The Fear of Gravy

I have learned a few things in my first year of marriage.  Some I expected to learn: how Superhusband likes his coffee, how to do twice the laundry in the same amount of time, how to call my mother in law by her first name and not feel like a creep—you know, the usual.  I have also learned some things I never expected: how it feels to walk into a room and have no interest in how many of the men in it are single (what a relief, I must say), how to drive on a corrugated road made of sand and vibration, how to correctly interpret the British names for car parts in casual conversation, etc. One thing, however, which has surprised even worldly and jaded me was how I have developed a very acute cooking phobia.  I am terrified of making gravy.

 

Let me place a few caveats on that before all of you run to your Southern mammas and get my heritage revoked.  I’m not speaking of the lovely, rich, sausage-filled, milk gravy that goes with biscuits.  Nor is it the Red-Eye for grits, the Giblet for turkey, or the non-sausage-filled poor-man’s gravy made from the bacon grease remainders, flour, and water, and best served with loads of black pepper.  No, my friends, for these I have allegiance and affection—these gravies are for specific purposes and are formulated to pair with humble, accessible foods.  I am speaking of English gravy.  English gravy is ubiquitous, occurring with every meal involving a meat-n-three (which in my experience with English cooking becomes a meat-n-SIX.) It is as if this substance is the primordial ooze from which the British Isles rose and all its inhabitants must feed upon it to sustain their power over under-industrialized nations. It is made with broth or stock, and each English individual has their own proportions and array of condiments with which to further flavor it.  It can be made from a packet, though this route is most often scorned. 

 

The scorn, however, is not limited to packet usage. There are SO many things which can go wrong with the relatively few elements of gravy. First there is the roux (it strikes me as odd that the English would use a French word as a basis for their most-loved sauce.) The fat (in most cases butter) melts over medium heat in a sauce pan. Don’t add the flour too soon, or it will clump, ruining the finished product unless one is prepared to spend much time with a sieve; or too late, or the butter will over-brown and start to smoke.  After a smooth paste is hopefully achieved, one must add the broth, not too much and not too little. The broth must come from a reputable brand, Oxo being the Australian best. If one uses an inferior stock the whole effect could be lost. Best to use two cubes per batch, dissolved in 1-2 cups of boiling water. If you have made it this far, you have done well.  But you are not done.  Now the array of condiments must be chosen: tomato sauce (think ketchup, but not) for sweetness, Worcestershire for tang, salt to supplement a weak stock cube, barbecue sauce for smokeyness, black pepper for depth, red pepper or chili pepper for heat, and any number of herbs and spices.  If you would like an onion or mushroom variety, you’re too late.  You SHOULD have sautéed them in the butter at the beginning, and adding them now will not do.  And this gravy has to be good, for it will be ladled onto every item on the dinner plate, from sweet potatoes to stuffing.  So basically, if you mess up the gravy, you’ve messed up the meal.

 

This is where the fear has its root.  I have always considered myself a good cook. One who has a reasonable idea of what goes together on a plate. My first mistakes in this marriage cooking-odyssey sprung from not having gravy present at all, because, really, I viewed it as a breakfast condiment or for holidays and Sunday roasts. Then, when Superhusband impressed upon me that it is an absolute necessity, I was left to experiment a bit, having only my American background from which to draw.  Obviously I do not come from an imperialist enough culture to fully grasp gravy’s complexities, so my experiments did not always satisfy.  But just ruining a meal or two is not enough to produce such fear—the plot thickens. Living, as Superhusband and I do, almost exclusively with members of each others’ families, it means that those experiments become testing grounds for family identity.  In a “normal” marriage, the husband and wife, in relative solidarity, hammer out the details of week-night dinners in a trial and error fashion, deciding which they like and which to scrap.  Not so for us.  Making dinner usually means making a family meal, and making a family meal means risking indigestion (or worse, utter disgust) of more than two people at a time.  Even the suggestion of making the meal involves numerous negotiations: “What time?  Who can be there? What meat?  How is it to be cooked? Does everyone like Brussels sprouts? You won’t put honey in the marinade again, will you? So-and-so doesn’t eat that.”  You get the idea.  These are all convoluted renditions of the same question…”Are you like us?” And when you find yourself a new wife in an in-law situation, the answer to that question has very high stakes indeed.

 

Those high stakes (in my mind) have recently struck me as a mirror for Christian fellowship. So many of our metaphors surrounding fellowship involve “table” language that I’m surprised this hasn’t hit me before.  (To some of you this might be old news, but I have been enjoying my present ruminations on the topic.) As a member of the church of Christ, I “meet around the Lord’s table” every Sunday of my life. We have potlucks, pitch-ins, bring-a-plate dinners, picnics, and Holy Communion which constantly and beautifully knit our physical feeding with the spiritual feeding.  Here in Perth I have found, to my delight, that most congregations offer free (or very cheap) tea, coffee and snacks after every Sunday service so everyone has this very important chance for face time after worship. And it’s completely Biblical.

 

Jesus himself sets the standard in a way so revolutionary, yet so taken-for-granted in my Pharisaical mind. Many times in the New Testament He is seen “eating with tax collectors and sinners.” I’ve always thought, “Why is everyone so scandalized?  The Guy’s got to eat, and we’re ALL sinners.” But I forget that a great number of the population at the time did not think they were sinners, or if they did, they sacrificed a dove or something and got sin out of their way. And I had never contextualized the whole sharing-a-table thing until recently.  I’ll tell you how it happened.

 

Superhusband and I went to the Perth Royal Show which is like a state fair on steroids.  It began as an agricultural exhibition, and has grown to a festival of mass proportions. While there, we stopped to have a snack in one of the crowded corners of a side street where there was a picnic table half-occupied by an Indian family.  We sat down to occupy the other half, and before I knew it, I was watching out for this woman’s children.  I did not know them.  We never exchanged a word.  But because of the mere act of sitting at the same table, I felt a strange obligation to at least be aware of where her three children wandered in the small courtyard. Then some beautiful, brown, exotic early-twenty-something couples sauntered up and sat down across from us. THEN I felt like the ugly step-sister among three Cinderellas and their princes.  And I wanted them to behave nicely in front of the little children who were now part of my family.

 

This is what Holy Communion IS.  We sit around the same table.  We look out for each other’s children. We are saying, in a very real and spiritual sense, “I am one of yours.” For early Christians this was a tad more jarring than I feel it is today.  It was more like sitting around my in-laws’ table with a steaming plate of meatloaf—a dish they had NEVER had.  Early Christians must have looked at each other with the same kind of anticipation, the same kind of wonderment and high-stakes anxiety.  The “partaking together” was not always a foregone conclusion.  For them, eating with a group of _________ (Jews/Greeks/Pagans/Idol-worshippers) could get them killed.

 

As if to sum up this whole eating-with-you-makes-you-family, one of the last times Christ is with his apostles before the ascension is on a beach, feeding them fish.  In John 21:1-14, seven of the twelve went out fishing on the Sea of Tiberius. They caught nothing until Christ hailed them from the shore and had them throw out their nets one more time.  The catch was no short of amazing: “153 large fish” we are told—don’t you just love God’s eye for detail?  And when they catch them and realize that it’s Jesus, they haul their nets to shore in a frenzy and are met with a campfire and the face of their Saviour saying “Come and have breakfast.”

