robinchartier

I’ve been writing a bit, but not publishing since all my thoughts lately are about our future and I don’t actually know anything. We are 4 months from the end of school — the time when we should know something about where we’ll be in the fall, but it’s hard to believe that things will all fall into place between now and then.

Right now it feels like we’re in the clouds and things are drifting and floating past, but we can’t grab on to any of it just yet. There are a bunch of opportunities out there and more are coming Josh’s way every day, but we’re still drifting and waiting. He’s applying to different jobs, but hasn’t had any interviews yet. He’s met with a lot of different people, getting advice on his resume and making connections with people who know people who are looking to hire, but it’s all abstract, nothing concrete to grasp. Because it’s not quite time yet. It’s like standing on the beach, surfboard in hand, ready to paddle out, but needing to wait a few hours for the tide to come in so you can actually catch a wave. We could head out into the ocean, but would end up paddling around, wasting our energy. Not that I’m doing any of the catching or the paddling — that’s all Josh, who has been diligent in looking for opportunities, finding the best way into a company, and sending them his impressive resume (Seriously, he’s got all sorts of skills and experience that I was unaware of until I saw it all listed in black and white).

So we wait. Maybe April is when the sets will start rolling toward the shore? When those wispy puffs of air start to build and get heavy with rain? In the meantime, we aren’t nervous. Just excited. At least I’m excited (Josh may be a little nervous since the pressure is all on him). I have no doubt that someone is going to want to snap him up as soon as he’s available.

I have a love/hate relationship with some of the songs we sing at church. Many of them are older hymns, with Ye Olde English lyrics that barely make sense to me as a native English speaker, and I’m certain mean nothing to the majority of the congregation that speak English as a second language. Maybe they’re like me and google words they don’t understand or maybe they aren’t “word people” and blissfully skim over them in their enthusiastic singing. Meanwhile I’m parsing and studying and getting annoyed by shouldsts and blests in our songs and wondering why no one else seems to think this is a problem. If you are trying to teach people about Jesus and God’s love for us, why wouldn’t you use language that the people listening would understand?

Lest you think I’m being picky, even the classic How Great Thou Art isn’t easily understood by someone from a different language background. If I’m translating word for word, Art = paintings so does the woman next to me think we’re singing about God’s great museum?

My trigger word to this issue was good old ebenezer from Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing, written in the 1700s. One of our first weekends at church in Abu Dhabi they sang this song and when we got to the line Here I raise my Ebenezer my gut reaction was “What the hell am I singing here? (yes, even the hell part) Who knows what that means?!” So as the congregation went on singing their thines and thous I googled it and figured out that it’s a memorial stone that the Israelites used to remind them how God had acted to save them in the past. Great concept, terrible execution. In the 1700s Robert Robinson’s audience probably understood his symbolism when they sang “raise my Ebenezer,” but I can guarantee that most of the people in church today don’t. That line conjures up images of Scrooge McDuck being hoisted in the air (if you’ve ever seen Mickey’s Christmas Carol, you’re right there with me, aren’t you?) and distracts from the message of the song. And at our current church, they probably don’t have that cultural reference; it’s just a word to gloss over as they filter known words from unknown and infer meaning from the leftover phrases that make sense.

I’m about 10 seconds away from dropping a note in the offering plate and suggesting that someone be conscious of our second language members when choosing songs. Instead of:

Here I raise my Ebenezer,
Hither by Thy help I’ve come;
And I hope, by Thy good pleasure,
Safely to arrive at home.

Hither by thy help I’ve come? I think that means we’ve gotten here because of God’s help. But by the time I mentally got there, the congregation would already be onto the 3rd verse . . . Instead of requiring mental gymnastics to come up with the meaning, we could sing something like:

My Savior
He can move the mountains
My God is Mighty to save
He is Mighty to save

I’m sure there are even better substitutes, but I quickly found this one that is in easily understood English and expresses the sentiment that God is our help and saves us in times of trouble. But for some unknown reason we keep singing about ebenezers, hasts, and hithers. Maybe I’m more sensitive to it because I’ve witnessed the struggles of an English speaker trying to understand the nuances of colloquial Arabic?

Sigh. Music is always the problem child in a church.

I’m back at the gym, doing my thing and getting bumped around. This bruise is from a rogue kettlebell I was lifting over my head that banged against my ulna (that anatomy class is still paying off, right Carrie?). Twice. It only hurts when I poke it, so of course I poke it all day long to see if it still hurts.I don’t mind the bruises as they are proof that I’ve worked hard and I’m getting stronger (or at least not getting weaker). I’m the same way with my mental scars — unseen by others, but I still feel the marks and the places where I’ve healed and view them as signs that I’m better and stronger than I was before.

