when the girls are all in school.  The coming year could prove a very smooth transition back into the full-time work force.