 

Therefore, that feeling of “Come have breakfast” and of “sit at my table” is the feeling I want to carry with me into Communion each week.  I want to look around the gathering, however big, small, familiar, or one-time-visited it is, and think about Jesus personally offering all of His family a big helping of “you fit in.” And it will bring me even more joy to know that this Communion is a mere non-fictional puppet-show of what WILL happen in heaven. We will bring our different gifts to the table and make the biggest potluck the universe has ever seen.  And you’ll know which dish is mine—it’ll be the one with perfect gravy.

The Nitty, the Gritty, the Agony and the Affidavit

I know.  I know it is September. Most of you likely thought I had lost either my ability to type or my hands altogether, because this is the first post in months and a conscientious person like myself would never leave a blog languishing that long.  You’re all very sweet. But, inexplicably, without a job, nor kids, nor daily routines, I simply haven’t chiseled out time to sit and write. I’m terribly sorry. But I hope this post will clarify what does haunt me when I let it (which is far too often) and takes up much of that “non-job” time.

Superhusband and I are often asked “So, how’s immigration going? Where are you in the process?” Let me tell you that there is no easy way (nor fast way) to answer those questions.  And sometimes I’m even tempted to reply, “Why? What have you heard??  TELL ME!” And then there are those who follow this up with “But aren’t you married? Doesn’t that make a difference?” Sure, it makes a difference: to God, to mankind, to us personally….but to governing bodies which oversee our right to gainful employment? Nope. Still illegal to be a two-income family wherever we go. Lame.

But in order to shed some light on the serpentine lives we’ve been leading, and to just fill you in on what it takes to immigrate if you’d ever consider it (and, really, to get some over-milked sympathy, as if I don’t get enough) I’m going to try to outline the process we’ve taken so far to get Superhusband to the USA to stay. Please note, there are other ways of going about the process, but we have chosen our best option at each juncture (so we thought) and have navigated honestly through the choices given, though we often acted in ignorance of the big picture.  And THAT is mainly what burns me up about this limbo we’re in—if we had known clearly the paths we needed to take when we started, we could have been done by now. And I often feel cheated out of these months by deadlocked bureaucratic nonsense and the absence of a clearly outlined process. But as my father says, “No education is ever wasted.” and boy, has this ever been an education. Ergo, I would also like to present this as “Exhibit A” for mine and Superhusband’s application for “Champions of Immigration Reform” and advisors to the US Senate.

 

And away we go…..

 

Superhusband (then only SuperAussieBoyfriend) proposed to me in Red Lobster in Florence, Alabama on Friday, March 25^th 2011. At that point he and I had already discussed the pros and cons and financial burdens of moving to one continent or the other, and decided that we would try the US first. About two weeks later, after asking for references from those “in the know,” I sought the advice of an immigration lawyer in Jackson, Tennessee on how to start the locomotive of paperwork and legality down the track.  Now, I should have been tipped off when, as I explained my engagement and hopes for the future, the lawyer quipped confusedly “Oh…so you want to do it the right way?” I should have flung myself right back out into the soggy West Tennessee afternoon. But I stayed. And I listened. And it has cost me two years of my life.

 

This lawyer suggested that since we were engaged, we should begin by filing a Fiancée Visa application.  As I was hoping to have the wedding in November, I asked if eight months should be enough time, to which she replied, “Probably.” Then she said that if I was to require her services I would need to lay down a $2,000 retainer, and that would last until she had worked a grand ten hours on my case, at which point I would be required to keep making a $200/hr payment.  Now those of you who are lawyers may be thinking that this was a reasonable fee, and it very well might be.  But to me, in my first job at a private university, only guaranteed one semester of gainful employment, that kind of money was not a practical expenditure. I am literate, college-educated, not a total dweeb….I thought I could surely, as the VBS song says, “Read and study and then obey.” So I embarked on the process with only my wits.

 

The first thing I found out was that I could not directly apply for my fiancée to come to the United States. I had to petition to apply with the I-129F. That cost $340, took a few hours to fill out, and needed to be accompanied by the G-1145 form to allow internet correspondence, and a G-325A including biographic information on both of us, including but not limited to every address at which either of us had lived in the last ten years (Do you know me? That’s a herculean task.)  two color passport photos taken in the last six months, a full-color copy front and back of my original birth certificate, and a statement certifying that our engagement is not a product of  international marriage broker services. I rushed, and got papers from Paul (mind you, each time documents went back and forth at break-neck speed between Australia and the US you’re looking at $30-50 each way) and filed our first papers on April 17, 2011. We then received “Notice of Action,” and then………nothing.  Not a peep. We didn’t know this was normal, because no one told us that it normally takes five months to approve the first step.  FIVE months of just sitting there. And by sitting there, I mean teaching university, directing Shakespeare and early modern theatre, finishing two thesis projects, wedding-planning, and house-sitting while SuperAussieFiancee was working full time and preparing to sell his house.

 

I admit, this is hard for me to write.  I am finding it hard to remember all the twists and turns and I’m feeling a flood of the anxiety which has defined months of my life.  I’ll try a list, but with explanations at certain points.

 

·         We discovered we could call my local congressman or senator for guidance, but we had to sign a privacy agreement first and mail the hard-copy to Birmingham, and then wait for them to contact us. Which I did in June, and had a lovely conversation with Lyndsay. She was skeptical about the timing, since we had already planned the date for our wedding, but she was encouraging.

·         After teaching one semester and graduating with my MFA in May, I flew to Australia to see SuperAussieFiancee’s hometown and help him sell the house from June-Sept 2010.

·         After not hearing anything from any government agency for a while, we tried to call for information. We discovered we cannot call the USCIS directly (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services), nor was any government official in Australia able to take a call for help—which, if they could, costs $12 per conversation. Lyndsay checked on this “no information” thing and discovered that whoever had put our case number in the system had failed to register it properly, so we weren’t getting updates.

·         SuperAussieFiancee’s house sold at the end of August, 2010.

·         I flew back to the States September 16, 2010 alone, to prepare for the wedding. I had 7 weeks.

·         SuperAussieFiancee flew to the States on October 3, 2010 to help with the wedding and get acclimated, all the while wondering IF he could actually get into the country with a pending-but-not-approved visa. He called when he was “through security,” and we cheered and wept.

·         On October 6, 2010 we drove to Birmingham to pick up Fudge the dog from his cross-planetary flight. He was happy to see us, and he now barks with a more Alabamian accent.

·         Around October 15, we were FINALLY approved to make our official application for Fiancee Immigration. I, however, knew that once we filled in those papers, the interview (which would take place in Sydney) could be scheduled at any time.  Widespread panic.  What if they scheduled the interview on the day of the wedding? What if all of SuperAussieFiancee’s family showed up in FLORENCE, stinkin’ ALABAMA, and we were back in Australia getting permission to marry? What if we postponed the wedding, and his WHOLE family lost THOUSANDS of dollars in travel cancellations, and THAT was their first impression of me as a person? We ended up cancelling our dream-honeymoon-cabin-by-the-river in Chattanooga because we didn’t know if we’d be in the country to use it. We opted for the much cheaper duplex-cabin-by-the-lake in Iuka, MS.

