We’ve had cause for a few celebrations lately.
Two Fridays in a row, we received (good) news that prolongs what was meant to be a three-year tour in Australia. First, there was the permanent residency we were granted. Then, our house in America sold and closed despite all the ghosts living in it (kidding).
Then, the other day, Little Brother turned five. And the lead-in was…quantifiable in its excitement. Every day, several times a day, he would ask how many more days were left until the big event. And every day, upon hearing the answer, his excitement would spill over into a giggly dance. Finally, we headed to a hotel in the city for a staycation granted by reward points, and the four of us piled into a king-sized bed for room service and TV. The next morning, LB woke up to balloons and presents and we spent the day as tourists in our own city, walking along the harbour and visiting museums.
But before that, and a couple of weeks early (the sitter was already booked for an event that got cancelled; #romance), The Husband and I headed into the city for his birthday celebration. I had booked a ghost tour because that was the kind of thing we used to do while we were dating–back when getting scared was a matter of haunted houses and horror movies, not unhinged presidents and anxiety over kids. Real life provides enough frights these days, but I booked the tickets anyway, and so we walked over from our Mexican dinner to the Rocks, the oldest part of Sydney.
We had a few minutes before the tour began, so we popped into a bar where live music was playing. We only stayed long enough for two songs, and as we heard the words to “Don’t Look Back in Anger,” TH and I glanced at each other. Before us, between the band and the entryway where we stood, were a group of people dancing with the aid of free-flowing drinks, and an insult formed on my ever-ready-to-insult lips before I saw myself there (or at the American version of there, at least) a few years earlier, belting out the same lyrics atop a bar on the Jersey Shore, just as earnest and just as drunk as the people we were watching. And when we left that bar a minute later and passed by several more–many with lines snaking around corners full of patrons awaiting entry–I felt a twinge of nostalgia for long nights full of endless drinks and possibility.
Then I remembered how those long nights actually went, when peered through a microscope: hope turning into disappointment, buzz turning into hangover, possibility turning into desperation; my own self-imposed urgency (What if my future husband is in this bar? What if I MISS HIM?!); fraught social interactions feeling like games of chess (I’ve never understood chess).
The FOMO that used to both haunt and propel me quickly evaporated. We didn’t stop, instead heading toward our tour group.
Yes, we were truly on the other side now, walking drink-less among a tour group led by an older man in a black overcoat and hat while bar-goers stared at (and likely pitied) us, and we loved it. We were led into dark alleys and locked houses, threaded through Sydney history and personal stories. We saw views of the Harbour Bridge and the water from vantage points we never would have known about, much less ventured to.
All of that, plus we got home at a reasonable hour. And the only dudes I woke up with are the ones to whom I’m related by blood and marriage. Score.
Sure, there are parts of life that are circling the drain at any given moment: workplace woes, real estate scarcity, to name a couple. But then last Saturday, I took LB to a birthday party at the zoo’s ropes course and he told me on the way in he didn’t want to do it. We kept walking, though, and a few minutes later he was harnessed and helmeted, and after a few minutes more he was–with a panic-stricken expression–doing it. After he made a particularly tough crossing, he turned back to his friend: “Don’t worry, E, you can do it! Trust me.” He had gotten to the other side.
There’s always another side. Sometimes you just have to endure panic, and maybe crap your pants a little to get there–where there becomes here, where panic becomes joy.
Trust me.
Permanent residency established, house sold. Husband found, kids born. Diagnosis received; denial transformed into advocacy of the beautiful different; move across the world completed; friendships made. I sat by one of those friends this morning on a beach where our kids played and I told her what I knew, what I will always know: “I would have been a completely different kind of mother if none of that had happened. If we had stayed where we were.” And I didn’t mean a good kind.
The four of us on the birthday of the youngest, walking around our city, our home, TH and I begging them to enjoy the view, dammit. On the beach gazing across the water in which they’re playing. On our couch watching the bridge go up and down. Watching. Trusting. Seeing.