Here we go again

Friday morning, Zoe and I will be catching a plane down to Copenhagen to see my family and for me to see some friends. I am going to a theater play with some of my friends, so I thought this weekend might be as good as any to go down for a visit. Having flown 53 times with Zoe before I don't anticipate any difficulties or surprises, yet as I have described before, I like to prepare mentally and practically a couple of days before. One thing that has changed recently is that Zoe is very heavy for me to carry in a soft-structured carrier and that although she likes to walk for parts of the journey, I need to keep her close by at certain key points during the trip. For example when going from the train up into the terminal to check in, I can't let her walk, it would take too long, and there are no trolleys with child seats like there is airside in the terminal. Yet, I could think of only a few things worse than actually having to take her stroller with me, getting it collapsed for security and trying to negotiate a carry-on suitcase with pushing a screaming toddler (Zoe still hates her stroller). In addition I have a stroller in Copenhagen at my parents' apartment and my mom mostly picks us up in the airport, with it. So soft-structured carrier it is.

Of other challenges, one is how to manage an almost two year old in my seat. She is way too big to be a lap infant, but since it is only an hour flight and that she still qualifies, I am not going to buy the extra seat. Besides, occasionally the airline will have an empty seat that will magically be next to me. If not, I pity the person next to us who will get Zoe's feet in his/her lap for the majority of the flight.

Finally, there is the patience issue: With Zoe walking most of the way now, she has less patience to stand in line for security and boarding and it can sometimes be complicated to keep her occupied while keeping my spot. Last time she couldn't understand why I didn't just follow her around all queue into the airplane where we were clearly going, why I kept standing behind all those people that she gladly walked around. I honestly thought it was a bit silly too and secretly prayed that someone would just ask me to come up front, but those things don't happen in the real world. Instead I just kept telling Zoe to come back and wait with me, trying to seem like I had my eager toddler under control.

Wish me luck, I will report back after my weekend trip how toddler traveling is these days.

Real life

Something that comes to mind on days where I go to work on 4 1/2 hours sleep because I stayed up past midnight correcting student exams and Zoe woke me up at 5, is how my lifestyle makes my life unreal. Moving country every 2-4 years makes it difficult to think of anywhere as 'real life'. After walking around in a daze today I realized that I have not been thinking of my life in Stockholm as something serious, something real yet. Perhaps due to my rather complex work situation (which needs a full blog post) but probably more importantly because I am not able to (refuse to?) completely understand the language and hence what goes on around me (what people talk about on the subway, what the tabloids say and which politicians are in power), I don't engage. I feel that this is just a game, a temporary thing, something that doesn't really concern me. Ironically I feel very much home in my academic field. I have really close friends who live around the world, (even one or two here) I am passionate about that environment and community. I also have close friends outside the field that do not live here. But walking around in the streets, interacting with strangers in shops, cafes and my gym, I don't feel the 'realness'. And I haven't for a while.

The US was as unreal as this, people would speak a language I am fluent in and I enjoyed small talk as much as the next American. I have a fairly American accent (with a mix of Scottish) so I didn't stick out the way I do here. But I often got to a certain place where the cultural differences caught up on me and meant that I could not emphasize any further with the people I was talking to. I simply could not understand their eagerness to repeat themselves, to talk about irrelevant issues or to talk about themselves as much as some tend to do. Again, don't get me wrong, I am not generalizing about Americans, they come as differently as other nationalities, but the basic cultural differences between me and them, made me realize that my life there was unreal or at least not grounded in a settled notion of everyday life.

One of the reasons it feels unreal is of course that many of my loved ones, including my family, are far away and not easy to talk to due to time difference and diverging schedules. The fact that these people cannot understand my everyday life as I do, means that they cannot advise me in normal matters (like bureaucratic issues or language specific concerns) and that I feel even more removed from them. I think I end up choosing to stay attached to people instead of places, which in return makes my everyday life feel so unreal. I make people in my life important, no matter where, in what time zone they are. Or perhaps it is just the 4 1/2 hours of sleep talking and I will feel perfectly real in my own life tomorrow.