·         I somehow convinced myself that it would be okay. We would get married, and then just finish the paperwork for Fiancee Visa in Australia, have an interview, and then “declare” our marriage on documents after that.  This was likely my most delusional phase in the whole process.

·         Superhusband planned a surprise layover in Brisbane to see my cousin. That eased the not-being-home-for-Thanksgiving feelings. It was dreamy (EXCEPT for the moment in the Annerly Motor Inn in Brisbane where the hard-of-hearing cleaning woman decided to start her work 30 minutes before check-out, and did not hear our plaintive screams to shut the door and NOT uncover our nakedness—you know, two weeks into marriage when mutual nakedness is still a really big deal. Scarring.)

·         About a week after arriving back in Perth, my father had a massive heart attack in Alabama. I did not get a phone call, I got emails with headings like “Dad.” Which nearly caused ME to have a heart attack, and on top of wondering if I’d ever get back to the US, I now worried whether I would ever see my father alive again.

·         We bought a caravan on Dec. 16^th so we could finally get some much-needed privacy and use it later to travel to Sydney and see the country. After an inaugural trip before Christmas, we also bought a bigger car to haul the thing, and made sure this one was an automatic so I could share in the driving.

·         With dad sufficiently healing in the hospital, we gathered more papers to submit to gain an interview, including an Affidavit of Support secured from one of my relatives, for which we had to wait six weeks because the postal service sent it to WA-Washington state instead of WA-Western Australia. This form, for those of you who are interested, is a form stating that the immigrant in question will not be allowed to become a “public ward,” and requires the sponsor to prove they have lived above the poverty line for the past three years AND that they will support the immigrant for no fewer than ten years barring death of either the sponsor or immigrant. Of course, we had to invite a family member into the equation because I had been in graduate school for the last three years, and we all know that MFA and “poverty” go hand in hand. Humbling. Terrifying. I never imagined that my education and economic standing could keep my husband from living in my country.

·         Before I sent more paperwork, I asked the US Embassy in Sydney if we needed any special marriage documentation to complete the forms. On December 4^th, 2010, I received word that since we were married and no longer engaged, we could not use any of our former paperwork and we had to start over. START OVER. New request for permission to apply, new $400 filing fee, new postage fees, new pictures, new everything. And this time, some of the forms were different. My “six-week” stay was now to be much, much longer. And then there was the unbelievable guilt of having not seen this coming.

·         On December 29^th the USCIS lockbox facility in Chicago (as we had to send papers to a different spot this time) received our new paperwork. We had started over. Had we known we would have to start over, we could have STAYED in the States married, and filed from there, skipping the Sydney interview. But now, having filed from Australia, we set ourselves on a different path of Consular Processing. And we’re paying $33 per night to park our own house in a caravan park (trailer park) and eat our own food.  It has now been three months since Superhusband has worked, and seven months for me. But none of this constitutes a “special circumstance” to the government.

·         We then had to notify our Congressman’s office again and send a new privacy release form before they could continue to work on our behalf. Lyndsay was not so chatty this time around.

·         And then we waited, hemorrhaging money until such time as we got clearance for an interview.  We were hopeful that this would be more economical than two more international flights and it would enable us to take off at a moment’s notice to Sydney. Of course, we had to purchase a $267 e-Visa for me to stay in the country for a total of six months.

·         By April we knew we would not have time to be approved AND schedule an interview before my visa ran out.  So, we decided to see some of the country anyway: this was likely the best part of our stay. We spent our last month travelling north and east through Western Australia, knowing we’d have to come back.

·         Got an email from a beautiful cousin letting me know about a children’s theatre directing position in Florence, AL.  Started an auspicious email conversation.

·         On May 21, 2012, we were approved for filing an official application.  That’s exactly FOUR days before flying back to the States for a family reunion.

·         Back in the States, the family reunion was amazing, and the first couple of weeks tumultuous while we were both fighting culture shock. Within three weeks Superhusband couldn’t stand the boredom anymore and we were off on another cross-continental trip up the US East Coast and into Canada, seeing many beautiful people along the way. It was a mixed bag, and quite unforgettable.

·         While on this trip I got a call from our local university about a job for which I had applied months ago.  Over the moon! I finally had an interview in my field.

·         Then back to the paperwork for me—we filed the application, and received instructions for the “Choice of Agent” which declared me as the “official” person for the government to converse with.

·         After  that we received instructions (and this is how it goes these days—not until after you complete one step do you get instructions and fee information for the next step) on the Affadavit of Support.  Same name, but completely different document from before.  We thought we needed the same things from our sponsor, but we did not, so we had to humble ourselves again and grovel for new paperwork. This document also required a list of all assets (property, vehicles, etc) with tax information and valuation for all, a hard-copy print out of account history for EVERY bank account we owned spanning the last twelve months, and my tax records for the last three years. This took days to complete.

 

·         Next we were informed that our application showed a gap of more than 6 months in our residence history. I had to re-type and re-submit a four-page form detailing every address Superhusband had had since the age of 16. Did it, mailed it, spent $27 to get it there.

 

 

·         Next we were given instructions on “supporting documents.” This required Superhusband’s original birth certificate (fortunately we HAD this), copies of his passport, and police clearance checks for all countries in which he had resided for 6 months or more since the age of 16. As fate would have it, he had spent exactly 6 months in England at the age of 16. Another document needed.

 

·         Upon researching what was required for police clearance checks in Australia and England we found that both had to be paid for in local currency, and the US required the checks to be completed with fingerprint scans as well. To even HAVE your fingerprints taken in Australia takes three months and is ridiculously expensive. However, Australia does accept fingerprints from the US and Canada. AND you can apply online, but if you do, you must pay online, and seemingly you can’t pay online if you’re mailing fingerprints separately.

 

After trying to find a digital-body-scan operation in Alabama (or TN, GA, or MS) and failing, I called the Australian Federal Police one night on Skype.  This had to be at 11pm because of the 16-hour time difference. I have never been so astounded as when I heard the automated answering machine say, “You are caller number One-hundred and two.  Your approximate wait time is One-hundred and eighty minutes.” When I picked my chin up off the floor, I asked Superhusband if we even HAD enough Skpe credit to wait that long—he didn’t know, so while we were on hold in one window, we opened a second window to buy more credit, and hope we didn’t have to refresh the page to get it.  It worked.  We waited just under two hours to speak to a representative, and they were no help this time. But we tried again a couple of days later, and by an act of God Himself I was connected to Phillip in Melbourne.  I explained my situation, and after some negotiation he came back with “Here’s what you’re going to do: Pay online, print out the consent form, send it with the fingerprints, and we’ll match them up when they get here.” I sprinted into the other room where Superhusband was making a cabinet and began to leap about exclaiming “We can do it! We can do it!”  He laughed at first, and then remarked that I hadn’t been that excited about anything he had done for months.

