![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=91.7){kind=small}
One week before Christmas, and on a weekend to boot, we had to notify our landlord that he may have to shell out for an expensive emergency plumber. We were a bit anxious making the call, but it had to be done. The landlord was very understanding and had a plumber at our flat early the next morning. Did I mention before that we have a great landlord? The plumber decided the best thing to do was drain all the hot water radiator units and reset the system. The whole process took about 2 hours and Husband managed to have a nice chat with the 30 something plumber from South Africa while he worked.
After the plumber left, Husband said “Very interesting guy, that plumber. He’s living in zone 6 renting a one bed flat with his wife. They are in the process of emigrating to Australia after having been in the UK for about 2 years to earn some money. He decided to leave South Africa when a friend of his was held up at gunpoint and mugged. His wife is 8 months pregnant so I guess they are looking for a safer place to settle and raise kids.”
“Well that makes sense”, I reply “It is very brave of them to start from scratch in a new country with a newborn. I bet he made a fortune working in London as a plumber, especially if he makes house calls on Sunday’s.”
“Probably. Maybe I should become a plumber! Then we could live in the countryside near my dad and earn a decent living.” Husband said as he reached for his freshly brewed cup of tea.
I could see the thoughts behind Husband’s eyes as he sat down at the table and thumbed yesterday’s newspaper. Apart from living in Toulouse in southern France with a mate for about 3 months, Husband has never had an experience of living in a foreign country. In the UK there has been a cultural trend to travel and see the world for several months or even a year. Many of Husband’s friends and family have done this, not just once but several times, but he never really had the opportunity. Now that he is in his 30’s and we are talking about mortgages and babies, the idea of travelling or living abroad is looking more and more unrealistic.
“You know,” I interrupt his thoughts, “we could always move to New York in a couple of years. I mean, I know we’ve agreed that we don’t want to settle in London but we don’t have to always live in the UK either. We could move to the US or somewhere in Europe if you want to.”
“Yeah, maybe. But New York is just as expensive as London is, so we wouldn’t be doing ourselves any favours there. Perhaps California? I don’t know, we’ll see. It’s an option, anyway.”
Our problem is that we have too many options. When you are given too many options it is difficult to make a decision because you will always wonder if you made the right choice. Because I am American we can live anywhere in North America. Because Husband is English we can live anywhere in Europe. The difficult part would not just be choosing where to live - but rather deciding to throw in the towel and move abroad in the first place. After all, it has taken us 5 years of living together to create a home for ourselves as we slowly upgraded our inherited and mismatched bits of stuff into respectable items of furniture. We’ve endured the painstaking climbs of career mobility, paying our dues and putting in our time at horrid office buildings with beastly managers. We’ve networked and schmoozed at industry gatherings and built up professional reputations. Although we may not love our jobs 100% (I don’t believe that anyone really does) we certainly do not hate them and we feel confident that we are on reasonably successful career paths. How could we walk away from all that to go traveling for 6 months?
Perhaps I should indulge him and plan a trip around the world for my last trimester? We’d have to take trains (you cannot fly while heavily pregnant) so it would limit us, but perhaps it is not such a bad idea after all? Besides, we want to leave the city and our jobs eventually – why not put our stuff in storage and hit the road? The idea of it makes me laugh. In reality husband and I would be terrible travellers – we’d be too busy complaining about fleas and lumpy mattresses to have a good time. We are no longer young enough to enjoy sleeping in less than clean surrounds, and too old to cope with getting ‘Delhi belly’.
There does seem to be a quarter life crisis element to all this. We’ve seen many friends give up the flat and job for the thrill of starting over. Because the inevitable truth to the traveling scenario is that you do eventually return, and the opportunity to go down a new fresh path presents itself. A stint abroad becomes like a ‘get out of jail free’ card and you no longer have to commit yourself to the professional hand you’ve been dealt since leaving university. There gets a point in your adult life when you can either stick with your lot, or twist. And in this current economic climate there is a lot of twisting going on amongst generation Xers – fueled, in no small part, by their inability to buy a home: they have nothing to lose.
But I don’t think ‘twisting’ was the motivation behind our South African plumber’s imminent move to Australia. No, his motivation was to provide his family with a better opportunity. And my own move from the USA to the UK was mainly done for a lifestyle change rather than to shake things up by ‘twisting’. It is this longing for a lifestyle change that I can see motivates Husband’s desire for an experience abroad. And moving abroad is a much more likely scenario for us than traveling. I like the idea of my children growing up in the USA for a part of their childhood – there are so many cultural experiences I would feel guilty of depriving them of, like Halloween and the 4th of July, if we did not live in the States for at least a little while. I also like the idea of living in a European country so the kids can immerse themselves in a foreign language and soak it up like sponges.
Well whatever we decide, moving abroad won’t be a decision we make until years from now. I think perhaps what is causing Husband to yearn for adventure now is simply his coming to terms with our decision to have kids. It was no coincidence that he got his first grey hairs directly after he proposed marriage, and each milestone that we approach brings out a few more. Husband realises his days of carefree abandon are numbered and soon he will be tied down, bound by the responsibilities of fatherhood. But with any luck, once the sleepless nights are over, he won’t be thinking about what he never got to do, but rather he’ll begin dreaming about all the adventures he can have with his kids.
