First Impressions: Galveston, not just a Glen Campbell song

We made our first trip to Galveston yesterday. LomL had described it to me as a mix between Rockingham and Mandurah - and that's about right. Those of you who live in Perth know exactly what I'm talking about. Mostly white, middle class, with a vague, uncomfortable undercurrent of prejudice underpinning society. Nothing you can quite put your finger on, just a feeling of unease.

Once you're outside the actual town, it's haunting. Winter in Galveston is despair-inducing. What is clearly a Summer hive of activity becomes effectively a ghost town. Evidence of the Summer playground atmosphere is everywhere; a cross between National Lampoon and a Gidget movie. Pastel coloured, multi-storey hotels, kitsch dining restaurants (no really, check this out Rainforest Cafe) and holiday houses abandoned to the ravages of the cold weather.

It's beautiful, though. In a lonely, wintry way. One imagines staying in the holiday homes, fire lit, large white cable-knit cardigan wrapped around you, sipping hot chocolate or a good red wine. It's the place of long, cold, lonely nights, walks along a windswept beach collecting driftwood and shells, and writing novels. It's where you'd picture Diane Keaton or Meg Ryan in their latest rom-com, blonde hair blowing, all turtle-necks and linen pants. It's where I'd like to own a holiday home for the Winter. Not for the Summer. I imagine the place is chock full of holidaying families, too much exposed flesh and sweltering bodies, too many tailgate parties and bonfires on the beach - or perhaps I'm just projecting the too many cheesy American movies I've seen...

First Impressions: Food Labelling and Ingredients

It's our second day in Houston and I'm trying to be vigilant about making observations about our new home. My love for food and all things foodie is well known by now. Ok, so it borders on obsession, but hey, everybody's gotta have a hobby. So it's no surprise that one of the first points of difference I notice between Houston and Perth is the food.

Yes, it's true that food is generally cheaper in Houston; both restaurant food and fresh food/provisions. If you think about it, that's not surprising. Perth is isolated. Remote even by Australian standards. The capital city of a state that's 3.63 times the size of Texas, but containing a population of just less than 2.5 million people (with about 1.8 million of those people living in Perth and its surrounding suburbs). It's big in terms of land mass, but teeny tiny by world population statistics. And it's far far away. There's a distance of 3301km (2051mi) between Perth and Sydney. That's a long way to transport goods. Add on the comparatively high labour costs in Australia (I'm not griping about the wonderful wage structure negotiated over time by unions, or the taxation system that allows those in need to continue to subsist in something approximating adequacy, but it's a fact that it adds to the general costs of living), and you have high prices generally, with particularly high prices in Perth. But I digress. This isn't meant to be a comparison of the socio-economic structures of Houston and Perth. It's about food.

We hear media reports on a reasonably regular basis about the quantity of additives and preservatives in food in the US, and of the rates of morbid obesity. Watch Dr Oz or The Doctors for more than 5 minutes and there's bound to be some discussion on the unnaturally high levels of chemicals in food, the increasing weight of the populace and how Americans should all be turning towards whole foods or raw foods. It's easy to sit in Australia and think we have it better, our food is higher quality, with fewer additives. It's easy also to assume that if you move to the US, you will have limited (or no) choices about what kind of food you can buy. This impression is exacerbated by shows like Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution. And I'm certainly guilty of thinking all of those things: the US population is generally fatter, the food choices are limited and there's little or no access to good quality, organic fresh foods. So imagine my surprise (and delight) when I discovered that that's simply not true... well, not true in Houston anyway.

There are plenty of good food alternatives. There are large (warehouse sized) stores that house fresh food markets - Central Markets, Whole Foods Markets, HEB and Trader Joe's for a start. There are also plenty of what we in Australia would consider supermarkets - Kroger's and Randall's come to mind. Yesterday I stopped in at a Kroger's for some ingredients for dinner. This is a store that's about the size of a Woolies or a Coles, but it's the Houston equivalent of a small suburban IGA. Even here, the choices were astonishing. There must have been 25 different varieties of plain/all purpose flour on the shelf. And here's the important part. Each one of those packets of flour was clearly labelled with the ingredients and processing of that flour. You know immediately what grain the flour is made from, what other ingredients have been added to the flour and whether or not the flour has been bleached. You know from the labelling on the packet. That's not so in Australia. Some packages have labelling, others don't. Most have labelling that requires you to spend 40 minutes reading packages before making a choice and some require a higher degree in chemistry to decipher the baffling ingredients.

