We woke up in a friend’s spare bedroom and took some clothes out of our suitcase. I chose a gray sweater because it had a hood. The skylights were filled with dark clouds, it could rain, its always good to have a hood on rainy days. We went to Octane for a coffee and croissant, then walked across the street to our bank one last time, trying to stay calm, but our cell phones were going berserk, people wanted to know how we felt, but how could we answer that truthfully without unfolding a long list of adjectives. Excited, ready, not ready, surreal, scared, worried, exhausted, expectant.
By the time we got back to Christiane’s house, we realized that our suitcase was too heavy. The problem was not the quantity of things, but the weight of things. We had to go buy a new suitcase, and then we only had 15 minutes to make the swap. 15 minutes to undo five days of meticulous packing. Whittling away at our possessions once again, trying to decide what was valuable, it all seemed valuable at the time, but choices had to be made. Knowing what we know now, we would have done it differently.
I almost left my pillow behind, but Diane would not allow it. She crammed that pillow into a tiny pocket of my carry-on bag, I’ll never understand how she managed to do it, but I’m so glad that she did. Friends were coming by to see us off. They stood around as we hovered over our scrambled lives, trying to squeeze in one more pair of socks. Fredo was crying, he had been crying all day, and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t worry me.
His brother was there to take the car, and sprawled across the backseat was the bike he’d built himself and ridden through every inch of Atlanta. There was a long embrace after the keys were passed, and so much weeping. I wonder if our friends were slightly worried too. They were there, offering consolation, wishing us the best of everything, and waving goodbye as we drove off in the backseat of Jessica’s car.
She took us to the airport. I don’t remember much about the ride, except that it was overcast, the interstates were congested, I had no idea what to say, but I was so grateful to be with Jessica. There was a calmness in her car, her voice, and in her eyes, there was a conviction about something that made me believe that everything was going to be okay.
This morning, we did not awake in the same city we flew to last year. It’s sunny in Stockholm. Fredo left early to get his hair cut. I’m having a cup of coffee. Soon, we will both go to work. Maybe we’ll go out to dinner tonight. We don’t go out nearly as much as we used to. Life is so different now, and we are still building ours back up. First, we had to lose everything. I don’t know precisely when we hit rock bottom, probably about six or seven months ago. We crawled across that bottom for weeks, mystified, until we found the strength to stand. To place one rock on top of another. And then another. And another. We are still going, there are so many rocks still scattered about, each day we must choose which one to grab next.
The joys and pains have been so high and so low, from pure euphoria to utter nightmare, but thankfully the distance between them is long, and we’ve spent most of our year traveling that distance. We have been foreigners, however, not travelers - and trust me, there is a big difference between the two.
Maybe soon I will be able to write about our first year in Scandinavia. Right now its still too close. It wasn’t until today that I could find any words to describe the day we woke up in Christiane’s guest room and flew over the Atlantic Ocean, and then the North Sea, with about 500 strangers.
Our first day in Copenhagen? We slept halfway through it, but the second half was pure bliss. Kids playing in the schoolyard, bicycles whizzing past our window in a steady stream, the air so clean we took it in gulps, we stopped for a coffee and drank it at the sidewalk café table, we stumbled through cobblestone streets, into quaint courtyards, and then into a local grocery store. How much do things cost here? Much more than we imagined.
Its been one year, and what a year it has been.
7 notes