The very hungry FSOs…

February 10, 2021 / cdncarolina / 1 Comment

When C was a baby we, like many (many) parents often read “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” by Eric Carle to her. To this day, one of my favorite “Baby C” words (which she still sometimes trips over) is “calipitter” which we heard again and again as “Read calipitter!” We are LONG past that book (we’re more into Percy Jackson and Wings of Fire now), but the lessons of making our way through apples, pears, plums, oranges, strawberries, chocolate cake, ice cream, a pickle, Swiss cheese, salami, lollipops, cherry pie, sausage, cupcakes, and watermelon (we’ll skip the leaves, thanks) seems to be the story of our lives lately.

The epidemic and its “knock on effect” for a lot of people, including us, has been to spend more time baking at home, cooking at home and, not surprisingly, eating at home. We had one glorious weekend early in our time in Istanbul when we joined a visiting friend of ours at a couple of scrumptious restaurants (one of which was a “gerçek” (real) American” BBQ place called The Rusty Fork – baby back ribs, pulled pork and bacon – a rare and wonderful treat in a predominantly Muslim country). We also joined her on a food tour in the back alleys near the famed Istanbul Spice Bazaar where we were treated to dürüm – a Turkish wrap usually filled with kebab meat – and pide – a “sort of” Turkish pizza (but not really) – in local haunts that we would never have found on our own.

On that tour, we also tried roasted chestnuts from a street vendor, a traditional pumpkin dessert with a tahini dressing (not so sure we’ll be tasting that again…) and we had a çay (tea) at pretty much every place we went. The Turks love that C drinks tea and she loves that they make sure to always give her lots of sugar cubes to go with it. It was all (except that pumpkin thing) delicious.

Eventually we wound our way back to the Spice Market and I bought WAY too much fennel seed (you’d think I would be adept at using the metric system after 2 years in Australia and 18 or so years in Canada, but alas…) while C was treated to various candies and sweets by the vendors lining the historic covered alleys.

In retrospect, we have been desperately glad that we had that opportunity to do some “outside” eating, because, since then, we’ve been pretty much confined to our apartment for meals. We are very (very) lucky to have a small café in the complex from which we can order pretty good food to be delivered directly to our front door, as well as the myriad of apps in Istanbul that will deliver food to you faster than I sometimes think possible. The delivery from “Getir” is so fast that last week I realized I had forgotten to buy pasta for dinner (spaghetti, so somewhat necessary) and Getir delivered it to me before the noddle water had boiled.

This easy access to ingredients – both from Getir and, every Thursday, from our local bazaar – has fueled our eating/cooking frenzy in the last few weeks (the hours of bingeing on The Great British Bake Off might have had some influence as well…). I’ve made challah several times with our upstairs neighbor, and since my recipe makes two loaves, I’ve also make challah cinnamon rolls several times. Last weekend B decided he was going to master puff pastry – from scratch – so we’ve had two straight weekends with sweet and puffy palmiers for breakfast. I’m working on perfecting my homemade dill pickles, bagels, hummus, ice cream, and chimichurri, and I’ve made it my mission to try to make every type of cake I can find and figure out which one is best. So far I’ve managed angel food, a butter cake, a genoise and a classic “sponge.” Next on my list is a chiffon – but I’ve got to take a bit of a break lest I have to buy a whole new wardrobe for me and B.

*^{Anyone see a sugar/carb theme here?}*

All this cooking and eating has been a respite – and joy – in the midst of what continues to be for us – and so many people – increasingly difficult and sad days away from our families and friends. The vaccine for COVID has been a light at the end of the tunnel, but with the new variants causing chaos in so many places, it feels a bit as if the train has stopped moving with that pinpoint of light still unreachable in the distance.

Luckily, today I received a copy of Modern French Culinary Art in the mail which, apparently, is the bible of French cooking – so I’ve got a whole new crop of recipes to try. I’m not sure how many of the savory dishes I’ll attempt (open faced pickled tongue sandwiches or chicken mousseline forcemeat (!?) anyone?). But I’m willing to stay home just a little while longer to try out apple (charlotte), pear (à l’Imperiale), plum (pudding), orange (tart), strawberry (chantilly cream), chocolate cake and all the others right through to watermelon (cocktail with wine). With any luck by the time I make it through all the sweet things I want to try we will be able to emerge from this COVID cocoon and our “calipitter” days will be behind us.

Ode to North Carolina (and the joy it brings me)

May 11, 2015May 11, 2015 / cdncarolina / 1 Comment

My love affair with North Carolina began like many love affairs – I was drawn in by looks.

I went to university in Louisiana, but my family lived in Canada, so four times a year, once in summer and once in winter, I got in my trusty Chevrolet Celebrity and drove the 1,300 miles between those two places. A little over halfway through that journey – 12 of the 24 hours in, I’d hit North Carolina. In those days (the late 80s/early 90s) North Carolina was the only state I drove through that had wildflowers planted in the highway median. The program apparently started in 1985 – so by the time I was making my yearly treks in 1987 the flowers were pretty well established and were beautiful.

