two years

When I moved to LA my standard line was that I expected to be here about two years.

In all honesty this two-year mantra came about more because I was unable to visualize anything concrete beyond that point than because of any well-thought-out life plan. For years now, whenever anyone asks me where I see myself in five years the first word that has popped into my head is… “Nigeria?”

Do not ask me why, because I don’t know. I have never been to Nigeria and have no particular yen to move there. Perhaps it’s just shorthand for, “So far in life I’ve moved internationally 12 times. Five years ago I could never have predicted I would end up in LA working with aid workers around stress and trauma. I couldn’t have controlled that process if I had tried, yet it’s felt right. You really expect me to know where life will have taken me five years from now?”

Some might say this denotes a certain degree of emotional instability, possible identity issues, and a pathological need to keep my options open. Some might say it indicates adaptability, a zest for life, a high tolerance for ambiguity, and a realistic view of how much control we have over the future. If I was trying to come off super-holy, I might say that it’s just a willingness to stay open to God’s divine leading for my steps down the path of life and demonstrates a remarkable spiritual maturity.

Whatever it really indicates, I blame it in large part on my parents. They left for what they assured their parents would be two years in 1983… and returned to Australia 21 years later. This is why, of all people to take my two year mantra seriously, I’m surprised by certain recent signs that they are doing exactly that.

Mum and Dad have always been very good at not putting pressure on me about my career choices. When I rang them up at 24 right after I graduated with my masters degree in forensic psychology and told them that one thing six years of higher education had taught me was that I didn’t want to work full time as a counselor, and that I was planning on moving in with them in Manila temporarily while I volunteered for non-profits and started writing a novel, they said “sounds fine.”

When I danced out of the bedroom in our apartment in Manila and announced jubilantly that I’d been offered an internship in Croatia that meant I was due in Canada for orientation in nine days time, Mum simply said, “We’d better start getting you organized then.”

And now that I’m based in California and often on the road, I know they probably worry sometimes. Heck, I was worried for Dad last year when he was jaunting into Somalia, but they never use that worry to guilt-trip me. The worst I’ve gotten over the years from Mum is a diffident, “Well, it’d be good if you didn’t have to go to Haiti next week.”

But as I entered my third year in Los Angeles I began to notice a subtle shift in Mum’s tactics.

Last May, Michelle, Matt, and I were all home together for a week and the morning after we’d all arrived home saw us trailing dutifully out to the shed to engage in the parental-mandated family-bonding activity of packing and unpacking boxes (also known as “organizing our stuff”). Organizing our stuff means braving snakes, spiders, mosquitoes and rats in the back shed to unpack our boxes or suitcases, provide a compelling argument as to why Mum should not be allowed to put said stuff in the “throw away” pile, and then pack it all up again, and label it neatly so that we can do this all over again even more efficiently in two years time. Organizing our stuff does not rank highly on any McKay child’s “favorite things to do on holiday” list.

Last May, however, it was more tolerable than usual. Michelle unearthed a stack of stories she’d written in her first-grade class in Dhaka, and I was immensely gratified to see that they all featured me as the main character, or at least the driving force in the story plot. I was flicking through my own first-grade stories, happily basking in the warm glow cast by decades-old sibling-worship, when Mum dropped the bombshell.

“The Salvation Army truck is coming next week, and we thought we’d just load this on with everything else.

The “this” she was indicating so casually was the first, and only, decent piece of furniture that I’ve ever bought on Australian soil - a pine dresser. I was attached to this dresser. When I bought it I was still in grad school, and it had represented a huge step for me. It was brand new, it cost me 300 dollars, I couldn’t move it alone, and there was no way I could fit in a suitcase. This dresser represented stability, and belonging, and sinking my emotional roots deep into the rich, red, soil of my home country. It had helped cement my Australian identity. So what if it had now been sitting in storage ever since I left Australia in 2001 for what I said would be two years?

“I want to keep it,” I said stubbornly. “I’ll need it when I come home in two years.”

“OK,” Dad said. “We weren’t going to tell you this, but a family of mice chewed through the back and made a nest in there and peed all over everything.”

Great. My Australian identity was now saturated with mouse piss.

“Fine then,” I sulked. “Give it away.”

“We’ll help you buy other stuff when you come home,” Mum wheedled. “Nice stuff.”

That was the start of the maternal offers that have been linked to the words “come home”. It is Dad who has typically been the soft-touch in our family. He is often plagued by the question of whether our peripatetic upbringing scarred us for life, and is prone to guilt regarding any issue remotely related to inherited physical or emotional deprivation. Dad is good for all sorts of things – from prescription glasses, to family funded credit cards in case of an international emergency such as a coup that would requires rapid purchasing of plane tickets (and maybe bail money), to phone cards that facilitate us staying connected to family and friends worldwide, to sneakers. Come to think of it, I’m not exactly sure why he bought us all sneakers last year, but it was very nice of him.

A couple of months ago I rang my sister with the news that my doctor thought I might have a genetic heart defect.

The very first thing she said was, “Wow, Dad’s going to feel so bad if that ends up being true.”

Then there was a long pause, while the gravity of my statement and all its attending implications set in. Then she hit the nail on the head.

“You’d be set for life!”

Mum is usually both more pragmatic and less indulgent. She rightly says that none of us would trade our international experience, no matter what it has cost us, and suggests that at 31, 28, and 26, perhaps it’s time we kids started buying our own expensive sneakers.

Lately, however, there have been signs of a late-blooming maternal softening in this area. Several months ago she said to me totally out of the blue, “Your father asked me the other day how much money I’d be prepared to spend to help you get set up in Sydney when you come home. I’m not going to tell you how much I said now, but one day, when you’re having a really bad day, you might want to ask. You might be surprised.”

I might not have ended up using all that psychology education to counsel, but I haven’t forgotten my thorough grounding in trend analysis, and I figured that it was only a matter of time before the stakes in the “come home” campaign escalated even further, but it came even sooner than I had forecasted.

Last night at 11pm, right in the middle of a totally unrelated discussion of the Headington Institute’s board meeting, Mum said; “If you came home we could get you the house across the road, it’s for sale. It’s got 40 acres, two waterfalls, and a spectacular view – better than ours even. It’s a writer’s paradise, and you could walk over and have breakfast with us.”

“How much is it?” I asked.

“$770,000” Mum said.

There was awed silence. I think even Dad was taken aback.

“Pocket change,” I said.

Dad snorted.

“What else?” I said, pushing my luck. “I’m getting out of bed to get a pen and I’m writing this down so I can consider the offer carefully.”

“Well, I don’t know if I’d call it an offer exactly,” Mum said, backpedaling.

“You clearly said, We could get you.”

“That’s right,” Dad said. “I was a little surprised, but that is what you said.”

“Fine,” Mum said, clearly figuring that if she was in for a penny, she might as well be in for 770,000 dollars plus some extras. “What else? There are stables. I’ll throw in a couple of horses.”

“It sounds perfect.” I said. “I think you should buy it now. That way it’ll be there for me when I come home in two years.”

two years