Home Leave

Before we went to the Netherlands, I read a book about the expat experience. Of course the book pretty much assumed that every expat is a man with a wife who organizes all the details of the home and family. But my feminist sensibilities are not the point of this blog post. The book had a hilarious chapter about “your first home leave visit.” Most expat contracts allow you to go back home once a year to visit family. This is known as “home leave.” Apparently most expats have a disastrous experience with their first home leave. It involves running around to visit everyone you are obligated to visit, buying gobs of clothes and needing to buy a new suitcase to carry it back, and feeling guilty about not visiting the rest of the family. Check. I can now say that I am a pretty typical expat in this regard. Even after reading the warnings and vowing not to make the same mistakes, we made them all. I guess some things you just have to learn the hard way.

As we made our arrangements to go back to the US, we knew we had to make some hard decisions about the house. We had been renting the front office to a neighbor who was working from home with 3 young children. But he decided to take advantage of the bad economy by building an addition on his garage. The guy who was using the bedroom like an extended stay hotel room when he was on business trips to Chicago also took advantage of the real estate market to buy a condo. And because everything happens in threes, the neighbors who were helping to take care of the house are expecting a baby soon. With a new baby, they won’t have time to pick up our mail and mow the lawn. We know that an empty house is not good for the house or for the neighborhood. We spent a long time debating between selling and renting the house. In the end we decided to rent it out with the help of a management company, but it was an agonizing decision.

When we arrived at our Chicago house, we had a welcome dinner at our favorite Mexican restaurant with our neighbors. Day 1, we started doing all the outside yard work – trimming bushes, scrubbing the porch rails, and cleaning out gutters. So many of our neighbors stopped by to say hello that it was actually hard to get any work done. It just reminded me how much I liked living there. Day 2 was the dentist, eye doctor and of course packing the rest of our junk into boxes. Day 3 was renting the moving truck and moving everything to the storage unit. Good thing we had the neighbor kids to help with the heavy lifting – they worked from 8 in the morning to 9 that night. We spent Day 4 trying to figure out what to do with the rest of the junk that wouldn’t fit in the storage unit.

Day 5 we left Chicago for Minnesota. Flying Southwest Airline was a pleasure, but after all the work we had done, I think any airline would have seemed nice. The guilt portion of the trip occurred in the Twin Cities. We have quite a few friends and family there, but we flew it around noon on Thursday and still had a 4 hour drive to Dennis’ home town. So we didn’t stop – sorry everyone there just wasn’t enough time! In southwest Minnesota I managed to go shopping in Sioux Falls with my sister and mother-in-law, we went to a baptism for the twins of Dennis’ cousin, had a great steak dinner, got my hair highlighted, and helped to bail hay on the farm. We picked fresh apples, had homegrown tomatoes and had a fun BBQ with the family. We even visited the End of the Line Museum in Curry. Too bad we had to go back to Chicago a day early to finish the rest of the stuff for the house. Day 11 was traveling back to Chicago. With all the driving and the flying, it takes about 9 hours to make the trip. We did manage to see our old house in Minnesota before we went to the airport.
Back in Chicago, we were pleased to see that the kids had done the painting on the front porch and patio as arranged. They did a really nice job, too. But we still had lots to do – installing a new front door handle (old one was rusting), throwing away tons of trash, cleaning carpets, changing furnace filters, and fixing the leaky condenser pipe on the air conditioner. Image saving all of the home maintenance repairs for 18 months and trying to get them all done in less than a week. Yes, it’s a nightmare.

On Friday night, we had dinner reservations at our favorite Italian restaurant at 8:00. After stopping at 2 shoe stores, we finally sat down at 8:15. We had a relaxing dinner for our last night in Chicago. Saturday morning, Dennis ran the last of the stuff to the storage unit (vacuum cleaner and other cleaning stuff) and dropped off the old paint, pesticide and weed killer at the toxic waste facility. He also wanted to stop at the bike store to do a bit more shopping, but he had to be back home by 12:15 so he could shower before leaving for the airport. I went to Wal-Mart to buy the extra suitcase for all the junk we bought. At 12:15, Dennis made it home. Our newest neighbor dropped by to see the power tools that Dennis was trying to sell. A very quick transaction resulted in the neighbor taking most of the large tools and a lawn mower. We left feeling a little bit better about the last remaining things that have to be sold.

After two weeks in the US, we finally were heading back home. Yes, home is where the cat is. A day of jet-lag and it’s back to work. Actually work feels a bit more relaxing than “vacation” now. Maybe next year we will go to Hawaii instead! That was the advice in the expat book, too.