My journals from those days are packed away, so I can’t quote myself exactly, but sometime in 1989 during one of those drives when the flowers were particularly beautiful, I wrote in my journal that I had “a new favorite state: North Carolina.” I’ll never know whether my pronouncement then influenced my choice of law school later, or whether it was predestined that I end up at UNC, but 20 years later – most of which were spent in that state – I still consider it my favorite.

The funny thing about moving in 2015 is that it is not terribly difficult to keep in touch with people. There are phones attached to our hips all day long – and we can not only use them to call the people we love and miss, but we can use them to text, email and facetime those same people. But it is impossible to keep in touch with a place you love, other than through sporadic visits. C and I made one such visit recently – spending 4 lovely amazing days in Charlotte, the place that will always be our “home” even when we are half a world away.

We were in Charlotte in March and it still felt like winter in D.C. It was cold and damp and I spent a good part of every time I was outside reminding myself that I wouldn’t have to endure a full winter again for at least two years while we are in Africa. To know me is to know that I am ALWAYS cold in the winter. I feel like I spend months just trying desperately to warm up. I can’t tell you how many times people say something to me like “but you’re from Canada, how can you be cold here?” Seriously though – I’m cold EVERYWHERE that it isn’t over 75 degrees. And besides, I’ve done winter, folks. Nineteen years of living through Canadian winters was enough winter to last a lifetime. I’m done with it – a yearly Christmas vacation of snow, skiing, skating and tobogganing is great – but a week of it is enough.

So we left D.C. where it was 36 degrees and we arrived in Charlotte, where, on our first day there the high was into the 70s. And the trees were budding. And the daffodils were blooming. I swear I almost dropped to my knees in joy when I saw those daffodils. We were outside without winter coats. My hands did not feel like Snow Miser was clutching them all the time. It was heaven.

Am I wrong or does Snow Miser look a little like B’s boss’s, boss’s, boss…

Then we started visiting – places, people, friends, restaurants and my heart was both a little fuller – and a little emptier. We stopped and looked lovingly at our house that B and I built – arduously picking fixtures, colors, layouts, making nooks and crannies where there were none, and C asked me if we could stay there. Then I had to say “No, because someone else is living there now.” It solidified my belief that we have done the right thing by keeping the house for now and renting it out, because I am not ready for it not to be ours – not ready to shut the door on the possibility that one day we can stay there again.

Charlotte, because it is a “young” city – with lots of transplants who are also young – is an ideal city for a child. I’m convinced that there is more to do with a 4 year old in Charlotte than in D.C., which, with its depth and breadth of history, is more suited to a 10 year old, or 15 year old. Charlotte is full of museums and parks and places that are geared to small children and we tried mightily to visit as many of those places as we could.

And, perhaps most importantly of all, Charlotte is full of people who mean the world to us. So, despite what I said above, and despite the fact that it really is SO much easier in this day and age to keep in touch with people, there is nothing quite like hugging the people you love. Sitting with them on a back porch, with the warm (WARM!) sun on you, drinking wine while your children, who were once the dreams you talked about, and then infants together, play in the yard and start the next generation of friendships which will endure through time and, now in our case, space.

I am going to miss our friends and family without a doubt, but I hope that I will also get many opportunities over the next couple of years to chat with them, talk to them and visit with them. I know I won’t get that opportunity with Charlotte or North Carolina. The feeling of peace and belonging we feel there will have to travel with us, in our hearts, to deepest darkest Africa, and wherever else this adventure might take us.

January in Canada

November 14, 2014November 15, 2014 / cdncarolina / 3 Comments

In January 1970, my parents boarded a plane in London, England and flew 3,550 miles to Toronto. They then drove another 2 1/2 hours to a town of approximately 400 people (404 when we arrived) called Arkona, Ontario. They brought with them a 26-month old (me), a six-month old (my sister) and, according to them, not much else. They left behind their parents, their siblings, their homes and everything they had ever known.

My mother had been born and raised just outside London. She was 28 and had just finished medical school and her residency. She had never been to Canada, or anywhere in North America, before she carried her two girls onto that plane and set off for an unknown life.

It is cold in Canada in January. There is snow; lots of it. When they arrived at their little (very little) house, which they had never seen before, and did not “chose,” there was probably not much to see in Arkona except snow. By mid-January winter is also not that pretty in Ontario. It has lost the sparkly newness of December. Christmas is over and there is a long (long) time before the next holiday (Easter) and the next warmth (often long after Easter). It is a difficult time. Bitter cold and short days making everything feel lifeless and dark.

Our street in London, Ontario circa winter 1975 – a lot bigger than Arkona…

My Dad, who had graduated from medical school the year before my Mum, had a job at the local clinic. When they arrived my mother did not have a job. My parents had opted to put her brand new – and hard fought – career on pause and move to Canada for the opportunity afforded by my Dad’s new job, hoping that once they arrived she too would be able to find work.

