Anything But Routine

I do not like change. I am soothed by the 8.00am to 3.30pm school routine and the rhythm of the school week. Half days of school, the beginnings of school holidays, even the first couple of days away from home can unsettle me.  

This must sound pretty funny since we have lived on 3 continents, in 7 homes in our 23 years of marriage. But I always imagined that I was going to be the one who lived in London around the corner from my parents and grow old close by my family and the friends I'd known since I was fifteen.
Instead here we are living in the USA via a move out of London to Oxfordshire and then five years later to Hong Kong. Each move has brought new challenges, new friends and many changes and although I still find them difficult, I have learned to manage them better with each experience.

By the time we arrived in DC at the end of August 2001 we had 2 school aged children and an 8 month old. So the extra challenge of helping our kids adapt was a new piece of the absorption process. Added to that my husband disappeared off into his job and 10 days after we landed in the USA   9/11 became a reality. I remember sitting feeling very alone, out of sync and anchorless, watching CNN as the plane hit the second tower and wondering what on earth we had done, bringing our children to this dangerous country and to the seat of world power. 

This tragedy was followed by an anthrax scare in DC and a sniper at large, close to our children's school. It was only some years later when bird flu hit Hong Kong and the HK expat community started fleeing back to their home countries that I regained my perspective. Of course, that was before last summer when our house got shaken by the first earthquake to hit our region in decades.

In between these national and local tragedies, I just about kept my head above water trying to understand and live the American suburban life. 

It was amazing that there wasn't a warning on the radio for everyone to stay home since a small, blonde Brit was at large, in a new blue minivan she'd never driven, on the wrong side of the road (to the one she was used to) trying to find her way to school in the morning rush hour. A route she had never driven before.Oy!

As time went by, I got to grips with the language differences. (Read  The Queen's English.) I grappled with the money that was all the same color and size unless it was a coin, in which case the smaller it got the more valuable it was.

 I learned about little leagues, the rudimentary rules of baseball, how to navigate the overwhelming choices in the supermarkets. I understood that I didn't need to rush to every single sale because they happened every week and prices were lowered on things you actually needed. How novel! I also began to learn the new rhythm of school life, carpools, class parties, homework, after school activities, and play dates and then it happened...... 

It was the end of December and we'd made it through the first term at school. I was patting myself on the back that I'd mastered the daily and weekly routines and then people started to ask me about our summer plans. Our summer plans???? It was December!  

Everyone around me was suddenly talking about day camp and sleep away camp and trips to the beach. Summer was a good 7 months away.Why on earth did we need to be planning for camp?

 I heard the horror stories.  Parents who stayed up until midnight to be first to press the enter button on their computers,  to submit applications to prestige camps. I learned that actually you should apply for  July sleep away camp as early as the September before, to ensure a place and get an early bird discount. 

I was surrounded by panic about what kids were going to do with an eleven week school holiday and I couldn't even plan what was going to be for dinner that night. Apart from the medical system in this country (which I will leave for another rant in a different post) kids' summer plans in January was definitely one of the most difficult things to get my head around.

And yet here I am on the brink of another summer and although I do not like change in routine, (did I mention that?) I am ready! I am a fully-fledged American mom planner. Term ends this week and the boys are set. Benjy has an internship he got in February which starts next Monday. Aron is training to be a firefighter. He was accepted to the course months ago and is visiting college campuses as well. Jacob is going to sleep away camp and then having 4 weeks of mommy camp. I admit we signed him up for this year's sleep away camp before we even drove him home from camp last summer. (Aren’t you impressed?) 

And although the routines will be upside down, my house will be overrun and each week will bring something new...the thought of eleven weeks without early wake ups, nagging about homework and bedtime is worth any amount of change....Oh and we are going to the beach before school begins; a trip that we planned in January!(See Beach Break-Tales and Tips.) We are true summer- planning- in- winter converts. That kind of change is fine by me.

Have a wonderful week full of positive changes.

Now all I have to figure out, is what we are going to eat tonight for dinner.

Gilly

* Please email me at gilly@bringingbooksofcomfort.org or leave a comment on this post below. I'd love to have your feedback. 

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