 

So, we mailed that off, (as it had a minimum of a 25-day processing time) and started looking at the British police clearance.  That required another set of fingerprints, payment in Pounds Stirling (no online option) and a passport style photograph endorsed by an upstanding member of society (several occupations listed as options) who had known Superhusband for a minimum of two years, with a supporting document containing the signer’s name, address, and sworn statement. And having researched attempting to get a bank draft in a foreign currency before, we knew this one would have to be done in Australia. But the fingerprints had to be done before we left.  So, the Alabama Bureau of Investigation came through with fingerprinting done each day before 10am, completed on the day before we flew overseas.

 

·         Within this time I had the aforementioned interview at our local university.  I could not sign papers because things were still up in the air about our processing. I loved the interview, was offered the job, and the professor even sent an email to our congressman’s office to ask for our case to be expedited so I could be back in the States for this job. Unbeknownst to us, however, our advocate Lyndsay had quit the department, and our case had been sent to three different places.  It was now under the supervision of a girl named Shan. I called Shan to ask about how to allow a potential employer to send an email on my behalf.  Shan so astutely replied “Look, I don’t know anything about these immigration cases.” Just at the time when help could finally be valuable, we were left bereft. But it didn’t end there.  Shan proceeded to send an expedite request..to the WRONG embassy.  That’s right, folks.  We received a letter stating that as soon as our paperwork went through to the LONDON office, they would speed it along. So, immediately, we called Shan and asked for an explanation.  She, again astutely replied, “Well, it’s because he was born in London.” Now, as many of you may already know, “London” is city, not a country, and Paul was born on almost the opposite end of the island from said city. That being as it was, we simply asked her not to do anything else.  It was already clear that we could not make it back in time to start the job, and I had had to turn it down. And communicating with Sydney (the correct embassy) would be too much for our young friend. But still, she was not satisfied until she had ruined everything.  Shan proceeded to contact Sydney, against our wishes, and was met with a “No, we will not expedite this case” answer. It was at this point we called the head office of the congressman to get her forcibly removed from the case so no further damage could be done. As if we didn’t have enough to do.

 

·         Also during the fingerprinting/police check process, we began to get mixed signals from our family sponsor. After enduring some unsolicited advice from said family member, some constructive and some not, Superhusband and I decided to be the dumpers and not the dumpees.  From that point forward, we were determined to attempt an independent sponsorship.

 

·         That is, until we received an email on August 5, 2012 which stated that our income looked “too low” (that’s bureaucratese for “nonexistant”) and we might consider a joint sponsor.  Well, duh. So my wonderful parents stepped in and offered their limited income and a HOUSE as assets to aid us.  24-hours and 30-pages of documents later, I was back in the post office spending another $27 to send a tree’s worth of print to New Hampshire.

 

·         August 7, 2012 we fly back to Australia. After a birthday and holiday stop in Melbourne, we arrived back in Perth and again started the waiting process.

 

·         On August 20^th we received an email saying that one box in the 30-page Affidavit document did not match the materials sent subsequently, and therefore had to be amended and re-sent. So, I called the National Visa Center (on Skype, of course) to see if I could send this information at the same time as the police certificates.  The information was actually given by a person, I assume a live one, and was a helpful “Yes.”

 

·         The first police certificate arrived a few days later, and after completing the requirements for the British certificate and waiting nearly the maximum processing time (and being $126 poorer for the prize,) we received the final piece of the puzzle on Monday, September 17^th, 2012 at 11am. By 4pm that very day we had compiled the rest and mailed it to straight to the NVC.  It should be sitting in New Hampshire right now, and up for another 20-day review period.

 

So there we are, folks. After New Hampshire makes doubly-triply sure that we’ve dotted every i and crossed every t, they will talk to the US Embassy in Sydney and then notify us of an interview time. We hope.  If they find something else wrong, which I imagine they could, we will repeat our process of fixing, finding, sending. Then we’ll only have a medical exam and a cross-continental trip to make.

 

But I tell you this, if after this season changes Superhusband and I can have the life we have envisioned, then it will all be worth the battle.  We will not take each other, our home, or even our ability to work for granted. And eventually, our children will benefit from a really great book deal. Until then, THAT’S how immigration is going.

The 92%

The 92%

The way culture shock in an individual creeps from mild amusement to mass hysteria is not through said individual seeing novel things or interesting artifacts. Visiting museums does not cause culture shock. Culture shock is insidious in that it wallops when the individual attempts doing hum-drum things in a foreign environment. And exactly how foreign that environment is makes a difference.

For instance, if you were in, say, Cameroon, in a hut with a dirt floor and no running water surrounded by grasslands and elephants and civil unrest, you would not expect to walk up the path and pop into a Wal-Mart and grab some native-generic Little Debbie cakes. No. That would be silly. But if you are in an English-speaking country with houses and paved roads and trees that look like trees you’ve always known which are wafting shade onto a polite-looking, modern-dressing, sufficiently heterogeneous population then you MIGHT just think you have the right to assume that you can get Little Debbie cakes (or your personal cultural equivalent) within a reasonable proximity of your person.  If you are moving between Australia and America, however, that assumption would be incorrect.

I am now watching, empathizing, suffering with Superhusband in the same odyssey I traversed over my nine months in Australia.  I can see the frustration on his face, the furrowing of the brows and tightening of his jaw and hands. I can hear the questions burning in his brain: “It costs HOW much? You can’t get that for HOW long? How many miles? What’s that in kilometers? WHY do you do it THAT way?” I know he wants to give up and jump on a plane sometimes, just like I did.  I know he tries to like things like milk gravy and turnip greens and sandwiches with un-buttered bread while doing without HP Sauce and Nescafe Blend 43. It hurts. It’s not normal. Anywhere we go, one of us is violently uncomfortable and often inconsolable.

I know I have not written in a long while, and when beginning this particular entry I had this whole gimmick planned where I would use slight hyperbole in describing the lengths to which Superhusband and I would go to get him a familiar-tasting sandwich.  But we have had more weighty matters on our already-compromised brains than sandwiches.  I will not downplay the struggle by making it about a sandwich instead of (what I believe is) real, spiritual warfare. We are fighting for our lives.

And it’s not just Superhusband who’s going through the culture shock—my own version has crept in. I am starting to believe in that old adage “You can’t go home again” not because you really can’t, but because you shouldn’t try.  I realized, after bringing my very exotic husband back to Florence, AL, that I haven’t lived here full time since I was 17. (Ok, there was that time when I was 27 after fat camp and before Huntsville, but don’t judge.) There is not much here that is familiar.  I don’t even know how the rental market is here because I’ve never lived in any residence in this town besides my parents’ house. On a very real level, I don’t know how life works here nor can I teach Superhusband how it works. I can tell him how things were when I was in high school, but the nostalgia of going out for icecream in your pajamas and then watching Dirty Dancing wears thin after a couple of weekends. And let me tell you, bad things happen when BOTH individuals in a couple are culture shocked. 

For instance, Superhusband’s English tastebuds pulled rank tonight and decided that we could NOT eat steak and broccoli without peas and carrots. Anything else was unacceptable, nay, unconscionable.  So we went out for pizza. Last night, at about the same time, I was weeping robustly at the canned musical accompaniment to the fireworks display at McFarlane Park because I really was “proud to be an American,” thanks to Lee Greenwood. It did not seem to occur to my senses that the riffraff on all sides of us who were fist-pumping and spitting chewing tobacco (or colloquially, “chaw”) from behind their well-quaffed mullets were not setting the most patriotic nor sentimental mood. Just last month Superhusband and I made fireworks of our own in a tiff that stemmed from not being able to find a certain Australian candy bar in Wal-Mart. And then we couldn’t find a single place within a 200-mile radius that would exchange Canadian money without a retinal scan and promise of our first-born. At this point he proclaimed unequivocally that we would NOT live here, not ever. But that was not before I blubbered at a VBS sing-along to none other than “Booster Booster.” Seriously. It was not that I thought I was seven years old again and sitting in that same auditorium, encouraging all those around not to be grouchy like the proverbial rooster. I just wished I was; because when I was seven I knew who I was supposed to be and what I should do next. I don’t know either of those now, and I have lived too recently like the rooster. Not that my family and friends who are here haven’t welcomed us with open arms and homes, it’s that those things can’t be my life anymore (at least not in their entirety.) I am a different person, and I’ve married a different person, and the road ahead is anything but clear. It’s hard to be a different person in a place that’s just like you remember it.

At times like these, it seems it would be enough for us to just get out of bed every day, be reasonably clean, eat at regular intervals and not throw the f-bomb at anybody.  But we so want to move ahead when the political wheels of our immigration case seem stalled. So we plan trips and see friends and drive through Washington, DC in the dead of night pulling a trailer with a motorcycle on it. We email government agencies, print photographs using international technology and mail them around the world, we slip our hopes and dreams inside ExpressMail envelopes and watch them speeding off into the unknown. We attempt to breathe new life into a 1920’s home (my parents’—not even ours) and make Frankenstein-esque modern conveniences out of pluck and leftovers. And we desperately try to make each other feel a bit more at ease.

So, what I’ve learned through these weeks of coming home and finding it anything but homey is that 92% of married life (for us, at this critical juncture) is forgiveness, and the other 8% is not getting offended even if you have a really good cause.  Superhusband has had to forgive me for reverting to teenage tendencies and smarting off to my mother and to him.  I have had to forgive him for blaming me for most of the economic problems of America and some of its poor import choices. Over and over, sometimes at lightning speed, forgive, forgive, forgive. Lord, just give us the strength to keep letting go when we’re white-knuckling our faith and clinging to reality.

My life is a crazy quilt, half-sewn

I know--it's been an entire month.  I'll have to catch everyone up on our adventures as they have been many and rich.  This post is just a little something I wrote on the plane back to the US when I couldn't sleep.  Forgive the rambling and the misspellings (though I'll try to edit them here.)

Let me describe this moment.  I am in seat 74D on a 747 somewhere just past the international date line.  I’m 5 hours off Sydney coast and 9 hours from Dallas where local time is approximately 4am.  I have watched a move,  several TV episodes, eaten a three course meal from tiny, metal boxes, and since I have been awake for over 24 hours, I should be sleeping like Superhusband beside me.

But these luscious little thoughts keep tempting me, chasing me, needling my typing fingers.  I am awash with what was, is, and will be.  I will write until my precariously perched laptop runs out of reserve battery power and possibly by then will have had enough catharsis to put me to bed for a while.  Speaking of going to bed, my lovely mother in law, who I just left in the Perth airport, dressed to the nines at 4:00 in the morning to drop us off, has a particular way of saying that it’s time to sleep.  “It’s sleepy bobo time!” she coos. Often it’s shortened and asked of others; “Off to bobos, then?” I don’t know what “bobo” is supposed to mean in this instance, but the fact that it’s a weird little Lancastrian term, reminiscent of some of the Southernisms of my family is distinctly comforting.

I am wearing grey dress pants because they are the most comfortable, stretchy pants I have that are fit to be seen in public.  I have delicately coupled this with a purple t-shirt I bought years ago at a thrift store.  The left side of the neckline refuses to cover my bra strap a la Naomi on Mamma’s Family, and the front middle waistline area has a constellation of little holes just about  the belly button.  These were either caused by my mother’s dryer which has little fangs that grab clothing during the cycle and gnaw them, or from giant Australian outback moths munching on my clothes while we caravanned.  (I digress a moment about the moths.  They do not only have a large wing span, but they are round, juicy creatures.  Like Hindenburgs of the insect world.  I was in a caravan park ablution block in Cervantes when one got stuck flapping around in the sink next to mine as I washed my hands.  It sounded exactly like the noise that would occur if you were to play racquetball in a barrel with a lump of baby mozzarella cheese. Do not underestimate the moth theory.) I am also wearing knee-high black socks, like a dork.  But at least now my feet won’t look like summer sausage when I get off this plane.  We’re flying into Dallas, after all, and it’s very important that none of me looks like breakfast meat. Top off this ensemble with some (again) second-hand brown, fake-fur-lined Sketchers sneaks with paint splatter on them, and you’ve almost got the picture.

I say almost, because while my body is weary and suspectly dressed, my mind feels more fecund than it has in months.  I am headed home to the US, and that has something to do with it—the prospect of hugging my mother brought tears to my eyes in the boarding cue today. But more than that, I have been granted by heaven some distance both from the ground I walked on and the ground I’ve covered.  I feel as though I’m seeing my timeline from a slightly raised platform—even if that platform IS a plane whose population is likely greater than some of the towns I’ve just driven through.  And let me just say: Babies on a plane.  What a concept.

But I am breathing freer in this high altitude.  I see my life stretch out like a crazy quilt in all colors and all directions. I am glorying in the accomplishments Superhusband and I have had, and dreaming of the ones we’ll conquer next.  Since my last entry, we have travelled over 1,000kms of wild, flat, Western Australian soil.  We visited Kalbarri gorges (which were far less disappointing than the pizza of the first night there, if you didn’t count the flies.) We visited the only monastic community in Western Australia and learned about monks and conversions in the 1900s.  We drove SO far out into nothingness to the Hutt River Principality, an “Independent Sovereign State” about 200kms from Perth which boasts (besides holding the distinction of seceding from Australia through a governmental loophole over wheat quotas in the 1970s) its own stamps, minted coins, and a royal couple named Leonard and Shirley.  If you see me during this visit to the USA, ask me and I will produce the postcards as proof.  You should look it up, and raise a glass to some good ‘ole boys with really good lawyers. We have FINALLY, after five solid months of silence, been approved to complete interview paperwork  with the US consulate in Sydney—just four days before heading back to the US because MY visa ran out.  We have climbed and photographed Wave Rock, which, as you might guess, looks exactly like an enormous ocean wave carved into a bluff.  We haven’t just lived in Western Australia, we have gallivanted in it. We have expanded into our existence and become more formidable people.

I read (on another lovely blog recently) that the woman of Proverbs 31 could “laugh at the days to come” because she was secure in God’s estimation of herself. I like that—it resonates.  But I hope when I laugh at my days to come, it’s not only about the security but the hilarity of the combinations of things and people and sights and projects we tackle.  I want see the incongruity, the asymmetry, the glorious heterogeneous abundance of my life and cackle. I want to live in a house with a red door.  I want to have children who can claim three continents as their flesh and blood. I want to be a part of a world of artists and Christians and baristas and musicians and small-town-community-theatre enthusiasts. I want to (this very weekend) sing in the midst of a great, human pipe organ of my relatives in honest a capella that makes rafters quiver.  I want to serve Thai curries and southern biscuits on the same table, both made with hands which dust themselves on the apron my mother made from her mother’s fabric. I want to fold and unfurl my crazy quilt life in all configurations so that all the colors get to meet. And when I’m done here, I want to fly to my Maker leaving a sparkling detritus of lives touched, tears shed, hands held, shoulders leant upon, and laugh lines earned. And I now renew my conviction to thank that Maker every single day for the fabrics He’s lent me to stitch on.

Gunshot Wounds to the Memory

This week Superhusband and I are dealing with two separate losses.  The first, and most painful, is the fact that it is now late April and even if we got news today that our immigration application was approved, we still would not have time to have an interview in Sydney before my visa runs out.  We must leave and come back.  We are really excited about the leaving part: seeing my family and Stateside friends for the first time in six months, living in a house (whether or not we're the owners of said house is now just a technicality to us), going to my mother's extended-family reunion...(I know this is another parenthetical reference early in the piece, but let me brag on this family again.  My mom is one of ten children born to a church of Christ preacher and his school-marm wife. Each of their children were also believing child-producers, and their children's children equally.  I am one of 34 grandchildren. The number of great-grandchildren is now approaching the 50 mark, and the great-greats started up in 2007. The sheer mass of us is amazing.  But what's astounding is that of all 130+ people that are invited to the gathering, there are maybe two individuals who I wouldn't choose to have coffee and/or a close friendship with. Families are messy no matter which one you're in; but to have this many people who like each other in one place is truly a blessing.  If you're reading this and you're single and of marriagable age, just let me know and I'll provide you with a list of cousins in the appropriate age range and gender categories for your perusal. You should jump on this train.)

Okay--so we're excited about going back, but what we really wanted was to go home. We wanted to come in with the trophy, the greencard, the cutting from which to grow roots.  Instead we return again as "temporary," as visitors, as rootless. It's as if we're returning from the State fair to the eager faces of our rural town, only to report that "Well, we could be the winner, but no one ever came to judge our entry. No one knew we were there." That's the painful part--feeling so insignificant in the face of the mighty international immigration machine.  And so we'll fly in to Memphis in another month, not knowing when we'll fly out again.  We will be excited to be back here in Australia later with the new side of my family, and the beauty and the adventure, of course, but a different kind of excited. The uncertainty, the back-and-forth, the money-hemorrhage continues. The houses, the jobs, the hometowns, the prospective children wait anxiously in the wings.

So what did we do in the face of this let-down?  We are on holiday!  We decided, rather ingeniously I think, to make the best of being here in the world's favorite vacation spot and see some of the Western Australian coastline north of Perth. Not quite making lemonade, but maybe lemon disinfectant. And it is WILD.  We set off on Tuesday and made it from Safety Bay to Dongara pulling our house and our hopes along the dry, red dust of the outback. We made it in about 6 hours, 2 of which were driven by me! Pulling the caravan!  If you know me in real life, you know that I've driven some pretty wacky and very lumbering vehicles, but until this week I had never attempted pulling a 14ft house trailer around a roundabout. Everyone should try it.  It's exhilarating.

Our first port of call was the beautiful, sleepy town of Dongara and its twin, Port Denison. We slept in, we sauntered around two main streets lined with Morton Bay Fig trees and ate whatever we wanted at whatever little cafe would have us. There were gangs of maurading children celebrating the last day of school holidays by careening their scooters in front of on-coming traffic, but since we were walking, we didn't pay them much mind.  Our first and last stops in the town were at the Priory Inn and the 1881 restaurant where were part of a free sausage sizzle in the morning (a weenie roast for my Alabamians), met the local watchdog named Lolly, and ended our evening in style dining on canneloni and steak/roasted pumpkin/chickpea salad amidst exposed limestone walls and wraught iron candlesticks.  It was glorious.  And we thought we were winning.

Then we headed to Kalbarri, a place of myth in Superhusband's imagination.  His family camped here when he was a child, and it's one of the last places he had good, strong memories of his father.  There are gorges and canoes, estuaries and lookouts, pelicans and promise.  But that was in the 1980s.  What he had no way of knowing was that the caravan park is now like a dirty parking lot with power hook-ups, every shop and eatery closes by 6pm and is enveloped into the vast darkness of the terrain, and the highly publicized "Daily Pelican Feedings" have never been the same since the flood of Christmas 2010.

Finally, after wearily driving up and down the one, dark, coastal street in this Superhusband-proclaimed-"Half-horse town," (and after literally being told at a closed gas station that "There would be three choices to buy petrol in the morning, but nothing is open after dark." as if they'd never heard of such a thing) we found the Kalbarri hotel open for service.  We were ecstatic. We walked resolutely up to the counter and ordered a "Gourmet meat-lover's pizza on a thick crust." Then we ordered our drinks and sat in expectation.  (By the way, Adam, I had a VB. It was nice, and indeed refreshingly B.) Unfortunately, our pizza was a homophobic; it seemed to fear the meats of its own kind like Italian sausage, pepperoni, bacon....it preferred instead meats that couldn't find Italy on a map: diced ham (like for salads), polish kebalsa, chunks of leftover steak, and some tiny ringlets of something that tasted like bologna, all nestled underneath cheddar cheese on a cardboard circle masquerading as crust. While eating it (because we were hungry and angry) I kind of enjoyed the bologna flavor--it reminded me of the fried bologna-and-cheese sandwiches we had as kids.  But we knew, Superhusband and I, that Superhusband could make better pizza with one arm and six ingredients tied behind his back. Blindfolded.  With a head cold. Our evening came to an abrupt end when, upon finishing as much of the "pizza" as we could stomach, the karaoke started and some guy named Gary began to savagely murder parts of "Rolling on a River." We skulked out, and got in our near-empty sedan to drive the 50 yards back to our dirty little campsite. We were awash in disappointment. I dare say, ennui.

So here we are.  Sitting a bit stunned in our caravan on a Friday morning, wondering if anything else is worth exploring.  I wonder if Lewis and Clarke ever thought "Another mountain?  Let's just map it from here. Once you've seen one loin-clothed native, you've seen 'em all. I want tea." Of course, we'll go to the world-renowned gorges in a while, and hopefully get some spark back, but for now it's a drudge.

It just goes to show, when travelling to even the most famed of locales, lower your expectations.  I think if we had EXPECTED to be robbed at gunpoint while being force-fed hot garbage while squirming on a slimy concrete slab, then Kalbarri would seem amazing. AND if you are reading this, and are one of the lucky few to have one of those famed boring lives of home, and children, and legal migration status, cherish it.  Live it up in your rut for those of us who take turns conquering and being conquered by our adventures. May your present live up to your past.

