Today I was thinking about how living abroad was the fulfillment of over a decade of dreaming by me and my husband. We went to Finland and had such a wonderful time there that we wondered if somehow - by some incredible miracle - we would ever be able to live there or in any other country in Europe. We thought that maybe Peter could apply to a company that had a semi-conductor fab in Grenoble, France. But somehow we were always stopped by the logistics of things. We had a big house and in it was my Pilates studio where I worked five or six hours a day training clients. My studio was filled with expensive equipment I would scarcely be able to take to Europe and I would have to shutter my business for sure. And we had such a great schedule in Portland. Peter worked a compressed workweek: Sunday through Tuesday and every other Wednesday. I worked Sunday through Wednesday and so we always had three days off together.
And then the mold illness hit. We all got sick. Our three-year-old cat died from mold illness - she went into systemic organ failure because of it. Our fourteen-year-old dog probably died from it, too. Peter was moderately sick because he has better genes and worked in a clean room. I got insanely sick. I had a migraine that lasted for two months and had mold growing in my sinuses and in my stomach. My neurological and immune systems went haywire and I started having food allergies and sensitivities to chemicals that are only mildly harmful to others. It was a nightmare.
My doctor said we needed to leave our house behind. She also said that all our belongings were likely infected with mold toxins at a level that was too high for my immune and neurological systems. I wouldn't be able to heal unless we moved and left everything behind.
So we did that and moved to the desert. Fast forward a few years and we ended up living in Wyoming where my husband went back to school and got a degree in Computer Science. He totally kicked butt and ended up graduating Magna Cum Laude. I am so proud of him. And here was our in. His grades were good enough to get into graduate school and if we wanted to, he could go to graduate school in Europe. He ended up applying to ten schools and he got into five of them. He picked the top-rated school, which was in Leuven, Belgium, and since we were pros at letting go of things at that point, we gave away almost everything we owned. We bought a one-way ticket to Brussels and showed up at our new home with just two suitcases each.
And now here we are, riding our bikes together on what is one of the lovelier bike paths I have ever ridden on. You can go for about fifty minutes riding out and back on it without crossing a single road. The canal which you ride along is beautiful. And if you time your rides right, there is not too much bike traffic.
We live in an apartment that is modern and furnished. We can walk to seven different grocery stores including a Polish grocery store that has incredibly good pickles and a Middle Eastern grocery store which makes homemade flatbread. We don't have a car at all which is a dream come true for us both. I always felt happier in Portland when my transportation was powered by me and now that we are in a small European town I can walk to everything. Besides grocery stores there are clothing and shoe stores, ice cream shops, tons of restaurants, furniture stores, frite stands and - one of the most important - the train station. We've taken the train on eight different trips around Belgium and the neighboring countries of France, Germany, and the Netherlands. It's been so much fun just like we thought it would be.
So that's what I thought about today as I rode. It's such a wonderful thing when the things you dreamed about come true. It was a long, circuitous path to Europe for us. It involved a lot of loss and pain and hope and love. But we got here. And that is so much fun.
No comments:
Post a Comment