Flitting: Epilogue

The thing about spending several years abroad is that you enter an odd kind of flux. Time marches ever onward but you’re in this transitional period. You’re ever on the brink of moving so become reluctant to buy anything that might be a pain to get rid of later. We slept upon two futon mattresses piled on top of each other for five years because it didn’t seem worthwhile to buy a bed. I still remember the afternoon we bought the first one.

This was our bed for 5 years. Literally 2 thin futon mattresses on top of each other.

We had a small apartment right above a municipal office, an authentically Japanese dwelling with tatami mats and sliding paper doors. It contained absolutely nothing so we had to scramble to get some basic necessities without much of a grasp on the language. Luckily everything we needed was within easy walking distance. We bought the futon from a department store just across the road. We rolled it upon and I carried it out on my shoulder.

Our apartment in Fukuoka, Japan

Paper Sliding Doors, Tatami Mats, Our apartment in Japan 2014

Then it started to rain. Levy still jokes to this day about the sight of me running the roughly half-mile back to the apartment trying to keep the futon balanced on one shoulder. We bought a second one a few months later and that was it, we never sprung for actual bedsprings the five years we were there as we just couldn’t be sure we’d be there much longer.

Our lives abroad made us think we'd could move any week, and so we never bought furniture that would be difficult to throw out. This was our first dining room table - a box covered in a "very Levy" scarf. Our seats - 2 floor cushions.

Aside from the lack of permanence in furnishings, it was also manifest in our sense of being, for lack of a better term, “grown-ups”. Home maintenance, gardening, retirement savings, and the likes were alien concepts to us. We’ve had to figure all that out in the last few months, it’s been a case of rather cluelessly blundering from one task to the next. But there’s a real satisfaction to it all.

The lawn is a good example. The first couple of months we just had some landscapers come in and do it every other week. Then they tried to up the price and we determined it wasn’t really worth it. So we began the process of doing it ourselves. You’d think that this would be a straightforward process. It wasn’t. We went electric and the first mower never started so we had to take it back. The second one didn’t come with a battery, we only learned of that after we got the thing delivered. So that one went back too. The third and final mower not only came with two batteries but actually started. Success! After about 12 minutes the first battery was drained, the second was done before I’d finished the first half of our front lawn. Oh well, we can’t be bothered trying yet another one so I do the lawn in series of mini-trips, usually about six rounds in all.

Hubs and Momo admiring the lawn of our new home, 2021

Short charge aside, I find the process to be oddly satisfying. The last leg of the chore is the slope at the back and I sometimes think about the countless times I’ll have to follow this exact same route in the weeks, months, years to come. Sisyphus and the mower. The thing most people don’t realize about that myth is the moral of the story isn’t the futility of the task but finding purpose and satisfaction in the climb itself.

This little ritual is a part of what I like to call my Saturday morning “husband duties”. The first thing I do is meal prep for dinner. Saturday is the designated cheat day and we make the most of it. At around 08:00 I start the marinade, by 18:00, the ingredients are so tender they practically melt. Hokke usually closely supervises this process, mostly to berate me into giving him a piece or two. