My Postsecret - Part II

It was the summer of 2007. We'd been in America for a few months, and I was through the honeymoon period and into the classic low dip that typically occurs 6 - 9 months after you move to a new place. But I didn't know about that dip and its timing, so I was just miserable and couldn't see an end to being miserable. The children had started their 12-week summer holiday - and no-one had told me about THAT. I had no idea how to manage TWELVE WEEKS at home with the children. We didn't know many people well enough to invite them over - I'd have thrown myself into playdate exchanges in the early days a bit more if I'd known about the 12-week vacation to come. It was over 90 degrees every day, and I'm never at my best in the heat.  I felt trapped inside the house. I was paranoid about the children getting sunburnt, and there were mosquitoes everywhere. I asked people what they did during the long summer break, but no-one really seemed to have any answer, except "the pool". The children were 10, 6 and 3, and, though I came to love our neighborhood pool in future years, it didn't hit the spot at all for us that year. I had to be with 3-yo in the small pool, and I wasn't confident about the two older ones being on their own in the big pool, so I hovered at the gate between the two, trying to watch all three, feeling hot, worrying about sunburn, and longing for Scotland. And there still remained several hours of the day, long, slow hours, each day, every day, before and after our trip to the pool. Husband was rewriting his PhD into a book, and we'd set aside the summer weeks for him to do that. It was a very lonely time. It was when I started blogging.

We'd already done the museums and other attractions in the city. Several times. In fact, I decided that if anyone said to me "There's a great zoo here. Have you checked out the zoo yet?" I would decapitate them on the spot. Yes, I had taken the children to the zoo already. Full of maternal initiative, me. I'd been more than once, actually. It was hot and dusty and full of sad, enclosed animals. "But thanks for the suggestion", I always managed. 

I decided I needed to get out of the city. A trip or two. That would raise morale. Part of what I had anticipated would be the fun of moving to a new country was the chance to explore. What I hadn't realised, and what I was finding out slowly, was that truly, there wasn't very much to explore where we were. I don't know if I'd envisaged a few little Cotswold villages, with tea shops and play parks, in the middle of the Great Plains, or what, but I'd expected something, anything, to go and do and see. I mean, wherever you are in the world, you can get to know your surroundings. Can't you? Surely? There's always something to go and visit, isn't there? Well, not so much in the middle of the Midwest. And especially if it's very hot, and you have three small children in tow, and you really don't want to make stopping at McDonalds the treat of the day. And you're sad and lonely and low on internal resources.

I had a great aunt, who was a big traveller. She used to say, if you're in a place and don't know what to visit, go and look at local postcard stands. You'll discover what's interesting nearby. Well, there weren't any shops with postcard stands where we were, but I asked in Wal-Mart, and a rather surprised assistant showed me a very small rack. I realise, now I understand the place and the way of life there so much better, that to find a postcard at all in Wal-Mart in that city was rather amazing, but at the time, amazed is exactly what I was not. I nearly cried. The selection couldn't have been more under-whelming. They were mostly jokey ones about cattle, or tornadoes. Great. There were a few pictures of fields of sunflowers, and yes, you could have a nice day out looking at sunflowers if you were in Tuscany and there was going to be a pretty little village snuggling against the hillside where you could order pizza and San Pellegrino and enjoy watching the waiter chat to your bambini, because everyone knows the Italians love children, but trust me, you can't really do the same kind of thing where we were. Unless you want to end up in a McDonalds, and my kids had already had way too many McFlurries that summer. Anyway, I had 12 weeks to fill. A day of sunflower-viewing wasn't going to make much of a dent.

Then I hit rock bottom. There was a postcard of a grain elevator. Do you know what that is? No? This is what they look like.

                                                                                                                      Photo credit: walkersquawker.net

They're big, made of concrete or steel, always white or grey, and not interesting. At all. The caption on the back of the postcard said "sometimes known as 'the Cathedrals of the Plains', these majestic structures can be seen for miles around". That was the final insult. Cathedrals of the Plains. I had swapped King's College Chapel, Westminster Abbey, Salisbury Cathedral, St Paul's, for these brutes? The beauty, history, design, and interest of cathedrals for the modern utilitarian ugliness of grain elevators? How could anyone dare compare them?