It was never meant to be like this

When I have a rough day, a straining hour or even just a bad moment with Zoe, like loosing my temper on a subway platform, I often think that it was never meant to be like this. Parenthood was never meant to be a single or even duo person chore. The good old saying "it takes a village" echos in my ears as I wonder where my support network is. Because having my lifestyle and career means that there might be many supporters but none next door. I have several close friends that I could call up at any hour of the day (and I do occasionally); I have wonderful family who even visits often, but all these people all are between 1 and 10 hours flight away and have been since Zoe was born. When I hit my head badly on the kitchen sink last night and the thought flashed through my mind that I might need stitches (not that it was that bad of a bruise but one's mind does tend to wander towards the extreme) the only one I could think of to call to look after sleeping Zoe was a younger male friend of ours who lives 10 minutes away. Not a close friend, not someone who have ever looked after Zoe or any other kids for that matter, but someone who Mark goes drinking with and who works in the same research center as we do. We have colleagues, but none whose phone number I have, or who lives within any proper distance. There is no village.

Modern parenthood is very independent and lonely in its structure and we tend to pay people to do the chores that was done by extended family and neighbors in "the good old days". This has become even more apparent now that we don't have an arsenal of payed people in our household anymore (well at least a nanny, a cleaning lady and an occasional babysitter seemed like an arsenal when we now only have one busy occasional evening sitter). Scandinavian daycare and wage levels plus our general financial situation means this is no longer an option.  When Zoe was sick two weeks ago and Mark's board meeting overlapped with my teaching I called an emergency nanny service. I left a sick toddler with a stranger and paid her a considerable amount of money to go to work. She was my village.

I keep reminding myself that this is how things are; I have made a choice to live like this, I have decided that I can do that. Even when I scream at Zoe because I just can't take her crying for the 5th day in a row while I am in the shower and there is nobody to distract her and she got tired of Pingu, I try tell myself that it is okay because it was never meant to be like this. I am in an extreme situation. And perhaps one day soon there will be a bit more of a village.

Running mommy

Stockholm Subway: We live by Mariatorget (red line), work by
Kista (blue line) and Zoe's daycare is by Stadshagen (blue line)

If you see a woman running in the subway, to the train, between the trains and up again, that would be me. As I have talked about before, Zoe has a wonderful daycare but one that is now two times three subway stations away, which includes a quite long walk between trains at the central station, not to mention the several escalator/elevator rides down and up. Door to door it is half an hour, with a toddler in tow it is more like 40 minutes from the first attempt to put her snowsuit on, until she has her "home shoes" on (a Scandinavian must). The only good part about this setup (apart from the wonderful daycare with great staff) is that it is sort of on the way to work, meaning if we take the 'long' way to work, it is by one of the stations where the train stops (and of course Mark and I are lucky to work in the same building right now). But it still annoys me that I have to spend so much time in transport. Yesterday, for example I got my hair done at a boutique salon near home, which at the time of booking seemed like a good idea, but it turned out Mark had late meetings and I had to pick up Zoe. I have perfected the technique of the home-to-daycare journey from knowing exactly what train I can catch when I see the information board upstairs and I know exactly how fast I have to run between the two platforms to catch which train. I also know exactly which end of the train I need to be in and I even know which car, which door to get in the morning so I can go straight into the elevator with Zoe in the stroller without having to walk on the crowded platform. I get incredible annoyed when perfectly capable people take the elevator up from the platform, filling it up so I have to wait with Zoe in the stroller and I have no problem pushing my way through the long rolling pavement that separates the two platforms I have to change between on the central station. As a mom you suddenly realize how precious time is and daytime is extremely valuable to me. If I am not working I want to spend time with Zoe, not in the subway (and I particularly don't want to spend time in the subway with Zoe). So I guess that is why I run.