Today I had an epiphany. I am moving. Now before you all join in a chorus of “Duh!,”  let me explain. As you know, I’ve been carefully planning this move for months. Over the last several weeks, I have been completely absorbed in the details required to get our family from Beijing to Shanghai. This has become almost a full-time job, characterized by ridiculously long to-do lists, endless sorting, purging, and packing, a plethora of errands, and myriad other small, but vital tasks.

In my quest to manage the logistics, keep the children happy, juggle an increasingly full calendar of events, and encourage my husband to focus less on our summer plans and more on our leaving Beijing needs, I somehow forgot to think about myself. I’m not a selfless person by nature, so this is a surprising realization. In fact, the older I get, the more often I tend to take time for real introspection.

I was raised by a mother who gave and gives of herself unceasingly. And, while I and my siblings and our neighbors and friends benefited from this, sometimes she suffered. So, I have learned from her to be generous and give what I can and even sometimes to give a little bit more. But, from my mother I have also learned the importance of keeping oneself healthy and emotionally balanced and with enough left in the tank to get through the inevitable rough patches or just the demands of everyday life.

Consequently, I was surprised this week to suddenly find myself feeling, well, sad. I’m moving, I thought. I’m moving.

I’m leaving behind my home and friends and routine.  I’m leaving the identity that I have forged, sometimes deliberately, sometimes inadvertently, in this corner of the world.

I’m abandoning the familiar in favor of the unknown. All the things that have become easy and normal will soon be hard and new, again.

I’ll have to make new friends and vet the children’s friends, again.

I’ll have to search for places to buy vegetables and shoes and stickers and tennis balls, again. I’ll have to find a new piano teacher, swim instructor, soccer coach, fabric store, flower market, pizza place, park, and favorite family restaurant, again.

I’ll have to be the family cheerleader, as usual, again. I started to feel overwhelmed.

I’m a pragmatist, some might even say a cynic. I focus on controlling what I can, and dealing with the rest as realistically as possible. I don’t believe in pretending that things aren’t happening, but I also don’t believe in wallowing when wallowing accomplishes nothing.

I’m capable and strong and resourceful and resilient. I’m smart and tenacious. I’m funny and good in a crisis. I’m not good at asking for help or sharing my emotions. I’m better at assessing a situation and responding to it.

I’m not especially good at anything, but I am really good at getting the job done.

This is how I have approached this move. I have focused on what needs doing and I have done it. I’ve had so many offers of help from friends and I have said, consistently, thanks for the offer, but we’re in good shape.

And, truthfully, in terms of the move, we are in good shape. At this point, I’m not panicking, I’m not worried, I can see the end and I know we’ll be ready.

But, will I be ready? Will I have enough time between now and getting on the plane and leaving Beijing for the last time, to get ready?

I didn’t build in time for that in my careful planning. I didn’t think about how I would feel.  I didn’t worry about my emotions or my needs. I’m the architect of our life, I’m the foreman, I’m the conductor. I’m the mom. I’m supposed to be ready, always. I’m supposed to smile and encourage and keep everyone moving in the right direction. That’s what I do. I like doing it and I’m good at it.

This time, however, I’m feeling a little less enthusiastic and a little more nostalgic. So, while we’re in good shape and I don’t need any help with the move, I do need some help. I need to be reminded to take a minute to focus on the joy that being here has brought me and remember that I have done this before, successfully.

I need to be told that friends and routine are not bound by geography. That our life, my life, will become familiar again. I need to go to lunch and get pedicures and spend time with my friends. I need help remembering that it is okay to be sad, healthy even, and that I’m not the only one feeling this way. I need to say, “I’ll miss you,” and hear that I’ll be missed, because I know saying and hearing that will make it easier to go.

You can find more of Linsey’s writing on her blog, Rambles and Ruminations.

Photo: Courtesy of Linsey Crisler

Prepping With Fun
As I mentioned in my last post, in preparation for our departure from Beijing, we’ve asked our three children to each think of three things they want to do before we leave. Their thoughts have ranged from one final feast at Xiang Man Lou, a sleepover with twenty or so of their best friends, to a last visit to the baozi place on the corner we have grown to love. Not surprisingly, their wants have a common theme, good friends and good food.

I’m not a parenting expert by any means, but I have mothering for over a decade and know my own kids pretty well. Consequently, I know this move is going to be hard on them. They have each grown so much here and really begun to forge their unique identities. They have made great friends and are starting to view the world through their respective lenses. They will each approach this move in a slightly different way.

Right now, it is all excitement and anticipation. Our conversations are dominated with talk of end of school year events, of which there is an endless stream, summer holiday plans, and parties, lots and lots of parties. I’ve been thinking about the overall plans, the minutiae, and the logistics involved with a major relocation for months, but the children haven’t really been involved in those discussions, not yet. However, reality is going to hit soon, and I expect it will be a bit of a bumpy landing.

