Taking the plane to school

On the Amtrak going to Northern California, looking out at the hilly green landscape I tried to plan the next four month in even more details. As much as I'm excited about my new job and the thought about never having to be apart from Zoe for more than a week, I'm also realistic. It will be hard. I'll be tired and I'll be missing meetings, missing friends, trying to write that brilliant paper on my one hour flight and have breakfast in the lounge more than I care (their coffee is not that good). But it wasn't until I bought (and wow, it's easy for me to buy plane tickets with my mobile Scandinavian Airlines app) a plane ticket for me and Zoe to fly from Copenhagen to Stockholm, early one October morning so she can make it for school that day, that it dawned upon me the reality of this: My daughter, Flybaby, will be taking the plane to school. If we catch the first 6:15am plane from Copenhagen, we can just make it for 8:30am, being probably 15 minutes late. But I have a work dinner the previous evening, so we have no choice. It's not just my life that will be chopped into pieces of different settings and countries, it is also Zoe's. I hope that I'll be able to support her and comfort her if it is all too much one day, and I hope that I will be relaxed enough to just let things (and plane tickets) go if she needs to take it easy.

I arrived at my California destination and rolled my little suitcase out to my hotel. Later on, Zoe's dad texted me telling she misses me. My heart broke in two and I had to comfort myself with with the fact that in 10 days we will be reunited. Meanwhile I have a committee meeting to run, six big boxes of stuff to pack, one lecture to write and a couple of flights to take back. 

Fly party

I told my friend that I had probably never flown as much in one week as I did this past week. Last Monday I flew back to New York from Stockholm and Friday I flew to California to attend a party. This was of course not just any party but a dear friend's yearly highlight of a party that I have flown over/up to many times. This year there were at least five reasons for me to go (including but not limited to racking up miles, hanging out with a guy I really like and seeing other friends) and I even managed to mix a bit of business into the pleasure. One thing I have realized with work is that if you are there, people think of you. If you are not there, people don't think of you.

Zoe's first latte, February 2013

As much as I hate flying (I know it's contradictory but I really hate the actual being in the air), the trip was still fairly painless, my jetlag made it easy to get up at 3am in the morning to catch a 5am flight and the lounge provided me with food and drinks. I managed to work on the flight out (remaking the syllabus for the class I'm teaching this semester) and sleep on the way back (because sleep was not something I got much of those two days). I nostalgically walked through SFO thinking back to the many times I had traveled there with Zoe, it was as if the places in the airport had her imprints. That was the sushi place where we had dinner, that was the bathroom where I had changed her when she was a baby. That was the moving walkway where she lost her balance while pulling her too big suitcase and that was the Starbucks where she had drunk her first vanilla latte, literally taking it out of my hands. The memories were sweet perhaps also because I know it is only a bit more than a month until her and I will pass through that airport again, together.

Friends around the world

I am so lucky. I have so many really really good friends, spread around the world. But as it turns out several of them live here in California and particularly in the Bay Area where I am for three weeks. It all started when I was a visiting research student at UC Berkeley over 10 years ago but several of my friends have also moved here more recently. For a week I have been going out almost every night with new or old friends, dancing swing dance, drinking margaritas and conversing over single origin drip coffee. The weather is beautiful as always and the people are friendly and fun. I have given talks at the big tech companies and get work done during the day, sometimes in the company offices with colleagues. I get reminded what it is like to be part of a company where a significant group is working seriously on the same research issues. And my heart ached slightly at the thought because this is what I really miss in my life, back in Stockholm. I miss that critical mass of research colleagues who work on similar issues and who you can talk to about it. Leaving today, shaking the hand of the manager whom I have known for years, I had to hold my tongue to refrain from suggesting that they hire me. I want so badly to work at this place and have this group.

After going to the gym for an hour and a half, I took the Caltrain back and cooked dinner while looking forward to Monday when I finally get Zoe back. She counts the days and I count the days. Three more nights and three more days and I'll pick her up from daycare and take her down here to my friends where she can play with the other children and we can hug and chat all night. Her dad is the reason I cannot move back here. She and I would love it though. And I would have just a few more of my friends nearby. 

California dreaming

I'm back in California for a couple of weeks, and excited and happy are not words enough to describe the feeling. Home isn't either because being an expat for half my life, I'm home when I have Zoe, when I can joke with people around and have friends nearby. So this is just one of my many homes. But this is one of the happiest homes, if not the top one.

Walking back from the pharmacy yesterday, to the friend's house where I'm staying, I sucked in all the sunny air and all the smiles and all the friendliness that is around me. From the woman who had turned around in the queue at CVS to discuss the brush she was buying and me engaging, thinking this might be a good brush for Zoe's tangled hair, to the restaurant manager who walked over to a playing Zoe and explained very nicely and gently that Zoe needed to stay within a certain space, not to have the waiters fall over her. I was gobsmacked and just blurted out how in Sweden (or Denmark for that matter) the manager would have walked over to me and told me firmly and rudely that I needed to keep my child in tow (which of course would have lead to an argument between Zoe and me, but here, the manager knew that Zoe would react much more obediently to a stranger). From the amazing mexican food to the ad-hoc parties I'm invited to because this is where some of my best friends in the world lives. And they have ad-hoc parties.

I'm enjoying every minute, yet aching because I dropped off Zoe two days ago. She will spend the next week with her dad in San Francisco, going to a daycare there. I can't wait until I pick her up next Monday and I'm considering flying down south to take her to Disneyland. Just because I can. 

Travel confusion

Last night, in Copenhagen, I asked Zoe to pack her backpack with toys to take to Scotland where she will spend a week with her dad (and his new girlfriend but that's a whole other issue that I'm not ready to go into here yet) but she quickly got upset with me. "But how will I remember to take them back?", she cried and I had to sit down with her and explain that she was not going to Stockholm despite us flying there, she was continuing straight to Scotland, before coming back to Copenhagen in a week. No wonder she was confused because the past weeks have been nothing but Mommy travel, Daddy travel, her spending weekends with babysitters and now five days in Denmark. Now she was going to Scotland via Stockholm because I have to fly with her still. We sat hugging for a while and I empathized with her feeling of being tossed around like a ball and not being able to decide anything herself. I promised that very soon she would be able to decide on her own when she wanted to go where and how she wanted to go. Not that I think that is really a possibility but I need to figure something out. I am a structured parent who believe in stability and routines and parents' obligation to say no to their child, but I am also very aware of children's powerlessness in their lives, particularly in a split family like ours where her whereabouts depend mostly on our work travels. Yes, it's true, her home for the night mostly depends on which one of her parents are in Stockholm at that time.

After comforting her, I told Zoe (even though it was 9pm and bedtime) that we could play anything she liked for the next 15 minutes; she wanted to jump in bed, play magic ice powers and have a glass of milk. I decided to try to stick to the next step after this and told Zoe that after six days with Daddy she was coming back to me for 20 days, showing two hands two times. She was excited and we left it at that. I did not tell her that in the middle of those 20 days we are going to the US, first two days in New York, then to San Francisco where we will stay two days with my aunt, then Zoe will spend 11 days with her dad there before coming back to me and fly to Chicago where she will have a babysitter for two days and then go back to New York for a week with me. Both her dad and I got some work in California and will go back for a couple of weeks (he is staying for 5 weeks). This will be my first time back since we moved almost three years ago and I'm very excited. I'm also worried that I'll miss it too much when I'm there but hopefully it will be okay. I'm excited to see old friends, colleagues and show Zoe where she was born. But right now, all she knows about is her next trip.