wanderlust and lusting for a home

Since our "manif", there hasn't been much excitement. I've been listening to students' oral exams & running errands. Monday was eight hours in the office; Tuesday was four hours of trotting between groceries, banks, the train station & the office. It's like we're real members of the Work Force this week.

I don't like it.

Yesterday, I got a statistics book from the American library. I have a few that I found online via Open Courseware, but it's difficult for me to read at a computer for an extended period of time. Plus, if I want to study in the park, I can't do it with my computer. Thank God the author has a sense of humor. He wrote this book just for me–dedicated "To those who open this book with dismay."

So I have my official, daily to-do list for the weeks when I have no work at the university, and now I have all of the supplies to go with it (a statistics book and, well, that's it really). It has me thinking a lot about graduate school. About putting the table cloth my mom cross-stitched for us and napkins my sister cross-stitched to match on our first kitchen table. About getting an album for our wedding photos and putting them all together. About buying a full-sized bed.

I keep running through the whole process of moving and decorating our apartment. I keep looking at a map of France, deciding what we should definitely do before we have to leave. I keep feeling myself torn slowly in half like a used subway ticket–part of me blowing away and settling on a pigeon-covered sidewalk here in France; part of me getting packed up and coming home.

While flipping through friends' blogs yesterday, I came across the word "wanderlust" and wondered how much it applied to me. I live for travel now, the next chance to see something, eat something, feel something new. I wonder what that part of me will do when we try to settle into some semblance of a settled couple. I don't think we'll feel settled for a long time.

And this thought in turn frustrates the other part of me–the part that still swells when I think of my childhood and how good it feels to get back to Ohio, to bike to my grandparents' houses, to have a backyard perfect for wiffle ball. I want a home, and we're at least three years from considering it. I want a backyard and a garden and a space that any kids we'd have would know is permanent, can be where they will always belong.

I spend more days frustrated than excited that our married life is torn between four locations–families in Ohio and Indiana, a life in France, memories of and hopes for a life in St. Louis–but then I get excited about the places we haven't been yet. It will be interesting to see how the pieces begin to grow together in Bloomington. I imagine it like the croissants lining so many shop windows–Layers and layers of fond memories and great expectations, but when you try to devour them, to enjoy them all at once, they fall apart and leave you feeling like an absolute mess. I've got to take this slowly, to peel a few layers of and enjoy them before dipping the next buttery bit off and dipping it in some strong coffee.

This will all take a lot of time, and I have to be okay with that. I keep telling myself this; I keep telling you this. It's just beginning to sink in.

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