Prepping for Each Individual Reaction
My oldest is a perfectionist. He likes to be in control. He likes to have information. He is not sentimental by nature, but his nature will be tested when it comes time to cull his possessions and say his goodbyes. We have already begun discussing with him what comes next and what it will take to get from here to there. He probably isn’t aware of it, but his subconscious is absorbing all these details, putting him in a better position to cope with the imminent changes, at least I hope so.

Our middle child is much more tender and prone to sentimentality. He doesn’t love change, not in the way I do, so I am trying to be particularly sensitive to that aspect of his personality. This move will be hardest for him. Although he is the most easy-going of all of us, he is also a creature of habit.

His world is about to be turned upside-down, and though we will try to ease him into it, there is only so much mitigating we can do. He’ll be sad, but we’re ready with pep talks and hugs and a long list of things to look forward to.  Once we arrive at our new destination, he’ll immediately begin the process of carving out a space where he can exist comfortably, at least until the next time.

My daughter is going to be the most dramatic and vocal. The final goodbyes with our beloved Ayi will be torturous, for all of us, but particularly for her. But, like most little children, with time and distance, the acuteness of the event will wane. She’ll find new distractions and people upon whom she can shower her devotion and affection.

She’ll forget about the princess kitchen that didn’t make the cut or the endless art supplies we’re leaving behind. She won’t remember the hundreds of drawings she insisted we keep forever, as long as we keep a few. She’ll hold our hands a little tighter and put up a pretense of timidity, but eventually, she’ll find her way through and will begin smiling and skipping through life, just like always.

Big change is a fact of our lives.
My husband and I are good at change. We’ve had years of practice and we have the benefit of pragmatism and hindsight. The kids, however, are still figuring it all out. A friend moving away feels very final. It isn’t, and often we have and will see those friends again, but their realities are much shorter than ours and far less nuanced. They are more inclined to live in the moment, so we try to make these big changes more about a series of little moments; therefore, hopefully less momentous.

We take things one step at a time and try to give them as much ownership and control as possible. Hence, the list of three things they made. We keep them busy and distracted, but also make time to really listen to them, to their fears, concerns, and hopes. This is their life, too, and they need to feel like their opinions matter, because, of course, more than anything else, they do.

Photo: Courtesy of Linsey Crisler

I knew before we ever arrived in Beijing, when we would be leaving.
It’s the nature of our job; we know the end even before the beginning. Some might think this is a little unnerving, but I like to think of it as a super power – or at least a sixth sense. Knowing how long we are going to live somewhere has taught me how to embrace my time in a particular place. I’ve learned to pace myself and not to squander opportunities.

For example, long before the notion of living in China had even been on my radar, much less a possibility, I saw a picture of the ice festival in Harbin in a magazine. I was mesmerized and immediately added visiting Harbin to my bucket list (I had a bucket list long before they were cool). Sure, it seemed like a far-fetched, unattainable goal at the time, but I was young and prone to dreaming the impossible, and I casually placed it near the top of my ‘things I need to see before I die’ column.

Fast-forward some twenty years.
As soon as I knew we were moving to China, I resurrected that long-dormant entry and began planning our visit. The more I learned about Harbin the more convinced I was that we needed to make the trip, but that we also needed to be prepared. Harbin is really cold. Freeze the nose hairs inside your nose when you breathe in cold. And, not super baby friendly, at least not to babies with thin blood, used to going outside with just a coat and gloves on to keep them warm during the mild, Mid-Atlantic winters.

Our youngest was just one year old when we arrived in Beijing, but I knew we had three and a half more years until the end of our tour, so I circled the calendar for January 2016, when she would be four years old and potty-trained. Also easier to convince that being outside in forty-below temperatures was fun because the ice was lit pink and blue and purple. I spent the intervening time planning other adventures until it was time to pull the trigger on a weekend amongst the tigers and ice. It was a wonderful weekend and a trip I highly recommend.

Since we knew how long we had, we were able to really embrace life in Beijing.
We could plan around fixed dates, a wonderful and surprising luxury to some.  We never worried about an abrupt departure or skipping things altogether because we think there will always be more time. We made friends with our local fruit and vegetable sellers who long ago stopped thinking of us as those crazy foreigners with three children but started greeting us with smiles and the hard-earned péngyou.

We enrolled the kids in weekend sports programs, without the worry that all our free time for playing tourist would be eaten up by long afternoons sitting on the sidelines of various pitches and fields. We learned the language, some of us anyway, and tried the cuisine, even learned to love the cuisine. We each have our favorite duck or hot pot spot. We walked our neighborhood and other neighborhoods, just taking in the sights and smells, unhurried and pausing to capture on film moments we’ll want to remember forever.