If my Mum wanted to talk to her mother – or father, or brother, or best friend, or anyone from England – she had two options: an airmail letter carefully scripted on vellum-thin blue paper and trusted to the Canadian Postal Service, or a very expensive long distance call with awkward pauses and echoing words across the Atlantic.

As we embark on this life of perpetual relocation, I am fascinated thinking about my parents in those early days. Particularly thinking about my mother. Alone in a cold, unfamiliar place with very little to do and two small children.

I don’t remember a thing about our immigration to Canada, just like, I suspect, C will not remember living in Charlotte, moving to D.C. and, in a few months, moving to Kinshasa. But, nevertheless, I feel for my mother when C breaks down in tears and asks about her friends, or her old house, or her old bed, because, whether she remembers it or not in 20 or 30 years, right now it is a trauma for her and is, no doubt, having an effect on her. I suspect, likewise, I was not that easy to live with right after we came to Canada.

On the days when I’m feeling particularly weepy and missing our friends and Charlotte, I wonder “how did she do it?”

I have Facebook, and Skype, and text messaging, and basically free long distance. When I get bored in our apartment, I leave. I get on the Metro and go into one of the most fascinating and amazing cities in this country (if not the planet), with amazing restaurants and museums and an endless list of things to do, not to mention many of my dearest friends. My child is in a daycare she loves where she is, in turn, loved and taken care of so B and I can do the things we want and need to do each day. I know moving to the DRC will be very different – I will not have the freedom to wander around the city and explore it, but, then again, I’m going to be stepping into a fully formed community of U.S. Embassy families who will help us navigate the streets, culture, stores and newness of Kinshasa. They have a blog that I can read right now to find out what sorts of events are going on (Happy hours, a Burger Burn and the Marine Corps Ball…to name a few), for heaven’s sake. My mother had none of that.

And, hand in hand with my mother, I also think about all the FS families who have gone before us. Who have stepped into the unknown of a new post without the internet, Amazon Prime, Skype and mobile phones. And it makes me realize that hardship is a wholly inaccurate and very relative term. What B and C and I are facing will be different, definitely, but hardship? “Severe suffering and privation”? No. It will not be that.

And so, when I look out my window at the streets of Arlington, and I’m homesick for the streets of Charlotte, I try and picture the streets of Arkona, with grey skies and lots of snow, and I remember how lucky I am, and, as well, how thankful I am that my mother (and Dad) braved the view (or lack thereof), the snow, the homesickness and sadness they felt, in order to give our family the amazing life we’ve had. I hope one day C feels the same way.

Rekindling

November 2, 2014November 2, 2014 / cdncarolina / Leave a comment

The summers I spent at camp were spent sleeping in tents in the woods, not, as seems to be the norm today, in cabins. The younger kids were grouped together, but as we got older we became more and more isolated until, as CIT’s (counselors in training), we found our tents a good distance from the main lodge and all the other campers.

We would often have campfires in our isolated little area and sit around until the fire died down and the embers glowed, but barely cast any light. We would lie in the dark and talk and watch the stars above us. Inevitably though (we were teenage girls after all) there were nights when some topic or other jump started our desire to be fully awake again and we would bank the fire and do our best to rekindle it so we could get back in its warmth and light.

I’ve been thinking a lot about that rekindling lately. The isolation and stir-craziness I sometimes feel being in our apartment pretty much all the time (living and working) has prompted me to get out when I can to do lunch with old friends who, at some point or another, have found their way to D.C.

Love reconnecting with old friends – 10 years later (hello 1994!)

A couple of weeks ago, I went to lunch with two of those friends and we had such a lovely time that one of them promptly invited us both (and our “entourages” (B & C for me)) to dinner at her house with her family. As we drove home that night it felt like that rekindling of the warmth and light from a fire and I wondered how I had managed to let these people get away from me and fade into soft glows over the years. I am feeling a tremendous sense of loss for something that I haven’t had for about 10 years (the number of years since these people left Charlotte). These are fabulous, interesting people who I can talk easily with, who I share some history with, who are, despite our lack of contact for many years, dear to me. And now, just as I am rekindling them and our friendship I am realizing that I’m going to leave. Suddenly, despite our desire to get on our way, 9 months doesn’t seem like long enough to be in this city. It doesn’t seem like long enough to bank these fires and get them roaring again.

Add to this the (almost) equally strong desire to build up the new friendships we have made through B’s A-100 class and our calendars don’t seem nearly large or open enough. Now that B is in language training (in a class of 3 people instead of a class of 84) there are not as many opportunities to hang out with all these new fascinating people who are also contemplating their new lives in the FS – and some of whom are only weeks, not months, away from moving to their first posts (one person in B’s class has already left!) So we find ourselves juggling the rekindling of past friendships with the building of new friendships – and, while I recognize that it’s a good problem to have, it is, nevertheless, a problem. Perhaps I should go back to my teenage days of believing that a good conversation with my friends lying under the stars was worth the sacrifice of a good night’s rest, and hope that once we get to Kinshasa we’ll have plenty of time to catch up on our sleep.