Ham Makes Me Hungry

Dear loyal readers,

I sincerely apologize for the lag in writing.  It's been quite an April. And as our journey back to Alabama (and, yea, even Indianapolis, the place of my nativity) looms closer, I've been thinking about what "home" means. Not just the place, or even the family, but the specific set of rituals and entanglements that make up familiarity.  Of course I will not be able to touch on all of the meanings in a single post, but I'll try getting to the root. But before this, I must write a special note:

Dear Paternal Grandmother--I know you are reading this.  I know that well-meaning family members have brought you my posts, and being the sensitive woman you are, you are worried about us and our remote status.  Let me assure you that we are not living in poverty, nor do we wish to eat a bowl of anti-depressants for breakfast (at least not every day.) Just to prove we're not in as unfamiliar territory as you believe, I'll give you five reasons that being in Rockingham, Western Australia is like living in Waterloo, Alabama.

1.)  People here also have "homes on the water."  Here, however, when they say "homes" they mean structures with walls, rooves, and indoor plumbing, and by "water" they mean the pristine beaches surrounding the turquoise waves of the Indian Ocean; unlike Waterloo where they mean a tent in the woods next to a drainage ditch.

2.) Like Waterloo, the mullet hairstyle has caught on with the fire of a first love (to quote the illustrious E.E.) and men walk around in sleeveless t-shirts.

3) The ratio of feet to shoes in public places is remarkably high.

4.) I live in a home on wheels, and my front porch is made of tarps, just like much of Waterloo. But here, there are no tornadoes--a definite plus.

5.)  While the land mass is larger, people here still love lounging on porches in the afternoon sun, stopping by and catching up with neighbors, and the local grocery store clerks still stare at strangers with an air of superiority (and don't even pretend that doesn't happen at "The Pig." I've seen that little manager in his elevated office-box.). Just like in Waterloo, a "stranger" is anyone who moved to the area fewer than ten years ago. And in those grocery stores you can ALSO find all manner of internal organs of farm animals meant for the creation of "comfort food." I can't get a squirrel gravy and biscuit, but I sure can pick up some lamb brains, wrap 'em in a nice flaky crust and make a pie--just like you-know-where.

So, dear Grandmother, sleep well.  Rest assured that Superhusband and I spend plenty of time with normal people who like us. We drink clean water. We wear clean clothes made of natural fabrics.  We sacrifice chickens and smoke tobacco through their hollow bones. Just kidding! Seeing if you were reading closely. We're okay.  And we can't wait to get back to Alabama and eat "green stuff" and fried squash and onions and complain about the humidity with you. 

All our love,
Blunderwoman and Superhusband

Now that we've got that straight, let's talk about home. For me, the geographical location is Florence, Alabama--a little, old-fashioned, slightly uppity college town on the edge of the Tennessee River. We're fifteen minutes from the Tennessee border, twenty minutes from Mississippi, and always two tourist attractions away from economic collapse. My aesthetic vantage point lies here: magnolia, honeysuckle, rusted cars, red barns, sleepy cattle, buttercups, grey winters, catfish, cotton in fields and clothing, rocking chairs, quickbreads, hunting dogs, victorian houses, hay fever and a "Hey y'all."  You get the gist.  From this scenery and sensory sorcery I have learned to feel at home in antiques. I love musty books, and have learned to match colors in off-shades of coral and chartreuse. I am not accustomed to the beach lifestyle of sandy browns and turquoise walls; or the Southwestern look of adobe and hieroglyphics--those are from other homes and speak to other lives.

The most deep, gut-level connection to "home" is with my family. From my mother's side I have learned that "home" means no one is left out. No one is uninvited, no matter how tenuous the connection nor how many years since the last visit. Even if we have to rent a convention center to fit us all in.  Everyone's offering is cherished. And from my father's side I learned that no matter how far you fall, family is there to catch you.  From them I have a deep sense of never ever being completely unknown or unprovided for. I will never be homeless, physically nor emotionally, as long as any of them have breath. This, I suppose, is what gives me the gumption to move all over the world to find things like husbands. And I am gratefull.

But the lesson I seem to have taken most to heart, from both geography and family, is not an entirely positive one. It is the lesson of excess.  All things must be in abundance. Two stories, one present one past, illustrate this law of superfluity.

This weekend Superhusband and I were lounging about in the caravan. (Don't worry, this is a family show--not too much detail.) He was gently stroking my arm, and as we often get into impromtu tickle-wars, and I was feeling a bit dingy, I said "Hey, don't go near my armpits. They're....." and I trailed off.  I was thinking words of euphamistic beauty like "unladylike" or "not at their best."  I was pausing to piece together my string of excess verbage to delight both speaker and spoken to. But this is how it went:

Me: "Hey, don't go near my armpits. They're..."
SH: "Farel?"

If it's one thing the English know, it's efficiency of language.  I could not have predicted that exact word coming out of his handsome mouth, nor could I stop laughing for a full ten minutes.  I mean, there was snorting and tears. Sometimes, unlike my Southern-charming way of spinning a tale about the least thing, a well-placed word is refreshing.  I aim to emulate.

And the second story of my past has to do with food and excess. (By the way, the friendship in the South of "food and excess" has precipitated at least a third of our cultural awareness and all of the health problems.) It begins with the Peking Chinese Buffet.

Mom and Dad and I were planning to go to our personal mecca--the Peking Chinese Buffet accross from Big Lots. We have patronized that particular restaurant building through about four incarnations--it was a Shoney's that boasted a female waitress with bulging biceps and ocean-liner tattoo on her right arm. It was a couple of things in between, but has stuck with the Peking for about a decade; the buffet is set up where the Breakfast Bar used to be. (I know you--at this point you're thinking 'This story should be about WORDS and excess....you're right.  But I'm getting there.) So, one fine summer evening the folks and I were planning our pilgrimage to cream cheese wantons.  We just had to run a couple of errands first--to my Grandparents' farm.

Dad and I decided to go, and leave Mom to get ready in Florence.  It was about 4pm, and we had eaten lightly that day knowing the avalanche of calories that would engulf us at dinner.  Dad and I tried to explain this concept to my Grandmother (hope you're still reading, and still laughing Grandmother!) but it didn't get through.  When we said "we've not eaten much today because......" all she could hear in her DNA was "My babies are starving!  Feed, feed, FEED!" After much protestation, she brought out the ham.  A whole, 15 pound ham. She hacked off chunks of the irresistably salty red meat and nestled them in white bread with generous mayonnaise.  She couldn't help it. It's in our genetic makeup.

What happened next, I think we could have helped, but we didn't.  We caved.  We ate the sandwiches. We loved them, and promised to take one home to Mom. We had it packed for us in a
re-used ziploc and dangled in a plastic shopping bag from our retreating arms. And at this point, errand completed, heading home (for the life of me I can't even remember why we went there) most sensible people would say "Well, that was nice.  How sweet of her! We just saved some money tonight and we'll eat out another day." But we're not sensible people. On the way back into town, Dad and I discussed how this predicament could only happen in rural Alabama, and how never before had ham been an appetizer to Asian cuisine.  In fact, we giggled, "That ham made me hungry." And for a long time we've been holding on to that title as the one for my second memoir.  My first shall be called "Zena, Reba, and Me."  And of course, I'll tell you why sometime.