My girlie is going to have her own scars and it drives me crazy (figuratively, not literally, thankfully) to see her struggling and not be able to fix it or change her brain. She’s currently in an anxiety cycle that started when we returned from Christmas break. Tears every morning about not wanting to go to school (she likes school, she’s just nervous before it begins every day), complaints that her stomach hurts, that she’s tired, that she misses her brother, that she’s upset about her uncle dying — probably all true, but from experience and practice I know that something is misfiring in her brain.She loves to swim, but she’s nervous about after school swim practice every. single. time. I’ve tried catering to her fears, ignoring them, bribing her with treats/toys for putting on a brave face, experimented with encouraging her to suppress her tears or express them . . . it’s all the same.By the end of the session, she’s perfectly fine and all smiles. Even eager to be first in line to jump in the pool. But we’ll wake up tomorrow and it will be Groundhog Day all over again . . .

I’ve always tried to be honest with my kids and share as many details as I know about our future, which at times are very few, but I can tell a good chunk of her anxiety stems from our uncertainty about next year. So, in a moment of desperation, I told her that we’ll be living in Abu Dhabi next year. I figure it’s 98% true since I’m 100% sure that Josh will be able to find a job here and the only question is whether the salary offer will be enough to cover housing and school for 3 kids. I’ve already told the school that I’ll continue working in the library next year, inshallah, inshallah. The instant I said it I saw relief wash over her face and I could see the weight fall off of her shoulders, but a 1/2 second later, because she knows how our life works, she asked, “Is it for sure, for sure?” I told her it was mostly for sure and we’ll just pray that it becomes for sure soon.

That seems to have helped a bit. I’m praying that she will be able to live in the present and not wrestle with the “what if’s?” of the future. Our sanity depends on it.

Winter brings the season of air shows — any festive occasion is a reason to send the jets flying into the sky. We live near the airport where they take off and land and school is about a block and a half from where they perform so we’ve been hearing them practice all week as they get ready for the Red Bull air races that are taking place today and tomorrow.

This is the “half time show” and we’re used to their hearts, circles and loops all in UAE’s national colors, but we still are mesmerized as the figures form in the air and then float away, blanketing the city in colored fog. Josh and I are spending the night in a hotel downtown with a perfect view of the airplanes as they soar high and low — a happy coincidence that it lined up with his birthday weekend.

I’ve been working on a blog post about mini-me and her mental issues, but managing them has taken a lot of my writing energy. Picture me as the exasperated psychiatrist from What About Bob? and you’d be close. Except my Bob cries a lot more. If you would pray for peace in her brain and for her to be able to enjoy life instead of being fearful, I’d appreciate it. I knew coming back from Christmas break would throw her, but I didn’t expect it to be like starting over.

Oh well, onto things that bring me joy and fit seamlessly into my life: carpets. Josh and I have been on an unintentional carpet buying fast since moving to Abu Dhabi. We no longer pass our friends’ carpet shops on our daily commute, we have no personal connections to carpet sellers, and the few times we have browsed, the prices were obscenely expensive compared to what we were used to in Bahrain.

Of course rent here is twice as much so it’s reasonable to expect that rugs would be similarly pricy and since we don’t actually need any more carpets, we’ve been in a drought. Until last night. A friend hosted a rug flop and I was looking forward to just browsing carpets, the way a book lover finds joy perusing the shelves at a bookstore. 

Ah my beauties. I was surrounded by Isfahans, Kashans, Qums, and all of their Persian brothers and sisters. And then he started quoting prices and they weren’t half bad. It was partially what I call The Avocado Effect: I spent 4 years not buying avocados because I couldn’t bring myself to pay 2 to 3 times what they cost in the US, but eventually I got over it and accepted that I like them enough to pay what they cost here. And if I find them on sale for $2 each, it feels like a bargain. After being quoted 10,000 aed ($2700 usd) for a Kazakh (a tribal style that is beautiful, but not expensive) from previous dealers, his 10,000 aed quote for a beautiful Persian sounded like a steal. So it came home with us. And I smile whenever I look at it. It’s an old wool Qum that has never been used so it’s in pristine condition. I promised myself that I wasn’t going to buy anymore big carpets, but I couldn’t resist this one. Red, navy, cream and blue — all my favorite carpet colors wrapped up in an elegant tribal design. The above photo is a more accurate reflection of color, but the bottom photo (under the fluorescent lights in our bedroom) is after bringing it home.

I’m pretty sure there are a few more carpets in my future, but future acquisitions might have to be the result of trading my less favorite ones for new pieces. I don’t have much floor space left!