spirit. While he was at Walden Pond, he wrote, “Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself.” Glancing at the $75 pile of batteries on the kitchen table, it occurred to me that simplicity was deceptively complex. The stillness was good—now that I’d experienced perhaps twenty minutes of it—but it was also, frankly, just a tiny bit spooky.
It was Sartre, I believe, who observed so gloomily that “life is elsewhere” (and he was living in Paris at the time). He was wrong, of course. Life is never elsewhere. And convincing yourself otherwise—that you are fate’s victim, or prisoner, or terry-cloth hand puppet, even—only underscores the point. That’s one thing my not-entirely-self-imposed exile Down Under has taught me.
When I told my Australian boyfriend I’d follow him to the ends of the earth, I had no idea he’d take me so literally. We were in graduate school at NYU, finishing our respective doctorates, when Ron, a Sydneysider, was offered a job in Perth, Western Australia. If it hadn’t been for that job offer, we probably never would have gotten married. We certainly would never have settled in Perth—a move that, from my perspective as a New Yorker (even an idealistic New Yorker, helplessly awash in the dopamine-scented haze of young love) felt more like a transfer to the lunar surface.
When we divorced three years later, it was hardly what you’d call a bolt from the blue. He was an Anglican priest who enjoyed golf, tennis, and vintage port. I was a kick-ass feminist intellectual who excelled at chain-smoking. It was never gonna happen. Our geographical differences were equally irreconcilable. He was overjoyed to be back in his own country after four years in New York. As for me, as much as I appreciated the clean air and gorgeous beaches, I knew I could never in a billion years call Australia home.
That was twenty-four years ago. LOL.
In the meantime, I remarried—a doctor this time—and had three babies (but not necessarily in that order) with alarming alacrity. The kids were four, two, and six months old when we broke up. My first divorce had been sad but amicable. This one was a conflagration. With an Australian as the father of my children, my chances of moving back to the United States were now as remote as Perth itself. I’d followed my heart to the ends of the earth, all right. And now I was stranded here.
That was fourteen years and several lifetimes ago. I look back at those days when I wished my ex-husband would get run over by a bus and feel pretty ashamed. I realize now that migration to a third-world country would have been fine. Kidding, people! He was, and very much still is, the father of my children. I remind myself of that every day of my life. The kids love him, and he loves them, and whatever the differences between us, that should be good enough for me. It’s not. But at least I recognize that it should be. Like that half-done quilt I’ve had stuffed into a bottom drawer since my eldest started middle school, I’m working on it.
Death, it is said, concentrates the mind wonderfully. So, too, does having sole charge of three kids under five. In the early years, like many another single parent, I clung to my professional identity like a baby to an umbilicus. I started writing a weekly newspaper column about my kids. I started writing books about gender and family life. And I started planning. (Up until this time, I decided, I’d lived in the here and now perhaps a little too successfully.) I formulated a five-year plan to get us stateside. Six years later, I revised that to a ten-year plan, and then a fifteen-year plan. In the meantime, the lioness’s share of my energy went to parenting my children: one sticky, sleep-deprived, extraordinary day at a time. I reminded myself that if home was where the heart was, then by any real reckoning I was already back in Kansas. Some of the
It was Sartre, I believe, who observed so gloomily that “life is elsewhere” (and he was living in Paris at the time). He was wrong, of course. Life is never elsewhere. And convincing yourself otherwise—that you are fate’s victim, or prisoner, or terry-cloth hand puppet, even—only underscores the point. That’s one thing my not-entirely-self-imposed exile Down Under has taught me.
When I told my Australian boyfriend I’d follow him to the ends of the earth, I had no idea he’d take me so literally. We were in graduate school at NYU, finishing our respective doctorates, when Ron, a Sydneysider, was offered a job in Perth, Western Australia. If it hadn’t been for that job offer, we probably never would have gotten married. We certainly would never have settled in Perth—a move that, from my perspective as a New Yorker (even an idealistic New Yorker, helplessly awash in the dopamine-scented haze of young love) felt more like a transfer to the lunar surface.
When we divorced three years later, it was hardly what you’d call a bolt from the blue. He was an Anglican priest who enjoyed golf, tennis, and vintage port. I was a kick-ass feminist intellectual who excelled at chain-smoking. It was never gonna happen. Our geographical differences were equally irreconcilable. He was overjoyed to be back in his own country after four years in New York. As for me, as much as I appreciated the clean air and gorgeous beaches, I knew I could never in a billion years call Australia home.
That was twenty-four years ago. LOL.
In the meantime, I remarried—a doctor this time—and had three babies (but not necessarily in that order) with alarming alacrity. The kids were four, two, and six months old when we broke up. My first divorce had been sad but amicable. This one was a conflagration. With an Australian as the father of my children, my chances of moving back to the United States were now as remote as Perth itself. I’d followed my heart to the ends of the earth, all right. And now I was stranded here.
That was fourteen years and several lifetimes ago. I look back at those days when I wished my ex-husband would get run over by a bus and feel pretty ashamed. I realize now that migration to a third-world country would have been fine. Kidding, people! He was, and very much still is, the father of my children. I remind myself of that every day of my life. The kids love him, and he loves them, and whatever the differences between us, that should be good enough for me. It’s not. But at least I recognize that it should be. Like that half-done quilt I’ve had stuffed into a bottom drawer since my eldest started middle school, I’m working on it.
Death, it is said, concentrates the mind wonderfully. So, too, does having sole charge of three kids under five. In the early years, like many another single parent, I clung to my professional identity like a baby to an umbilicus. I started writing a weekly newspaper column about my kids. I started writing books about gender and family life. And I started planning. (Up until this time, I decided, I’d lived in the here and now perhaps a little too successfully.) I formulated a five-year plan to get us stateside. Six years later, I revised that to a ten-year plan, and then a fifteen-year plan. In the meantime, the lioness’s share of my energy went to parenting my children: one sticky, sleep-deprived, extraordinary day at a time. I reminded myself that if home was where the heart was, then by any real reckoning I was already back in Kansas. Some of the
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