Author: Robin Chartier

jet lag

So I had myself situated perfectly for a seamless transition back to Bahrain time. I slept a bit on the plane, but with 24 hours of travel behind us we arrived in Bahrain in the evening prepared to crash for the night. At least I was. I hadn’t counted on kids who were wired and not ready to sleep. Whatever, they can take care of themselves. I put them to bed with instructions to keep the volume down and was in the middle of sweet sleep by 10:30. Perfect.

Until 2:30 when the laughs got louder and a little voice said, “Mommy, I’m hungry.” Thankfully, one of the brothers took her downstairs to get her some cereal so I was able to go back to sleep. Until 3:30 when I hear shrieks of “MOMMY! MOMMY!” I stagger downstairs to find her fully dressed in tap shoes and fancy dress, standing on the kitchen counter with a jar of peanut butter, mad that we don’t have any bread in the house.

Seriously?!
Not impressed
The boys were in the middle of a Kinect tournament so I figured I better, you know, be a mom and supervise my starving child. And that was the beginning of my very long day. 
So that’s what sunrise looks like. I figured I might as well take the dog for a walk since I’d already been up for hours. 
Let the unpacking commence. 
These little boogers thought that around 2:30 they were going to take a nap — WRONG! I had to wake Carter up 3 times before Josh finally got them out of the house and took them to the grocery store. Before they left, Camille was on meltdown #349505 of the day, poor thing, so I wasn’t surprised when I found her lying on the floor outside my bedroom door.

 I moved her to my bed and lay down next to her so she wouldn’t wake up and . . . that was it for me. 4:30pm and we were done. Until 12:30am when a little voice woke me up with the words, “Mommy, I’m hungry.”

And that’s why we’re up at 2:30 in the morning watching Seinfeld and Friends reruns and eating girl scout cookies while everyone else is asleep.

Heading home

The day before or the day that I fly, I spend my mental energy pushing back the curling fingers of nerves that try to penetrate my peace. Our brains are amazing things — they can be reprogrammed, but they still are able to pull up past memories and feelings without warning. At church on Sunday the pastor, speaking on forgiveness, said, “We are told to forgive and forget, but that is impossible because  we are human and our brains don’t work that way. A more accurate way to phrase it would be that we need to “forgive and forgive. And then forgive again.”

It’s the same thing  with flying for me. Just cause I’m better doesn’t mean that getting on a plane is all easy, breezy, and fun. It’s a tiring job keeping my brain from wandering down dark paths, whispering warnings and doomsday proclamations like it used to do. It doesn’t help that for the last month here the news has been dominated by the plane that crash landed in SF. Excellent fodder for a brain in overdrive. 
I’ll be fine. I am fine. And just as remembering that someone hurt me doesn’t mean I haven’t forgiven them, remembering that flying used to make me insane (or rather, I was insane and flying brought out the worst of it) doesn’t mean that I’m sick again.

But to show you where my twisted mind goes, I’ll just say that right before I posted this, my brain thought,”How ironic if these were your last words.” Seriously?!?! Good grief brain. Get it together. Thank God for my Zoloft to keep things in check. I may be unable to keep from thinking stupid things, but at least I don’t have to feel the irrational panic that used to accompany those thoughts. 
In the category of Not Helping, on the way to the airport dad asked, “Did they ever figure out what happened with that Korean airliner?”  Hahahahaha. (Don’t worry, Dad. It was fine.)
Off to put myself in relaxed robot mode for the next 24 hours. See you on the other side of the world!

This is how she rolls
Why yes, that is a Louis Vuitton purse that the lady is carrying with her forehead. 
We are back!

Stomping Grounds

Driving by our old house in Monterey makes me a little sad. I’m one of the least sentimental people around, but even this stone cold heart starts to thaw when I remember the good times we had there, our homeschooling days, neighborhood block parties, my garden where I waged war on earwigs night after night … If I let myself, I would miss it. The nostalgic voice whispers, “You’ll never live in such a magical place again. Josh was able to ride his bike to work, you were 3 minutes from one of the most beautiful coasts in the world, a mix of all the best things were within your reach — Farmer’s Markets, roadside produce stands, Trader Joe’s, REI, and Target covered all the bases. The boys could run and play and climb trees and build forts until you rang the bell calling them in every night. It will never be like this again.”

The boys went back to “our” Trader Joe’s and found the otter! 
(The employees hide the otter in a new place every day and when the kids spot him they are given candy from the store manager). 

And it won’t be. That’s the problem with going back — even if we did get to live there again it wouldn’t be the same. The kids are bigger, the neighbors are different, we have a girl now… So I brush away the wishful thinking and turn my thoughts toward what comes next. Four days from now we fly back to our tiny island with no regrets. My cup is full. We’ve seen everyone it was possible to see, eaten all of our favorite foods at our favorite places, stocked up on clothes for the coming year, and loaded up our suitcases with bits of here to hold us over until the next time we’re able to make this trek. The introvert in me is all talked out and almost looking forward to the quiet days of Ramadan.

Artichokes in bloom
Fun trip to “our” mall. 

The last item on our “Tour de Costal California,” a visit to Phil’s Fish Market for Phil’s special cioppino (a tomato based fish stew, loaded with seafood.) 
This is the line from inside the front door. The food really is that good. 
Ready to get cracking! Over Caleb’s shoulder, the line continues out toward the parking lot.
A first for her — last time we were here she was just a baby.
Calamari starter
Cioppino on the bottom left — scallops, mussels, clams, squid, fish, shrimp, and crab in a spicy stew. 
Treasures to take home? 
We are able to say “We used to live here” about way more places than the average person, but we don’t often get the chance to go stand on those exact squares of sidewalk and reminisce and relive. This has been a great trip for doing that — especially since the kids are old enough to remember all of their favorites too. 

I’ve been neglecting my blog, but it’s been an intentional decision to spend the time that I’m here, being here and reflect on it later when I’m sequestered in my house back in Bahrain. We return for the second half of Ramadan where it’s illegal eat or drink in public during daylight hours and since it’s a million degrees out, it’s easier to just stay home rather than pretend that we’re fasting along with the rest of the country. There’s something about not being able to drink that makes me incredibly thirsty.

The boys went to Vacation Bible School on base for the two days before we left on our vacation. I went early to pick them up on Tuesday and Camille got right into the middle of things. She didn’t know the songs or the choreography, but when she saw her brother on stage, she wanted to be part of it.

It’s good to be “home.”

I know people think our life is crazy — moving every 2 years (or less) all over the country (and now, the world). But on the positive side, we’ve come to find that home is wherever we are. It’s about the people we’re with, not our geographic location on the planet.

That’s how we could be at home in a city we’ve never been before — with family, we’re home. It’s how we could meet up with friends I haven’t seen since High School — picking up right where we left off. If it weren’t for the new wrinkles and the bunch of kids added to the group, I would have thought we were right back in Oakland. It’s how we could pop in on friends we haven’t seen in several years and we were received with tight squeezes and laughs and exclamations of how tall everyone has gotten and we were home again in the forest.

The gift is I can’t hold any location too tightly because it is going to slip through my fingers too quickly no matter what I do. My links to places in time become the people I meet and those relationships that last beyond our short time together. And while I’m loving returning to all of these “homes,” I’m already missing the newest links in the chain, those I have come to love while living in Bahrain. Soon enough we’ll be back in the heat, sweating it out together on our desert island, creating a new “home” that will last long after we’ve left the island.