Deportation: It's not just for Mexicans

Cindy,  my expat blogging buddy in Brussels,  is being deported. Yes, deported.

If any of you have visited her blog, you know that Cindy has had ADVENTURES as an expat. Since moving here from San Diego last November, her life has unrolled like a series of zany SNL skits. When I read on her blog  she’d unexpectedly been served with deportation papers ordering her to leave the country in five days, I thought it was just another chapter in what will one day be a bestselling memoir. And because all the sitcom-like scenes that are Cindy’s life in Belgium have had happy endings (more or less), I figured this episode would have one too.

Besides, Cindy is a lawyer. She knows all about paperwork and legal processes. She’s been working with a relocation agency since she moved here to ensure a smooth trip through the formidable Belgian bureaucracy. Her partner Dan’s employer has been helping her too. I mean, how could they deport Cindy? Surely this was yet another silly turn of events.

But it’s not.

She leaves on Monday.

We had lunch together today and tried to sort through the mess of it. I just felt shocked, because until today I didn’t think Belgium would really deport her. It was hard to face the facts.

We joked about all the reasons Belgium might have for deporting her: hmmm, that little incident when she ran into a tram? Or the time she was stranded in the Palais du Justice during a bomb scare and exited the building with the TV cameras rolling? Or maybe it was the time she blundered through a diplomatic procession at NATO ? Or the altercations she’s had with French-speaking old biddies on the Metro and in the street? Snubbing the mayor of Brussels didn’t help, but hey, she really did think her neighbors were joking when they introduced him as the mayor.

Both of us thought of all the “illegal” Mexicans in the U.S. who are dealing with Bush’s suddenly hawkish immigration policy. National Guard troops securing the border? Has the world gone crazy?  Cindy and I agreed that maybe she should ask Belgium for political asylum. She described herself as a "first world refugee."

Hey, I said, if you leave you'll have to  change the name of your blog from The Belgian Years to The Belgian Months. That’s just not right!

But behind all the laughter, we were both uneasy. Being ordered to leave the country isn’t funny. We keep telling ourselves that surely this will all be worked out and she could come back, right? Just another bureaucratic snafu to iron out.

We hope.

All I know for sure is my stomach sank when we said goodbye. I couldn’t turn back for a final glance as my train pulled away from the platform.

May 19, 2006

Moving on

It’s the middle of May and in expat circles that means one thing—moving. Many of the people we’ve come to know in Brussels are preparing for new assignments.

For some families, this means a return to the U.S. Many military families I’ve met end up in Virginia, close to Washington, D.C., and not too far from my former home. One family is leaving cool, gray, rainy Belgium for the blistering hot, dry desert of Arizona. Talk about meteorological whiplash! That’s almost as bad as the family that moved here after living in Hawaii for several years.

Some folks are waiting to hear if they’ll be moving to another part of Belgium or to The Netherlands or to a more exotic locale like India. Others are off-loading belongings left and right to prepare for a stint in a small house in Japan. A number of State Department employees are heading to posts in the Stans—you know places like Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan. (Don’t feel bad if you need to consult a globe to pinpoint locations. I had to do the same thing.)

Unlike me, these military and diplomatic families have moved over and over again. They’re accustomed to packing up, moving on, and starting over, usually in places chosen for them, not by them. The U.S. government smoothes the transition, normally providing schools, support, and recreation services, but moving is moving.

I admire military and diplomatic families’ resilience, openness to change, and willingness to let go of expectations and forge ahead. They travel light in every sense of the word—decluttering their lives of excess emotional and physical baggage. They’re experts at leaving the past behind and picking up their life in another community, in another country, in another part of the world.

My own experience as an expat in Brussels has been so different. Saying goodbye is not a way of life for me. I had lived in my community in Virginia for 15 years. Moving to Belgium was a radical choice for our family, but one I don’t regret. I was in a rut in the U.S.—a nice rut, but a rut nonetheless. Moving physically and psychologically outside my comfort zone has been good for me. Yet, since I re-located here more than a year ago, I’ve felt as if my life is suspended between two places and multiple points of view. I’m no longer rooted in one place, and that’s both liberating and uncomfortable.

