2018 should have been the year for us to really feel settled and just enjoy Ghana. The initial adjustments were behind us, the chaos of moving on still too distant to consider. I had imagined it as the golden year of exploration and enjoyment. And it has been that. Our lives have not lacked adventure and travel opportunities, and our initial appreciation and affection for Ghana has deepened into what I know will be a lasting sense that this is now one of our places, one more true home among many.
That attachment was not as naturally and easily won as we’d anticipated, though. I rang in 2018, not with Andres and the kids in Accra, but in frozen-solid Cleveland, sharing a toast with my parents in a hotel restaurant.
I was mid-medevac, still not yet aware that I wouldn’t be returning to Accra for more than two months (see this post and those that follow if my various health scares are news to you). So while I was bundling up and trudging through ice and snow to get to my medical appointments, Andres and the kids were living their daily life without me. Andres got up every morning to make the kids breakfast before heading to the embassy. He made the most of weekends, taking the kids to see the local sights, visiting neighborhood coffee shops for breakfast, making burgers on the grill. Life wasn’t normal but he kept it as normal as he could. Everyone pitched in and just made it work.
The days stretched into weeks. I had been ready for a break from heat and humidity, but this was a little ridiculous.
I was really ready to go home. And then, of course, I couldn’t. And I didn’t know when I would. And while I was feeling good, I was taken aback by the fact that my health was more fragile than I had ever wanted to acknowledge. I still get emotional looking back and seeing how much I missed: everyday things like radio check and floor-mopping. Fun outings like dinner at Accra’s one-and-only Mexican restaurant. The arrival of our car (finally!!). Events at the embassy and the kids’ school, like Marisela’s Ellis Island reenactment. I’m glad I have the pictures Andres so carefully curated but every time I see them I’m saddened by the time I missed.
Of course I had meaningful times of my own, and I’m thankful for them. I got to visit with my dear friend from Dallas, celebrate my nephew’s birthday with him, attend my niece’s play, and help my parents when my dad was hospitalized with a GI infection. I got to hang out with my sister and shop for the elusive dog toy their Lab pup couldn’t destroy in minutes (never found one) and watch the Olympics and X-Files and enjoy more time together than we’d had in decades.
Everyone made it through just fine. The kids hung in and did well in school and helped Andres with housework and ran errands and were just phenomenal. Our amazing neighbors gave rides and invited our kids over and took them to the movies. Andres somehow managed to be there for the kids, to feed them, to keep everyone’s clothes clean, and to maintain the crazy pace of work in the consular section. I did everything I could to get well, stay well, and enjoy the unexpected time I had with my stateside crew. And then, mid-March, I was finally able to come home. I still haven’t taken this poster down.
I’m taking up a lot of time here with something that I realize for many families is a matter of everyday life. I know military families, and diplomatic families with parents at unaccompanied posts, and plenty of others have periods of separation far longer than the not quite three months we experienced. I am all the more grateful now for the sacrifices those families make. It’s not easy. As resilient as our family proved to be, it was a traumatic event for us all. Reconnecting was easy. Moving forward with life felt easy. But the real impact of the separation, and the anxiety we all experienced about my health and about when and where and how we would be able to reunite is something we’re still dealing with. It made the year feel a lot less settled than we’d expected it to be.
We’ve done well with moving on. My health has been great. It was a bit of a hassle bidding for our next post with my new restrictions (restrictions imposed by State Department on where I can go; day-to-day I just have a few more pills to take), but at least there hasn’t been any further trouble with my blood or my heart. I’ve established some routines now: started playing tennis again after a long break, initiated a weekly get-together for other spouses in the embassy community who work from home. Now that we have our car we’ve done lots of exploring in Accra and beyond. We had two incredible international journeys, first to Europe over the summer and then to the Middle East in December. I’ve acted as developmental editor for a brand-new book at the company I’ve worked for the last many years, and it’s almost done.
We’ve celebrated birthdays and milestones like Isaiah’s completion of middle school and move to high school.
We’ve enjoyed our wonderful community and built friendships and said some sad goodbyes.
We’ve developed new skills and sought out new experiences. Isaiah programs video games, and he and I continue in our sporadic attempts to develop our mediocre tennis skills. Marisela and I have enjoyed batik-making, beading, and sewing. Isaiah and Andres joined friends for a boxing match honoring the 60th birthday of local hero Azumah Nelson (regarded – at least by Ghanaians, and I think by the rest of the sporting world – as the best African boxer ever). Marisela took part in a soccer camp. I tried my hand at painting.
Once school was underway again this last fall the inevitability of routine gave us the structure we needed to feel like life was truly getting back to normal. Isaiah started high school, Marisela her final year of elementary. Seasons don’t bring much change here, but the events still march along in predictable fashion. Fall break brought a week with friends our favorite guest house (well, for the kids and me . . . I could work pool-side, but Andres, sadly, could not). Halloween brought homemade costumes and ridiculous amounts of candy we’d all ordered months before to ensure the successful celebration of this holiest of kid holidays.
As the year neared its end there was the usual Calderon crush of birthdays (three of the four of us within a month, with plenty of extended family/close friend birthdays packed in as well), and also the fun of holiday teas and galas – although we’ve been doing this foreign service life for a few years now, it all still feels (delightfully) like a grownup game of dress-up to me.
We spent Thanksgiving day at a beautiful beach and then shared a delicious meal prepared by friends who will also be posted in Lagos with us.
It’s hard to express why, despite this embarrassment of riches, this incredible, beautiful, ridiculously privileged life we live, the words that come to mind for 2018 are unsettled, uncertain, and bittersweet. It’s hard to acknowledge those feelings, knowing as I certainly know how very, very fortunate we are, and considering the many once-in-a-lifetime experiences we had this past year. But as the year began, I was adrift without the solid ground that is our little nuclear family. Things I took for granted, like their presence and my health, were not guaranteed. I wasn’t as bullet-proof as I’d felt. And my memories of the year, I’m guessing my memories of Ghana overall, are now indelibly marked with that uncertainty and that unexpected sense of vulnerability.
I’m not doing a great job at the classic, upbeat year-end roundup. Angst is not something I’m comfortable with, but this is the honest year-end roundup. We all had an amazing year. We did incredible things I had never expected to do in my life, and met people and visited places that have brought us joy and kindled wonder. We also fought hard to keep life normal when it simply wasn’t, and that has taken some time to come back from.
It took us a while, but we mostly caught up on missed celebrations. About 1/3 of a continent and an entire ocean separated us on our fifteenth anniversary, but we finally managed to celebrate (at a guesthouse up in the hills outside Accra that’s startlingly evocative of New Mexico, where we met and married).
We’re excited about 2019, whatever adjectives it may bring. There will be plenty of unsettled, I know, as even now we start the process of tugging up the thin Ghana roots in preparation for the move to Nigeria. There will be more uncertainty, maybe not in the form of alarming health issues or unexpected separations of unknown duration, but later this year we will be moving to an entirely new city and doing the whole new house, new friends, new job, new school thing all over again.
I have a friend from a book club several cities back who was always wary of books with bittersweet in the back cover blurb or reviews. That was an automatic pass for her, as it usually translated to maudlin and melodramatic. My discomfort with sharing my thoughts on our bittersweet year is touched with a fear of tipping over into that territory. So I’ll close with the acknowledgement that there is certainly more bittersweet ahead, and that’s OK. Because while our year hasn’t been perfect and it hasn’t been particularly settled, it has been memorable, and it’s been an opportunity to discover our strength, and to be thankful for the strength of those around us.
anchored . . . for the moment 