I haven’t moved very many times in my life. In the first 18 years of my life my family lived in just two house, and I only remember one of them: the house where I grew up, and where my parents still live today. Then there was college, when I shifted from dorm room to dorm room to my first rented house with friends, always having my childhood home as an option on weekends and school breaks. Then, after graduation, I lived with Daisy for a year in a cheap basement apartment which has now gone the way of so much real estate in Seattle: bulldozed to make way for exorbitantly priced high-rise housing.
My marriage coincided with my first big move; one month after saying “I do,” we said goodbye to the city, state, and country of our births and moved to Saudi Arabia for my husband’s job. We had 8 suitcases to our name and didn’t really know anyone in the odd little expat compound where we lived, but in our first year there, we grew into adulthood. We made friends, I took my first real teaching job, we painted the walls and bought a car, a scooter, and a small collection of beat-up used furniture. But after a year of settling into married life and life abroad, my husband’s job moved him again: across the country to the university where he’d gone for a free Master’s degree several years earlier. So we sold our car, scooter, and furniture and packed up our bags again, and dove into another fresh start.
This time we knew a few people from my husband’s grad school days, and we found the smaller community an easy place to plug in and get involved. We found a wonderful rhythm to life as we both worked jobs we enjoyed and spent our leisure time traveling and trying new things: scuba diving, ultimate frisbee, book clubs, desert gardening. This time, the move we never intended to be permanent started to feel that way. A year turned into six. Our families stopped asking us when we were moving back and came to visit us instead.
I used to say I would never have kids here, but then I came to see how happy all the young families around us are. The schools are world-class, the playgrounds are plentiful, the healthcare is free. We live five minutes from the beach and an hour from an airport that can take us to anything we can’t find right here…what’s not to love? So, after much trial and error and money paid and tears shed, we welcomed our sons to this crazy little corner of the world, and it started to feel even more like home–the only missing pieces had clicked into place.
But the nature of expat communities is transience. People come and go. We have become long-timers here, which means we’ve had to say goodbye to dozens of wonderful friends over the years. Each farewell always reminded me that one day, someday, in an unknown number of years, it would be us leaving our community and our life behind. Now, that day has finally come.
We aren’t coming home to the US, but my husband has accepted a new role in his company that requires us to move back to where we first started 7 years ago–the company headquarters on the other side of Saudi. Some things will be familiar, but I’m sure much has changed, and 90% of the friends we had back then have long since moved on. I know we’ll be fine, and I’m grateful that this could be a stepping stone to eventually returning to America and being close to our families again. But I am grieving. I’m loathe to leave the fantastic friends we’ve found here, the church that is like a second family to us, the amazing combination of amenities and community culture that simply doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world.
It breaks my heart to leave the 20-foot mango tree we planted from a seed and the house we brought our babies home to after long and stressful hospital stays. This place has been a haven and an idyllic home for us for the majority of our marriage, and I know nowhere else we’ll ever live will compare.
Part of why we stayed so long is that this lifestyle is so darn comfortable, but I know to find challenge and advancement both personally and professionally, it’s better to step outside one’s comfort zone. Many small signs nudged us in this direction over the past few months, and when the job offer came, it felt right. But that doesn’t change the fact that part of my heart will always remain in this special place, and I’m gonna miss it like crazy over the next few tumultuous months of long distance marriage, packing up, moving, and transitioning to a new normal, all with twin toddlers running amok.
It’s always been hard to explain why we love where we live so much, because when people hear “Saudi Arabia” it conjures up an image entirely different from our reality. But I hope this post helps to express why this upcoming move is so bittersweet–new opportunities are always exciting, but what is left behind is worth grieving and honoring, too.
You have my symapthy, Bluebell! A lot of what you described resonated with me. I felt in a similar way about Oxford. When the time came, we were both ready to leave, but there was this feeling: ‘is there anywhere in the world like this place?’. It was such an unusual place (quite different I think from your home in Saudi- but perhaps both equally unlike the regular world!).
I guess we should just be happy that we have found such places in our lives and enjoyed our time there to the fullest. Who knows what cool places the future holds!