I bought the postcard.

I wanted to write "I hate living here" in huge, bold capitals on it, and send it to Postsecret. It felt really good, just to think about doing that. Perhaps I'd make it "I really, really, really, REALLY hate living here". But I didn't write that. First, in that irritating way that life has of laughing at you and debunking your most intense moments, the first couple of biros I tried wouldn't even make a mark on a postcard (and I obviously hadn't discovered Sharpies at that point). More significant than the biro issue though, was my pride. I was committed to making a success of our overseas adventure, and I had decided that the foundation of that commitment was the "Not wrong, just different" approach to life that was the title of my blog at the time. To send an "I hate living here" postcard would be to let myself down, and to let my blog down.

The modified version that I came up with, and I think this will make you laugh because it's so very Iota, was "I can't believe I'm living in a place where they make postcards of grain elevators". But I didn't even send that. I don't really know why. I kept the card, though. It lived in the desk drawer, and I used to take it out and look at it, and think how much I hated where we were, and how homesick I was for the land of my family and friends and cathedrals and tea shops.

Time passed. I grew to love my life. I never loved the place, but I loved my life in it, and we found ways of making it work, even though it wasn't Tuscany or the Cotswolds. A highlight was our annual Thanksgiving trip to Colorado, when we would drive for 12 hours across the Great Plains, in search of mountains. I loved those journeys. We got to know the route, and found places to eat on the way that weren't McDonalds. In one cafe, they even recognised us from one year to the next, and opened up for us once when we arrived a few minutes after closing time. I grew to love the Plains, and to cherish the opportunity that life had given me to experience new things in a new place. It would be stretching it to say that I grew to love the grain elevators, but I made my peace with them. You need landmarks to place your eyes on, as you drive across the flat landscape, and there's something about them that's large, solid, and comforting, like lighthouses. "Majestic structures", I suppose. They survive when nothing else does, when a tornado passes through. And actually, if you look at the photo you'll see two grain elevators, an old and a new. So I suppose there is even a historical interest to be found in grain elevators, if you look out for it. 

When we were moving back to Britain, I got the postcard out. I was going to write on it "I used to hate living here, but now I'm really sad to leave", and send it to Postsecret. I didn't, though. As I said, Postsecret has changed. Brash sex revelations have replaced the weekly feast that I used to enjoy, of the tiny, sometimes whimsical, windows into the lives of strangers. It was no longer the right place for my secret to be aired.

I can't even remember what I did with the card. (That isn't a very good ending to the story, is it? It's the truth, though.) I vaguely remember ripping it in half and putting it in the bin, bidding it farewell and telling it "you've served your purpose; I don't need you any more". But I also vaguely remember tucking it into a pile of papers, thinking it would be fun to see it again. I hope it's the latter memory that's correct, because when that picture postcard surfaces, it will be like greeting an old friend.
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Hot tea

We all have bad days. This wasn't even a bad hair day. Just a bad day.

There is just under a week left of the school holidays (and I believe I've mentioned that they are 3 months long here... read my lips... 3 months long...). I have no imagination left. I have no patience left. I do however have two children left. Don't worry, I haven't done away with any of them. One is out at a friend's (hurrah! we've finally done enough inviting round for them to be invited back, hurrah! hurrah!).

Now I know we ex-pats look at Blighty through rose-tinted spectacles. Even so, I do think certain things in my life would be easier if I were back there now. This afternoon, for one. This is what I would do if I were in Scotland. I would go out. I know, I know. It's rained all summer ("summer?" you grunt). You're all sitting there feeling very grumpy and sorry for yourselves. But I would spot that half hour of grey dampness, in between the downpours and the drizzle, and I would force them out. There would be resistance, subversion, complaining, plea bargaining, lost wellies, but I would persist. The rain would possibly have set in again by the time I'd got every one togged up (at what age do they do this themselves without badgering?), but out we would go. The park, the beach, a walk, anywhere. By car first if necessary. I have a friend whose motto for the care of children is this: if in doubt, fling them out. You need to watch her near any open windows, but I do agree with the general sentiment.