Moving overseas has made me realize I’m far more adaptable than I thought was. I have more confidence and know that I can find happiness in a variety of places and settings. Living abroad has also highlighted all that I love and miss in America—as well as all that I’ve been glad to leave behind. In short, being an expat has given me some objectivity and a birds’ eye view of my life. Whether flying into the wind or gliding on an easy current, one thing I’m sure of: I can land almost anywhere.

© 2006 Veronica McCabe Deschambault. All rights reserved.

May 18, 2006

Ready to say "Ah!"

Over the weekend, my back decided a world where I didn’t see the chiropractor every week was not a world it wanted to be a part of. Tired of being good and being ignored, it acted up to get some attention. Damn, I hate anatomical bullies.

A knot formed over my left shoulder blade, sending tension up into my delts and neck. Soon my upper back was being punctuated by an occasional shooting pain. Zing! Zing! Ouch.

Putting my chin to my chest hurt, turning my head far to one side hurt, getting in and out of bed hurt, and staying in bed wasn’t much fun either. It wasn't incapacitating,  it was just enough to remind me that full blown back spasms might be one deep breath away.

I stayed out of the cold, damp weather, did some yoga, slapped a heat pack on my back, took some Advil overnight, and hoped for the best. It did get better each day, but it was clear it wasn’t going to disappear.

When I received an e-mail from the massage therapist I see from time to time, it was like getting a message from God. “Go ye therefore into the Land of Brussels, seek out Nikki of the Strong Hands and she will mend your Evil Shoulder.”

And so I sojourned into the Land of Brussels this morning, a stranger in a strange land, and  I sought  Nikki in the place where she could be found.  Soon I was flat on the table, with Nikki of the Strong Hands working warm oil into my muscles. Starting at the base of my spine and working up, all was sweet and pleasant under her professional touch until she hit my Zone of Doom.

I think she said, “Oh Veronica!” at the same moment I said, “Oh Nikki.” And no, it wasn’t the good kind of “Oh” moment. As soon as her hands hit my scapular, it felt like she was massaging sacks full of rocks. Honestly, my muscles were so cramped and unyielding, we could both hear them snapping and crackling as she rolled them under her palms. It was hurting me and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was hurting her. Truly, it sounded like boulders rolling over one another on dry grass.

Ow, ow, ow. Nikki adjusts the pressure, but I don’t’ want her to let up too much. I know it’s going to take some serious effort on her part to break up the adhesions and knots in my back, and hey, I want to teach it a lesson. After a while, it stops hurting, quits snapping, and starts to feel pliable.

She works on me for 45 minutes. When I finally get off the table and reach up to touch my shoulder muscles and back, I’m amazed they now feel spongy. A nap, some yoga, a break from the computer—that’s all I need to finish out my Wednesday.

No more “Oh!,” no more “Ow”—I’m ready to just say “Ah.”

Trading spaces

My subscription to Better Homes and Gardens is on its last issue, and I’ve decided not to renew. I’ll pick up my subscription again when I move back to the States. Mentally caught in the middle between two places, I’ve lost interest in decorating for the first time in my adult life.

I became a homeowner at the tender age of 21, moving into a brick ranch that E and I bought in Oklahoma. A small house set on a long narrow lot in a blue collar neighborhood, it was modest in every sense of the word, but I loved it. I thoroughly enjoyed decorating it--choosing paint colors, accessories, and furniture to create a mood and make it ours. Outdoors, E built a garden shed in the backyard, added a deck off the kitchen, and began developing his landscaping skills.

We lived there for six years, rented a townhouse briefly when we first moved to Virginia, and then bought a Cape Cod with big windows, French doors, and cozy places under the eaves. It sits on a generous corner lot filled with hardwood trees and pines. We lived there for 15 years, and we’re renting the house to friends while we’re overseas.

The interior of that house has been painted more times than I can count—beginning the day we closed on it. We drove straight to the property with paint supplies in hand and got to work because I’m not a fan of white walls and couldn’t wait to lay some color down. The light peach I chose looked mighty orange under incandescent lights that night, and I thought I’d made a huge mistake. But when daylight streamed through the double colonial windows and all our furniture was moved in, the color gave the rooms downstairs the perfect soft glow.

