I write this from the children’s hospital in Atlanta, with which we are so familiar that my computer immediately defaulted to its wireless. That is just…lots of things.

Wrong. Helpful. Funny. Sad. Exhausting. All the things, really.

The Kid is getting his yearly MRI, the one where they check various places in his head and neck, a follow-up we’d very much like to #cancel, but so far have not managed to avoid. When I just took him back to the scan room, he writhed in my arms, screaming, “WHY DO I HAVE TO DO THIS?” That was what got me: all that he’s been through, all he’s had to endure. It’s not fair. And yet it’s made us who we are. Funny. Sad. Exhausting. It’s all the things.

I just filled out a “coping plan questionnaire” for TK which is well-intentioned and probably helpful, but I know that, like me, the best way he has of coping with hard things is for them to end. I’m forty-two and still haven’t completely accepted that this isn’t how life works, so I can’t expect him to have arrived at that realisation yet, but here we both sit, anxiety riddling our bodies, “STOP!” being our battle cry, trying to put on brave faces while, inside, spiralling.

And yet…we’re growing.

It’s been three years since we moved to Sydney, and this was the year we were meant to move back to America. Joke’s on the me from back then, since we’ve signed on for at least two more years, which makes this trip to America just that: a trip, a visit, a round-trip holiday, not the bookend return to our arrival. Our house here in Atlanta is sold and holds new occupants. We’re on our fourth Sydney house. It’s all quite ridiculous, really, and yet not? Because it’s our brand of making sense now, this dual life we lead, loved ones on both continents and within both hemispheres. Home scattered across the world.

This most recent move may have been our fourth in three years, with conventional wisdom telling us it should get easier, but a recent shipment’s arrival from the US meant it was a bigger move than the others, and our new place is the smallest. I’ll give you time to do the math there. Visually, it looked like rooms full of furniture scattered about and me standing in the midst of it, shutting down in a panic.

One of the pieces of furniture that made its way across the ocean is the rocking chair I used to feed both boys in as newborns. I remember sleepless nights spend in that chair, frustrating feeds and angry words shot from that seat toward The Husband, who annoyingly hadn’t been cut open and turned into a cow himself and therefore deserved all my resentment. Now, though, it serves as a seat for an eight-year-old and his five-year-old brother and their older yet slightly less tired parents, this four-pointed family who have come so far–literally and figuratively–together since those early days (and nights).

Then, we barely knew each other. Now, we are bonded by a glue stronger than anything we knew of back then: travellers in a strange land together, navigating fields both foreign and familiar, jet-lagged yet aware of each other’s “tired signals,” each knowing how to both push the others’ buttons and make them laugh uncontrollably. So, yes, I know how to fill out a coping plan for TK, and I’d know how to fill one out for Little Brother and TH too, but really? What we need most is grace, followed by each other. Luckily we have both in spades.