So, this is what I've found. Yes, there's a lot of talk in the US about the ingredients in food. Yes, there's a problem with increasing weight and morbidity as a result. Yes, we all need to be more attentive to what we're shovelling in our mouths. No, things are not better in Australia; food labelling is not clearer (actually it's more obfuscated and confusing) and choices are actually more limited. If carbon miles are something you consider when buying food (as I do), then you're more able to make informed decisions in Houston than in Perth. Not all supermarkets in Perth label where food is sourced from, or whether it's organic (as confusing as that term is - I mean really, the debate that rages over what constitutes organic is migraine-inducing).

Perhaps there is more to be concerned about in the US. Or perhaps there's more concern because there's more information already available from which to make a comparison. I'm not sure yet, but it does bring another perspective to the argument.

Bidding Farewell to our Home

Our household contents have finally been packed up and removed. I watched the last of the boxes be loaded onto the truck, ready for shipping to the other side of the world. And it felt ok. The emptiness of the house didn’t really strike me. There was still so much to do. The mess left behind still needed to be dealt with. Besides, we’d recently had all the carpets in the house replaced, so it had been emptied of its contents just a short while ago. This didn’t feel any different.

B2 and I got to scrubbing while B1 was spending the day with a friend. We vacuumed, we cleaned cupboards, we cleaned bathrooms, we dusted, we picked up all the last bits of rubbish. Then B1 arrived and helped with the last few things. When we were done, I went from room to room, closing blinds and doors and saying goodbye to this home. I hadn’t expected the wracking sobs building from my gut, or the fat wet tears streaming down my cheeks. They took me somewhat by surprise. I thought I had rationalised it. After all, it is just a house. A building. A place to stop and rest. Why this sudden emotion?

B1 came in to find me in the kitchen, patting the countertops and sobbing. He hugged me, asked me why I was crying and said “but it’s just a house”. That’s when I was able to articulate what I was thinking and feeling. This was not just a house. This was the first home that LomL and I had ever owned. It was the home where both my children lost their first teeth. It was the home from which I sent them off to their first day at school. It was the home in which I home schooled them. It was the home from which they started at their new school, the one in which they had both been so happy. This was the home in which magic had been woven and letters from the Toothfairy, the Easter Bunny and Bilby and Santa had been received. It was the home where both children learned to ride their bikes, fell, grazed knees/arms/faces. It was the home where they learned to be pirates and climb trees and make fortresses out of branches. This was the home where a hundred parties were thrown, a thousand arguments were had, a million meals had been cooked. This was the home that both LomL and I had celebrated our 40^th birthdays in, where both the boys had achieved double-digit birthdays. This was the home from which both LomL and I had completed yet another tertiary qualification. This was where new friendships had been made and old ones renewed - friendships that transcend time and continent.

This home had housed us, the dog, chickens, geese, goldfish, rabbits, guinea pigs, frogs, bobtails, monitor lizards, gallahs, corellas, black cockatoos, herons, wattle birds, magpies, 28s, red-caps, splendid wrens, bronze-winged pigeons, tawny frogmouths, kookaburras, geckos, spiders and the various “pet” insects the children captured. This was the home in which I learnt so much about Australian indigenous flora and fauna and ecology. This was the home where we truly established ourselves as a family. And cleaning her felt like performing the last rites. It was my gift to her for having housed us so well, for having allowed us to grow. It felt very like my final gift.

 

Oh, I’ll go back before we leave the country. There are still things to be done. But last night was my farewell to her. I leave her with wonderful memories and immense gratitude for our time there.

I knew him

Penny (Australian) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Old Harry lived in a house near the end of the car park of the doctor’s surgery two doors up from our house. I don’t remember anymore what his surname was. But he was old. We moved to the suburb when I was 7, and Old Harry was already a shuffling old man, perpetually in his chequered house coat and slippers, suffused with the smell of old age. You know that smell. Dead skin cells and unwashed hair. It defines old age. As a child, my nose seemed particularly attuned to it. Like a bloodhound, I could smell when Old Harry was near. My nostrils would prickle and I would curl my nose and top lip with the pungency of it. Recently, I noticed my own hair has begun to emit the same odour. But I digress.

Harry was a friendly and lonely man. His only son had attained some prominence as a minor politician and was busy making a life for himself with his own family. I know so little about Harry. Children are rarely privy to the mysteries of old age, and it had never occurred to me to ask him what had happened to his wife. The egocentric world of childhood doesn't encourage that kind of curiosity about people. Those questions are for the socially aware and curious middle-aged. They are the questions I would ask him now.

