Today I had a simple mission… train it to my friend’s house so I could watch their new puppy while she ran some important documents into the city.

I felt a bit like a spy… hoping on and off trains without paying (ok ok it was a fareless day, but still felt super cool), causally catching the keys she tossed me as I disembarked and she caught the same train back to town, wondering the streets until I found an unfamiliar little while Mazada that instantly brought back the 80’s that match the keys, slipped into her house, plugged my ipod in and started to play with the loveliest puppy.

And for the next 2 hours I get to play house in a world that is just about exactly how I imagined mine would be by now.  House with all the carpets ripped out, but the hardwoods not yet refurnished.  White curtains fluttering across open windows, but not blocking all the view.  A few legos here and there to trip over, but most things picked up and chucked helter-skelter into toy bins, at least for the next hour…. It is that magic time when you can’t start any big new projects, but you still have a bit of time to yourself before the school days wraps up and the kids come careening home.   There is lettuce to be picked for dinner, a bottle of simple local wine to chill, a puppy is sleeping at my feet, and the house has bits and pieces that remind me of where I have come from.  There are strawberries and ferns in the front yard and a clothesline attached to a kid’s fort in the back yard.  Nothing is opulent about this house, and yet everything has this feeling of luxury to me because it is so clear that this is a house where there are twins and a puppy living happily, and that to me just makes me feel all cozy and assured that there is enough.  This is a place where adults have a bit of fun and provide for their kids and feel established enough that there is no question that they can take on a bit more and care for others.  It is a home, hard won and well loved.

This is a house where things are being unpacked and gardens planted. My real house is a place of chaos, boxes, documents to scan and shred, and visa paperwork to fret over.  The garden is a pile of weeds. The chickens need a new home.  Everything feels in limbo… even more extreme than all the waiting to move to NZ, the waiting to do a cycle, the waiting for the pain to subside, and then the last year of waiting for Italy to happen or not.

Well it is happening.  In the next month I should have my student visa and be on my way to a new land where donor eggs are band and where the population is shrinking due to a very low birth rate.  A place that I am working hard to reframe for myself.  It does not have to be a shift away from all that my heart wants right now — from kids, home, my career in the field I love, and a sense of putting down roots — but until I find a new way of thinking about it, it is just that.  A very big departure from my current dreams.

But today is a day of light and dreams and pretending.  On the train I listened to this podcast and thought… hmm, what about adoption in Haiti. Oh wait, that’s right, adoptions are on hold there, my life has no address, I’m soon to be living off a grad student stipend, not exactly a fool proof idea.  But there was something about the thought that made me pause and said, yeah, that just might happen.  The train stopped and I started out the window and a rush of memories and thoughts about Haiti came to me.  I remembered deliberately missing my bus stop in Boston because I was so enjoying listening to the couple in front of me chat in Haitian Creole.  I remember doing a speech assessment on  a youngster I’ll call Ntasi. When I called his mother up to review my findings, we talked and talked and talked.  I think both of us would have kept talking if it wasn’t that 8 o’clock came around and she said, ‘Oh sorry, I just noticed the time… ”  and I apologized about interrupting bedtime, and she laughed and said, ‘No no no, on Friday nights we all stay up as a family and have a dance party.”  And to this day on Friday nights, I wonder if her three kids, father, and husband are all dancing somewhere.  I think of Stacey and all the posts she’s written about her experiences.. and those photos and stories and her talking about the emails to Haiti… then less heavy thoughts came to mind, like trying to stomp out specific rhythms in my music of the Caribbean class my senior year in college as the only non-music major in the class. And in that moment I couldn’t say that I had a plan, but there was this seed of an idea that something will happen with my dreaming and ponderings.  Yes I know I have to act, not just dream, but perhaps the time for action isn’t quite yet and I can just trust a bit for a bit.

Which is good, because currently I have a very long list of things to get done to ensure that both my husband and I get to Italy and honor the commitments we’ve made over there and my commitment to myself to somehow make peace with this move, for my sake and my poor husband’s sake, ideally before I board that plane.. or atleast before I land… or maybe before my 4th summer in a row starts… hmmm, I don’t know when it will happen, but I will make peace with this move, somehow.