We’ve been to our favorites sites often and been able to share them with friends and family who came to visit. We made real, lasting friendships that will continue long after our time in Beijing comes to an end. And, we’ve been able to work around the unpredictability of the pollution, secure in the knowledge that there would be another day to visit the Summer Palace when the AQI wasn’t above 400!

We tried really hard to live our regular lives whilst in Beijing, while still acknowledging that we live in China.
We tried not to ignore the benefits of living in this amazing city while still maintaining our own version of stability and normalcy. We’ve done a good job, I think. We asked the children to each come up with three things they want to do before we leave Beijing.  We have 10 weeks to cross all their wants off our list. I’m confident we’ll get through everything they selected, and we might even have time to fit in one last visit to the Great Wall. We’ve been a million times, but it’s definitely worth another look.

You can find more of Linsey’s writing on her blog, Rambles and Ruminations.

Photo: Courtesy of Linsey Crisler

I’m not a hoarder by nature. But being an expat for the last 10 years and having coordinated 4 major moves, my views on “stuff” have shifted.

I save things.

If you ask my husband, sometimes I do so inexplicably. I save Christmas cards, packing supplies, small trinkets, magazines, anything that comes home from school, including an unending stream of what my children insist are artistic masterpieces. I can’t always see the creative genius, but they’d be heartbroken if we didn’t save every one, so I do.

I save containers in various shapes and sizes for, well, container emergencies like, “I need to make a diorama tomorrow,” or “There’s an egg drop competition.” or “Don’t you have a bag the perfect size for my collection of…?” And so on.

I’m also not the most organized person and holding onto things for longer than typical is my way of making sure nothing goes missing. From these revelations it might seem like I really am a hoarder or at least have tendencies in that direction, but I am saved from admitting this to myself by the fact that, every few years, we move and we are allotted a strictly enforced weight limit for our goods.

So we must purge, purge, purge before we leave.

Our next move is just months away. Our three years in Beijing are the longest we’ve ever lived anywhere since we picked up our lives and joined the expat throng and, consequently, our pile of possessions is a lot larger than usual. Mentally, I started the purging process long ago. I’ve thought my way systematically through each room and closet, taking stock of everything we’ve crammed in over the last 36 months and making lists of what can go, what can stay, and what should be sent to storage.

This was an unexpectedly emotional process, but I tried to be rationale, pragmatic, and keep the sentimentality to a manageable level. I thought I was making progress, gearing up for the inevitable sorting and donation runs, and so I shared my brilliant assessments with my husband.

I rattled off the no-brainers first, the items we could not possibly ever need or want again, then moved on to the more subjective areas – outgrown children’s books and games, nostalgia clothing we’ve held onto, but haven’t worn in years, gifts we’ve never used, but can’t seem to part with because they were gifts, and even things I’d prefer to keep if I had the luxury of limitless weight and space.

I glanced at my husband as I neared the end of this list, eager for his approval. But, his eyes were narrowed, his brow furrowed, he was just not in agreement with my carefully crafted plans. He was clearly not pleased. When I took a breath, he swooped in and item by item offered reasons why every single thing I mentioned had to be kept.

I was dumbfounded.

Didn’t he understand how much mental time and energy I had put into this? Didn’t he understand I too loved our things, I the keeper of tins and toilet paper rolls and a devotee of the phrase “just in case?” Did he not appreciate the effort involved in actually getting rid of this stuff in favor of just letting the movers pack up and paying an enormous bill when we went way over our weight limit? I was doing us a favor taking on this mammoth task and saving us money!

He, however, was steadfast in his objections, but I was formidable. I pointed out many of our beloved effects were taking up space and would serve someone else better. I reminded him there are myriad mechanisms available in Beijing for painlessly divesting ourselves of those things we hold dear, but are just excessive.

I convinced him we had more stuff than any family of five needs, and we could be content with less. A LOT LESS! And then I showed him the 6 large garbage bags full of stuff pulled from just my side of the closet in a single afternoon and finally the lights came on. He saw the fruits of my mental calisthenics and miraculously began to purge too.

We’re at the beginning of this process, but we’ve begun. We’ve done our homework and have plans to visit various charities with weekly drop-offs. I’ve got my advertisements ready to post on some online resources, and I’ve noted the dates for our office, school, and church rummage sales and toy drives.

We’re offering first dibs on everything to our Ayi and the other ayis in our building. And, slowly, we’re making headway. I’ll miss some of the things we’re parting with, but many I’ll forget about instantly and wonder why I ever thought we couldn’t live without them.

Except for maybe that one University sweatshirt shoved way back in the corner. That one I might keep, just in case!

6 Resources for Purging:

1. Roundabout
2. Operation Blessing
3. Bethel
4. Lion Club
5. Freecycle Beijing: FreecycleBeijing@yahoogroups.com
6. Beijing Mamas: beijing_mamas@yahoogroups.com

Photo Courtesy: Linsey Crisler