Normalization - Part 2

I started this blog post in October then never bothered to sit down and finish it.  I think it's an excellent place to lead into an end of year review, though, so I'm just going to add on.  The below text in italics was written almost 3 months ago, the rest was written today.  

We've reached the point where our life here is very comfortable.  The honeymoon period is still there, but it's waning and I can feel that I've started thinking about things without the lens of bliss.  At least once every other day, Nic and I will look at each other and say something like "Yep, our life is great.  No complaints."  Even when it's a frustrating day or something happens that requires an urgent care visit, we are completely happy.

This contentedness, this fullness, has become our new normal.  We are active, we have routine, our house has what we need in it, we know where we're going and how things work, the kids have friends and activities that they participate in...

... they don't have active shooter drills at school.  No one is concerned about their genders.  No one asks them where their parents are when they go to the park by themselves.  We aren't going to spend hundreds of Euros on their medical care.  It's more affordable to feed our family fresh and healthy food than otherwise.

Previously, I'd written about how observing my own self-defense mechanisms against the everyday trials of living in the US helped me to understand more deeply how the bad things in a society become normalized.  The "this is just the way it is" response leads to a feeling of helplessness and lack of action toward any significant change.  

After 13 months of living in the Netherlands, my normal has changed so much that I'm slightly terrified of returning to the US to visit.  I'm afraid that my culture shock will be intense and the guilt of leaving others who I love behind will be overwhelming.  When we come to visit in the summer, it won't be the big things that freak me out, though.  The US will be in full-swing with the presidential election (and even the Netherlands may still be fighting off its own far-right resurgance), but I've pushed away the huge hopelessness of the world for as long as I can remember (at least back to around age 8).  

It will be the little, everyday things that hit me.  It will be the need to drive, how expensive food and healthcare are, the now unfamiliar fear of walking down the street at night, discussing homelessness and poverty and drug use with my kids again now that they've been away from it existing in their daily lives for so long.  It will be the cultural pull of everyone needing to compete against each other and carve out space for themselves, the rat race of basic survival in the US.  It will be the idea that being queer and having basic rights isn't a given, the idea that those rights need to be claimed and defended with guns, and the fact that the Other side feels the same way and lives across the street.

I will also be overwhelmed by the hills, the mountains, and the trees.  I will find a log and sit in Point Defiance crying for a few hours to myself or with my family because I've missed the smell of the forest so much.  My kids might wonder aloud what is wrong with me, but on the inside they'll also be full of nostalgia and homey warmth at the smell of the woods in the summer.

I might walk into the Parkway Tavern and cry because no bar here could possibly feel as much like home as the Parkway once did, before kids and the pandemic shifted my life away, long before we left the country.  

Moving to the Netherlands has been one of the best decisions and experiences of my life, but there are still pieces of Tacoma that will always fill my heart in a specific way.  Just like the pieces of Portland that will forever trigger the Big Feels.  It's by no means perfect here, because humans are humans across the world and perfect can never truly exist.  But we are happy here.  It feels right here and our new normal has been so worth it.