After Mr. A was born, we added onto the house, a big room with vaulted ceilings, hardwood floors, built-in bookcases, lots of windows, and a fireplace with gas logs. Over the years, we replaced carpet with oak flooring, chose new vinyl for the kitchen, had the master bath renovated, changed window treatments, furniture, art, and wall and trim colors. The house, like any house, was a work in progress, and the changes we made, big and small, were a source of joy.

Being a stay-at-home mom and a work-at-home writer, I can honestly say the house and all its accoutrements was my world. Because I spent all my time there, the comfort and design mattered to me even more. I was always tweaking the interior to get it just right.

And then we moved to Belgium.

We looked at close to 20 homes before deciding to rent the one we’re in. It’s bigger than our house in Virginia but the yard is small and less suitable for kids, though it’s private and fine for adults. The house, a traditional European brick cottage, has lovely stained doors and trim, iron hinges and hardware with “birdcage” handles, exposed beams, knotty pine paneling on portions of the ceiling, brick walls highlighting some of the downstairs rooms and walls that are nearly all glass looking out on the garden. It has a sunny kitchen, a stone fireplace, a covered terrace, beautiful casement windows, tile wainscoting in the kitchen and baths, a curving staircase, and lovely views from the attic. The driveway is cobblestone, the retaining walls are made of stone, and there’s a wraparound patio. Sure it has its quirks—not many outlets, only one closet, no space for built-in appliances in the kitchen, ongoing issues with hot water—but most days it’s easy to forgive these minor shortcomings.

Yet as lovely as this house is, the fact that it is not our house affects how I feel about it. It has been strange to live in a place and feel disconnected from it, to admire it and yet feel so detached from it. I can’t paint these white walls. The house came with curtains but they were dingy. I washed the ones that I could do in the machine, but I refused to have the drapes dry cleaned because it would cost more than $400. I won’t pay that to clean someone else’s curtains. Nearly all the art I had shipped over has not been hung, partly because I can’t find the right spot for it, but also because I don’t want to put holes in the wall of someone else’s house. No matter how much I like this house, my heart and purse-strings are drawn tight—I won’t invest myself emotionally or financially in making this house a home. Sure it’s comfortable and beautiful, but it’s not MINE.

It’s a strange frame of mind, I know. Renting vs. owning has pinged on my subconscious in a way I never expected. Instead of living where I am and making the best of it, I make imaginary lists of improvements to the Virginia house. I visualize how things will be arranged and changed, make to-do lists, mentally budget resources, and set priorities. I can hardly wait to go to Lowe’s and linger over the paint chips. I’ll be reclaiming my space and making a home, mentally and physically, with each stroke of the paintbrush.

© 2006 Veronica McCabe Deschambault. All rights reserved.

May 16, 2006

When it shines, it shines so bright

On the surface my weekend had all the elements of a typical weekend for a family of four—sports, errands, a birthday party for my daughter’s playmate, a bit of cleaning, a DVD to watch on Saturday night, a trip to the library, sleeping late, shopping, church.

I spent Saturday morning watching my daughter play softball and the afternoon designing and creating cards with some new stamping supplies I got a while back. Saturday night E and I watched Shop Girl, a Steve Martin movie based on his novella with the same name. Adored the book, loved the movie.

Sunday morning the first thing I saw was my son’s blond head peeking around the bedroom door to see if I was awake. A second later, his sister peered around the corner too. They made me breakfast, cards, drawings, and bought me a small present. After church and shopping, E made me dinner and the kids hosted a “party” complete with table decorations, games, and goody bags. They planned the whole thing themselves. We played bingo until we sent them up to bed. It was a perfect weekend—ordinary yet extraordinary for me.

There have been times when I’ve felt like I was a spectator in my own life, not fully engaged or appreciative, unable to really give of myself and share in family life. Depression can flatten me emotionally and physically, but the silver lining in those passing gray clouds is that when depression retreats, I truly savor ordinary happiness, relish each moment with the people I love, laugh often and loudly, and offer the world a broad and heartfelt smile. Joy bubbles up unexpectedly in the midst of my mundane days.