Back then, I was content to know that Old Harry was the friendly old man who would periodically shuffle across the blistering heat of the bitumen car park to our back door. That was enough for me. That and the fact that he called the neighbour who lived behind us “Girl Gallagher”, despite the fact that she must have been well into her 50s or 60s by that stage. Mrs Gallagher was also on her own and had spent most of her life in that suburb. She may well have spent most of it in that house. I don’t remember any more. Old Harry remembered her as the child she must once have been and insisted on referring to her as a girl. I recall hearing him talk for the first time of “Girl Gallagher” and the sense of shock as I realised who he was talking about. For a 7 year old, a woman in her 50s or 60s is as far removed from girlhood as the Earth from the Sun.

Harry would wrap his dirty chenille housecoat around him, slip his house slippers on his feet and amble painfully over to our back door step. He would wait at the bottom of the steps that led to our back door till he could see someone moving around inside. Our back door would invariably be open. This was in the days before home invasions and burglaries. It was a more innocent time when doors were rarely closed, let alone locked, cars were never locked and you knew everyone in the street. It was a time when children played in the dirt lane way till they were tired and hungry, then landed at any one of the houses in the neighbourhood for a glass of milk and some afternoon tea. It was a time when the two old ladies who shared a house at the end of the lane way, whose children were married to each other, would take in playing children to feed them cake, teach them a little piano and send them home with armfuls of silver beet.

Old Harry would wait patiently at the bottom step, regardless of the weather, until he saw or sensed movement from the dark, cool recesses of our home. Then shyly, quietly he would call out till one of us came to the door to chat with him. He would keep us talking until politeness kicked in and we invited him in for tea. He would drink his tea with relish, but it was never the tea he came for. Harry was seeking company. I imagine now, though I couldn't then, that he had reached the age when partners die, children move on with their own lives, friends of the same age have moved away or shuffled off this mortal coil and the neighbourhood he knew had changed so radically that it was no longer recognisable.

Looking back on that time, I see how remarkable Harry was. A man who had lived his life in the same suburb, who had seen the deprivations and loss of war, who had known only a white, middle-class society would seek out our company. How strange we must have seemed to him. The smells of unfamiliar spices emanating from our house, the flavours of foreign sweetmeats and savoury treats served with tea, the sounds of ghazals and hindi movie music pouring from the record player, the sight of my mother swathed in her sari or my father pottering around in a lungi. All so removed from anything he could previously have experienced. Yet Harry would settle himself into a seat at our kitchen table, nurse his tea and seem content with simply being surrounded by the noise and bustle of our family. I am grateful to have known him. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to reflect on Old Harry and his quirkiness.

A Day of Hearts and Poetry Scribblings

I love my Queen of Hearts cup and saucer (it came with a teapot that I also love). It was my birthday present a few years ago and it's the cup I now use every morning to have my coffee in.

When I was younger, I would have saved this cup and teapot for a special occasion. It would have been carefully placed on display and probably never used. But what I've learned is that every day you're alive is a special day. Every day free of pain, free of torment, filled with first world problems, is a special day and worthy of celebration. So now, I celebrate by using all those special-day items that I love and that make me happy.

Since Alice in Wonderland is possibly my favourite book from childhood to now, this tea set holds a particularly special place in my heart.

I've also been working on one of my favourite poems and how I can create something out of it. Perhaps a quilt, perhaps a soft book, perhaps some embroidery. I'm not sure what yet, but it was in my head and I needed to start scribbling. Can you guess the poem? It is rather obvious!

Exhaustion

Exhausted. Just exhausted. The morning was characterised by some phenomenal dream that had me thrashing about. I have no memory of the dream itself, but did wake to find my pillows perpendicular to each other and items from my bedside table flung unceremoniously across the floor. I wonder what it was that had me so agitated?

I went to bed irritated and don't doubt for a second that that was what triggered the dreams, but the actual content of the dreams completely eludes me. Whatever it was, it had me flailing like I was fending off some monstrous beast.

Sleep has once again become an issue. It had been controlled for a while with the advent of regular swimming, but it's been nearly two weeks since I last swam any laps and I'm climbing the walls. Motivation is hard to find and lethargy curls its sinewy fingers throughout the day. My eyelids grow heavy and my brain grows dull. I hear the buzzing return of tinnitus and know that there's some low-level infection working its sinister magic on my immune system.