But that's how it went.  We ate ham AND coconut shrimp that night.  We harrangued my mother with tales of our crushing defeat in the face of preserved meat and maternal instinct. And we lapped up the excess--words, laughter, food. Of course indigestion followed, but we have antacids to keep us from facing the consequences of our actions.

Excess.  Abundance. Cornucopia of delight, grief, togetherness, meringue. For good or bad, that is my "home."

I am a Ruler Bear!

I am having a bit of an identity crisis.  Not that I don't know what my identity is--no, that would be too simple.  My problem is that I know too well what I think I should be, how I should act, and what the results of these actions should be.  So well, in fact, that I will not accept the slightest deviation. Oh, the tyranny of "should." I am a Pharisee of Pharisees, practically born with a rule book in one hand and a stone to throw in the other.  Part of that has to do with being a coC preacher's kid from AL, and part of it is my own darn fault.

I have known this about myself (the whole "toe the line" attitude) since an early age.  I'm the kid that pulled an all-nighter at age 13, drinking black coffee to stay up and finish that homework. I had a pretty fierce temper tantrum later that year because I was getting a C in Advanced Algebra I (I had skipped pre-Algebra, you see, and didn't have the foggiest what was going on in that class.) and I was going to get kicked out of Jr. Beta Club!  If you know me, you may add your own anecdote here in the "she's a bit intense" category. But it has taken living in a foreign country to bring this flaw into high relief. And I think I've found pattern in my identity paralysis, the skeleton on which hang all my insecurities: 1) How others interpret my actions 2) How my actions match with the rules in place (this means private, interpersonal, judicial, state and national ordinances, you name it) 3) How I judge my provision for those I care about--mainly in the form of food.  As Joyce Meyer would say, "I have a hard time separating my 'who' from my 'do.'"

For instance--RIGHT NOW--I'm going outside to the convection oven to check on the Sticky Date Pudding that I've been nursing to health since 6pm last night.  The butter for the sauce is warming on the stove.  It's 10am.  Be back in a minute!

Lucky for this post, the pudding needs more baking. Back to the self-deprecation.  Last week I got pulled over for the first time while driving in Australia.  Superhusband and I were coming back from Fremantle from a Bible Study, and I was driving.  We had just gone through a traffic light and hadn't made it back up to cruising speed when I saw lights in the rearview mirror.  KNOWING I was not speeding, I pulled over and thought the worst.  Thank the Lord we were greeted by the sweetest, most handsome Welshman you ever did see. (We knew he was Welsh because Superhusband asked what part of the UK he was from (Superhusband is English and knows their accents within a 20km radius of their home.  It's uncanny) and he responded "Wales." Then we asked "Where in Wales?" and knew he was a true Welshman by the fact that his tongue was suddenly replaced with a hand mixer dipped in cookies n' cream milkshake. That girgling, whirring sound was the name of his home town.  I really wonder if even the Welsh can help but look a little alarmed when their language is spoken.  But I digress.) This little Welshman asked me if I had a drivers' license.  I replied "I have an international drivers' license and a passport, but my actual US drivers' license was stolen about two months ago." Come to find out, since (to hopefully passify immigration officers) we put the car in my name under a US drivers' license and had not re-registered it in three months with a Western Australian license, the police scanners picked me up as a law-breaker. We explained that I wasn't planning on living here...immigration status....theft...blah, blah, blah.  He listened respectfully and sent us away with a warning to get it checked out.  No harm, no foul, right?

Not in my little mind! The next day I was pestering Superhusband to take me to the traffic licensing department to clear things up right away! He assured me that I was within my legal rights, and that if I wasn't, he would drive from now on. But I wouldn't let up. At the time I was pestering him we were in a shopping center--about to be heading to another government office to correct yet another issue that I thought was right and good to do--and there was lots of background noise. He asked "Why does it bother you so much? They didn't arrest you." and my response was "I am a rule obeyer!" Of course, in the noise of the shopping he misunderstood.  "You're a what?" "A rule obeyer."  "Oh--I thought you said Ruler Bear." Hilarity, and my newest nickname, ensued.

By the way, the Sticky Date Pudding is amazing.  It worked, and you wouldn't believe how much my self confidence has increased by being able to make English food properly. See Identity paralysis point 3 above.

So, Friday we did go to the traffic licensing and got a piece of paper that says they don't need me to get another license. Then, after much wailing and gnashing of teeth, the weekend was over and we headed to church Sunday where I got a much-needed Biblical kick in the teeth. This whole time I had been bewailing my identity. My little combination of cells and ideas and screw ups that I think are sooooooo important.  The lesson at Fremantle Church of Christ was about What it means to be a Disciple--this week, "Salt and Light." 

You have all heard the Sermon on the Mount (if you haven't, it's Matthew 5 in the New Testament. All the cool kids are reading it.) where Jesus tells his listeners, and us by extension, that they are salt and light.  Now I've heard scores of lessons taught on a Christian's seasoning power, the small-amount-big-influence-factor, and the Don't-you-dare-lose-your-saltiness approach.  But Garry added a new bullet point about salt's preservative power.  Up until one hundred years ago, salt was the only way to keep food from being rotten.  Christians are the world's preservative.  I liked that, and started thinking about other properties of salt.  Then I got it.  In order to be effective, the salt MUST dissolve.  It must lose its granular identity and liquify into the substance its preserving.  One cannot reclaim salt in its exact grain structure after it's been used.  Conversely, if salt STAYS in it's grains, it's useless. (Mind you, I then began on a thinking tangent about times when you can still see grains of salt on prepared food, and all I could think of were giant soft pretzels. And while they're tasty, the salt still has to dissolve on your tongue before it's pleasurable.  So, just know that if that's what you were thinking, I already thought it.  And disproved it.  Booyah.)

There my lesson stands.  It doesn't matter how many times I have heard "Your life is in Me" from the scriptures, I didn't get it until yesterday.  As long as I hold on to my rules and my little idiosyncrasies, that's all I am--a bag of rules and idiosyncrasies that do no one any good, least of all me.  I need to dissolve.  Let go of the crystalline binding and see how far I can stretch into effectiveness.  Of course, as soon as it is learned, the lesson is tested. I attempted making quiche last night which utterly failed after 4 hours of cooking/prepping/baking time all while Superhusband erected a new tarp-roof, finished fixing our antenna for perfect reception, and completely installed a new water system in our caravan.  Inferiority complex, anyone? I was barely consoled by the Satay Beef and Special Fried Rice from Golden Harvest Palace at 8:45pm--because it meant I had again failed to perform a nourishing duty.  But I must look at it differently, just like everything else here, in order to survive.  At 8:45, being salt meant not fighting Superhusband in his decision to ditch the quiche and get take out--dissolve my pride in order for the greater good of getting dinner.

And that's the only way any of us will survive. Let go of your imperfections and dissolve into the Living Water.  Perfect, law-abiding, love-washed, eternally-preserved.  Just the way a Ruler Bear wants to be.