In recent months, I’ve felt wonderful—fully present in the moment, able to express what I’m feeling, appreciate what I’ve received, and reach out to others. It reminds me of a beautiful tasseled bookmark my friend Lynn gave me. On one side is the Chinese proverb: “One joy scatters a thousand griefs.” On the other side are the Chinese characters for happiness, harmony, tranquility, and prosperity. Ancient wisdom that holds true today.

Paul Simon said it less eloquently but with contemporary flair: “Ba, da, da, da, da, da—feelin’ groovy!”

May 15, 2006

Caught between a dump and a green place

Confession: when we lived in the U.S., I was not much of a recycler. Sure I supported recycling in theory, but the U.S. doesn’t make recycling easy. In my community, trash was picked up from our driveway twice a week, but there wasn’t any home pickup of recyclables. If you chose to recycle, you had to drive your stuff to the community landfill which was 10 miles away.

Once at the landfill, you couldn’t park your car in one spot and unload all your recyclables into the appropriate bins. No, the paper bins were at one end of the parking lot, the colored glass and clear glass bins were somewhere else, plastics had their own area, the cans were across the way, and none of this was marked by visible signs. Because it was such a hassle and not close by, we’d procrastinate on dealing with our recyclables until the garage looked like a dump. Then in a fit of frustration, I’d often end up bagging everything up and dragging it to the curb on trash day just to get it out of my house.

Recycling wasn’t mandatory where I lived, and because I’d worked in the environmental consulting business early in my career, I knew that just because you put something in a recycling bin in the U.S., that didn’t guarantee it would be recycled.

Whether items got recycled or not was all market-driven. In true capitalistic fashion, it’s all about money and supply and demand. If businesses aren’t using recycled paper in their offices or processes, then the financial incentive to turn discarded newspapers into new products isn’t there. Or if the supply of discarded paper outstripped the demand for the recycled product, the paper left for recycling was sent to the landfill and buried like all other trash. The same dynamics ruled the plastics, glass, and metals programs.

Because the U.S. government refused to step in and require recycling and the use of recycled products, there wasn’t a strong incentive for consumers and businesses to jump in and do the right thing. Let’s face it, when money talks, green intentions can get tossed.

That’s why I’ve been impressed with Belgium’s recycling program—it’s government-driven and harnesses financial incentives to push people to be “green.” Recycling is mandatory in my commune, and pickups for different sorts of waste are done according to a calendar. Everything brought to the “container park” (landfill) or picked up at the curb must be sorted and placed into color-coded bags which are sold by the commune. It’s a subtle way of making you pay for all the waste you generate and the cost of disposing of it.

The bags are expensive by U.S. standards, they cost well over a $1 each. The brown ones for general waste (meaning garbage) are the most expensive. Their cost gives you a direct financial incentive not to fill them with aluminum cans, glass jars and bottles, paper, or plastics. No, those go in the less expensive recycling bags, each one color-coded for a particular category. While the bags are colored, they’re also sheer, so don’t even TRY to put items into recycling bags that don’t belong in them to save a few pennies.

Do that and the sharp-eyed waste handlers will give you a “spanking” by slapping a big red hand sticker on the outside of the offending bag and leaving it at the curb for all your neighbors to see. Ah public humiliation! It’s a great excuse for people to discuss whether you’re intellectually challenged and can’t properly sort recyclables or morally decrepit and trying to circumvent the system.

We’ve been caught red-handed twice and had to talk trash with our neighbors to figure out what we had done wrong.

Getting slapped with the red hand makes me want to shout, “We’re not morons or cheats—we’re American expats!”

I’ll leave it to others to debate whether it’s better to be in the former category rather than the latter. The truth of the matter is that we’re just green at being green.

© 2006 Veronica McCabe Deschambault. All rights reserved.

May 11, 2006

Don't miss this

Untitled at www.untitledlife.com had linked to this article on Christianism. It's a brilliant essay on the discomfort so many believers feel about the politicalization of faith. Check it out here.