It's a vicious cycle this exercise and sleep business. I exercise, I sleep well and wake with energy. I don't exercise, I sleep poorly and fitfully and wake exhausted to my very bones, unable to muster enough interest or ability to complete even simple tasks.

My day has consisted of completing online forms and sending emails. Another contributing factor to the lethargy. Instead of revitalising me, it has made me long to curl up and sleep. My head feels filled with cotton wool and I cannot wade through the viscosity of it. I know there are tasks to complete, but have no will to summon. I suspect the weighty burden of all that needs to be done is also adding to my paralysis. I find myself near catatonia every time I consider the enormity of what remains to be done.

I'm sure there's a solution. I daresay it's a simple one - perhaps a reversion to my trusty lists is what will snap me out of this. The cotton wool in my head makes thinking clearly seem like trying to swim my way through a swimming pool filled with treacle. Every time I think I'm making progress, the sticky, gooey morass of impending deadlines and tasks yet to be done drag me inexorably to the bottom.

Still, to quote my favourite southern belle, "tomorrow is another day".

First Encounters

So here we are on our orientation trip to Houston, preparing for the big move over at the end of the year. We have a one week orientation to the city and surrounds and it's our opportunity to see if this is really something we could do.

We had always talked about living outside of Australia at some point in our lives, preferably while the children were still young and able to make the transition relatively easily. Over the last 10 years or so, we have considered and rejected many possibilities for overseas postings. LomL works in the petroleum industry and that pretty much limits the number of fun places we're ever likely to live in the world through his work.

A few job offers have come up for Mauritania. Ones we did seriously consider for a minute, but the thought of living 24/7 in a gated, barbed-wire, electric-fenced community and taking the kids to school with an armed driver, really did very little for my peace of mind.

There were job offers for Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Both involved living in gated compounds and, for me, living a very restricted life. Singapore came up once or twice, but we couldn't see that the life would be better for us than what we had.

Eventually, we got to the point where we began to resign ourselves to a life lived in the same place. This may not seem a big deal to most people, in fact, I can see how it would be a comforting thought to many. The familiarity and comfort of all you know, all you have ever known surrounding you. The problem for us, however, is that we're essentially restless and adventurous souls. LomL came to the realisation the other day that this is the longest we've ever lived in one place since we've been married; 9 years. Recently, I had a very dear friend tell me I'd done a lot of brave things in my life. It has never felt like that. We've always just faced the challenges and lived our lives without consideration for how hard things were - without ever really considering that things were hard. I think that because of that, we've managed to have fun and make wonderful friends in some of the most unlikely places.

Still, after 9 years in the same place, doing pretty much the same things (with a little overseas travel thrown in), one does tend to become rooted to the spot. I don't know whether familiarity breeds contempt, but in my case, it has certainly bred complacency. One does tend to give greater importance to petty worries and irritations than they deserve, because life is overwhelmingly carefree. What that parent said at the last school event suddenly gains far more importance and weighting than it should in my mind. I worry over what this person thinks, how that one was affected by my words or actions, I worry about whether I'm advocating enough or too much for the children at school. I worry about minor, silly things that deserve no time or space in my consciousness, because, frankly there are no big worries. We are surrounded by family, by friends, by support systems and by unnervingly familiar ways of working and living. I find myself growing roots out of my toes to the place we live, the places we shop, the places we visit. I appreciate less what's around me, and take for granted more all the advantages we have. I complain more. I become more scared of doing things and going places. And I become lazy about fighting those parts of my personality that I don't particularly like. There's no need. I have family that love me. I am surrounded by a wonderful network of friends that love me. Why change? Why even be pleasant or make an effort?

While my initial reaction to the prospect of moving permanently to another country was fright and anxiety, it really didn't take much thinking to know it was the right thing to do for us. The children are both young enough not to be adversely affected by the change and old enough to be excited by the prospects of a new adventure. LomL is going to a new, more exciting job that has effectively been created with him in mind. And I, I am going to a new place. A new house, a new community, a new way of living. I don't have to worry about learning a new language or be super cautious of cultural sensitivities. I do have to learn a new way of thinking about distances and temperatures and other measurements. All in all, there's some new stuff to learn, but quite a lot of what awaits is familiar. But the best bit of all? It's a huge opportunity to reawaken my adventurous spirit, dust off some cobwebs and push myself to be less introverted and more social. That excites me.