Have you ever been asked this question? In a kind way, not
an irritated way, I mean? I imagine most people appreciate being asked that. And
my Aussie friend tells me to focus on it as I continue to look for a place to
live. It makes sense, of course. I don’t want to commit to another mortgage for
a home that doesn’t feel like home.
But I have to admit that I don’t like that question. Because
of all the tasks I have in life, of all the decisions I have to make, it’s the
hardest thing I know: how to figure this out.
You may think I’m joking. But I am deadly serious. I envy
greedy people sometimes, because clearly they know the answer. I never know
what I want, and often not what I need, either. And I’m not sure why this is
so.
It probably has something to do with growing up in the
pre-feminist era – when girls read things like this in magazines: “Ask him
about his hobbies and let him decide where you should go on a date.” All this
talk about how to get a man, and how to keep him once you’d got him. When I was
married, I worked very hard to figure out what my husband wanted. I may have
taken it too far, because I recall the time when we were remodeling a bathroom
and I had three binders of wallpaper samples. I knew exactly which two samples
my husband was going to pick (and we ended up using one of those). But I had no
clue which ones I liked.
That was scary.
If you don’t know what you want, it’s easy to bury yourself
in others’ wants and needs. SO much easier. You don’t have to look at your own
messy self, at the neurotic parts and those bad habits and vices. You can bury
that whole conversation under rushing around doing things that have to get
done. Being a single mom was perfect for that. There was always something to
mend, cook, or wash, always someone to ferry, nag, kiss…you get the picture.
So here I am in this new land, with a full-time job that
actually has reasonable working hours, and I suddenly don’t have to spend all
of my waking hours making money or taking care of children. This leaves all
kinds of time for the uncomfortable pursuit of ‘what I want’.
The truth is, I do know what I want on a more universal
level – things like beauty, justice, health friendship, love -- not to mention all those things I want for my children. It’s those issues that
aren’t quite as significant that I have trouble with: do I want to live in a
smaller place closer to campus, or a larger place farther away? Do I want to spend
my spare time on music, writing or volunteering? Should I buy a car? etc. etc.
Writing this, the thought that comes to me is “Well, isn’t
THAT a first-world dilemma!”
Maybe I’m asking the wrong question. Rephrasing it, I could
say that I am open to the discovery of what I want. I’ve realized that living
in this new country has made me much less afraid of the unknown. I really don’t
have a choice -- it’s not like I have a ‘safe’ place to hunker down in.
Everything makes me vulnerable – the weather, the language, the new job
requirements, the new people. And in this openness, there is a rare freedom to
explore options I might not have thought about before. I could decide to live
in an absolute minimum of space but travel more frequently. I could die my hair
purple (as a frightening number of middle-aged women do here) and start to wear
red boots (I bought myself a pair for my birthday). I could start bar-hopping…OK.
I definitely know I don’t want to do that. But the freedom of fantasizing about
the possible options is an unexpected benefit of moving 5000 miles...I mean 8000
kilometers... from home.