The world according to E-Grrrl

Explaining about a classmate, who bursts into tears every time he doesn’t feel he can do a task:

“He really can’t help it, Mama. You know, he’s just premature for his age.”

Writing a definition for "dinosaur" in her very best handwriting:

“One of a group of exstinked reptiles that lived millions of years ago.”

Discussing an astounding fact she'd learned recently:

"I read that in the Genius Book of World Records!"

May 10, 2006

Reality Check

It took me months to muster the courage to pick up the phone and make an appointment for my annual mammogram. Every Sunday I’d make my weekly “to do” list, and every day I’d procrastinate on making the call. I felt like a huge burden had been lifted when I finally dialed my doctor’s number, got my Pap smear last week, and had her arrange for the mammogram—today.

But relief has quickly been replaced by dread.

My mother died of breast cancer 14 years ago. Normally, I simply don’t think about it, but every year when it’s time for my mammogram, I get a reality check. I come face to face not only with the prospect of cancer but the memories of my mother’s suffering and my loss.

It makes me squirm. My stomach churns. When I woke up to gray clouds and rain today and the prospect of catching two buses to get to the clinic, I didn’t feel any better. Not only do I bring personal baggage to this appointment, but every medical first here is a mild source of anxiety because I don’t know quite what to expect.

Never underestimate the comfort of a familiar face and a friendly nurse at the doctor’s office, the confidence you place in the people who have been with you over the long haul.

The technician who did my mammograms in Virginia was an older woman and a Christian. She was professional and didn’t talk about her faith, but her office space had a bulletin board with all sorts of notes and cartoons tacked to it, including Scriptures she found inspirational or meaningful and words and facts meant to comfort her patients. Once when I was preparing for my exam in that room, I noticed she had a Post-it note on her desk calendar with a reminder to “Pray for every patient!”

Maybe some people would be uncomfortable with the idea of someone’s spiritual life and professional life intersecting that way, but I loved that she was committed to taking a moment to meditate, focus, and pray for me before doing my exam. To me, it represented the ultimate standard of care, evidence of a personal and professional commitment to my well being, a sign I wasn't just a "task" but a person.

Undressed and feeling vulnerable in a room with all my fears and memories and the cold glass plates that will compress my breasts until they ache, I can use all the comfort and care that's offered.

May 9, 2006

May

If April is all about making an attention-getting entrance, May is the thrill of a party in full swing.

The forsythia blossoms have receded and green leaves unfurled. The tulips, daffodils, and hyacinths have slipped away unnoticed. The trees have rained showers of petals and pollen onto the fields, yards, and sidewalks, and delivered cool, green, and shady places just in time for warm weather. The flies, ants, and bees are energized, and work the gardens from sun up to sundown.

The parkas have finally been pushed to the back of the closet, the blankets get folded down most nights. The windows are opened each morning to greet the day. Feet are liberated from socks and boots and catching a view in sandals. White arms and shoulders blush in the sun after months of hiding under layers. Freckles dot pale noses and cheeks like cinnamon sprinkled over vanilla ice cream. Sunscreen reappears on the bathroom shelf.

Women in bright colored skirts and softly shaded linen dresses move with confidence. Shy girls dare to wear lipstick. Shy boys dare to notice. Men and women watch one another while pretending to watch something else. The birds carrying thatch to make a nest. The doves cooing and dancing on the roof.

The days are long and warm, the nights cool and gentle. A breeze carries the sweet smell of cut grass from house to house. Skinny legs with bruises and band-aids power bicycles, scooters, and roller skates up and down the sidewalk. The patios and cafes entertain outdoor guests.

Curtains flutter through open windows, conversations and laughter drift onto the street. Men lean against buildings fingering their cigarettes, waiting for something to happen. The shopkeepers linger near the doorway, eager to greet customers and make the cash registers ring. The streets hum with activity and plans. We dare to dream because May is all that we’ve hoped for, delivered to our door, wrapped with anticipation of the summer days that lie ahead.

Copyright 2006 Veronica McCabe Deschambault. All rights reserved.

May 8, 2006