Relativity.
The most logical explanation I have is that time has sped up. It’s the only way I can wrap my head around the fact that we’re leaving Brussels in less than three months. Because it just hasn’t been that long (but was also a lifetime ago) that we found out Joe’s next assignment.
(My hypothesis is almost certainly colored by Joe’s recent purchase of General Relativity for Babies and that fact that I’ve read it at least twenty times to Nicolas. But that’s neither here nor there.)
It had been a game of hurry up and wait since we found out at the end of November that we’ll be moving to Santo Domingo this summer. We knew, generally, that we’d be on the earlier end of transfer season but that was about it. Not much can happen logistically until the transfer paperwork is received by both the post you’re headed to and the one you’re leaving behind.
Sure, we had started talking about what we’d want to purge and what we might want to prep but we haven’t really been able to plan with any sense of specificity. I’d peeked at a couple of preschools in Santo Domingo but knew it was totally pointless to get my heart set without having our housing assignment. And any time family would ask when we might be back in the States on home leave, I’d have to say “sometime in early summer.” Discussions had been abstract, full of maybes and if-that-then-thises.
All that changed the week before last. There’s now an expiration date to our time here in Brussels. We don’t know exactly which day(s) they’ll come to pack our things or when we’ll get on an airplane with a one-way ticket, but we know that it’ll be in the first half of May.
With paperwork in place, wheels started turning both here and there. The moving coordinator reached out to us with a pre-packout questionnaire, Santo Domingo sent us the housing survey, we gave the required 3 months’ notice to the crèche…
I didn’t really notice the full force of inertia until a few days ago. The end of January had been a big push to both finish up my time working at the embassy as well as get Nicolas through a minor, but still under general anesthesia, surgery. And I spent the first week of February taking care of a child who was well enough to play but not quite ready to go back to “school.” Last week finally gave me some space but looking at the calendar made me realize that there wasn’t much, if any, time to rest.
This time in between — still going about the daily routine of living while also getting ready to leave feels awkward and uncomfortable. It’s like learning how to rhythmically breathe while swimming: exhaling with my face still in the water, body driving forward while I turn my head to the side to take in a breath of fresh air. I’m not practiced at keeping forward momentum while also finding the balance between being here, now and anticipating what’s to come. And sometimes it feels like I’m choking or flailing just as I did when stroke, stroke, stroke/breathe was still foreign to me.
All the while, the clock ticks.