I can't do that here. Outdoors doesn't exist in the same way. The neighborhood pool is now open only after 4.00pm, since a lot of the schools have gone back - "school hours" they call it. It's somewhere between 95 and 100 degrees, so the park isn't an option. This is not just me being a wuss. The swings and slides are too hot for the backs of small legs. We've done a short stint in our nice shady garden (back yard... whatever...). That's all the options.

Plan B in the UK would be this: a soft play centre (I said I had no imagination left). They're vile places aren't they? Vile, but we love them on afternoons like this. I would be sitting in a large barn of a building, inadequately ventilated, full of screeching children. The noise level would be uncomfortable for adult ear-drums. The smell of damp socks would pervade the atmosphere. The dust would irritate the back of my throat. 3-yo would bite small chunks of dirty foam out of grubby balls, and then laugh when I told her not to. The third or fourth time, I would say "if you do that again, we'll have to go home" and then instantly regret it. She might do it again. I would be sitting at a plastic table on a wobbly plastic chair. I would have optimistically purchased a cup of tea. It would be horrid. It would be in a polystyrene cup. They would have put the milk in when the bag was still in. The bag would now be floating around, unable to turn the white water a sufficiently encouraging shade of brown. They would have filled the cup too full, so the so-called tea it would slosh over the edge at any attempt to prise a little more colour and/or flavour out of the bag. I would have scalded my tongue (I hate polystyrene cups). I might also have a nasty flabby danish pastry in a sealed plastic pocket. I might eat it to make myself feel better about the tea.

Sounds appealing, huh? Well, that's what rosy-tinted specs do for you. But let me tell you this. I live in a city of 500,000, and there is no soft play centre. Strange, but true. I'll tell you why. Several of the McDonalds and Burger Kings have very small play areas. Very small, but better than nothing. It's a poor alternative, but you can buy a coke (the food is not compulsory, I've discovered) and sit and watch your children as they burn off excess energy. Or write a blog entry. I don't have a whizzy lap-top, so it's just with plain old pen and paper for future transcription. I tell you, this could be a blockbuster about a boy at a school for wizards, if I was in a romantic coffee shop in Edinburgh and not a greasy Maccy D's in a soft-play-centre-free zone in the Midwest.

And the tea? Well, I did give it a try. This was a rather exciting moment, actually. Hot tea is rare to find. Iced tea abounds (hate the stuff), but hot tea is a rarity. So when I saw it on the board, I thought I could redeem the afternoon by discovering that McDonalds' tea is surprisingly good. That would have been a cheering moment. Would have been. If the tea had been surprisingly good. Their coffee is so surprisingly bad that, my first week here, I took mine back to the counter saying "I think there's a mistake, I didn't order a mocha", and the girl said "this isn't a mocha".

The tea thing started badly this afternoon. I asked for hot tea, and the girl simply didn't understand me. This has never happened before. After repeating "hot tea, tea, hot tea" several times, I eventually just pointed to it on the board. "Oh, haht tea", said the girl. I made the mistake of ordering a large. Of course I should know by now. Large is too large. A cup of tea the size of a bucket is not appealing. Then I asked for creamer. I know not to ask for milk, but usually when you have coffee, you get creamer in small sachets. But not in McDonalds. The girl had to go and ask her supervisor, who got a small cup of cream out of the coffee machine. They had never met anyone who liked cream in tea. I don't like cream in tea. They were doing their best though, so I just said "we do in England, or milk, sometimes". It was not looking promising at this stage. I had a bucket of dark tea (good colour though, which was something), and a small bucket half full of cream. My hopes were not high, but they were still there. That was until I discovered that the dark bucket was filled with warm water. Ah well. At least I wouldn't be scalding my mouth.

My final problem. How to dispose of the large amount of unwanted beverage I now had. I didn't like to leave it, which seemed a bit ungrateful after they'd tried so hard to overcome the accent and the milk issues. I didn't feel I should put it in the trash - all that liquid sloshing around in a plastic bin liner could cause trouble. I didn't want to be seen sneaking off to the restroom, cup in hand. In the end, I tipped it down the water fountain, holding it in front of me and hunching my back to hide it and to give the impression that I was bending to drink. Fortunately, we were the only people in the play area at this point. Oh good. I was hoping I would find a "fortunately" somewhere in this story, and there it is.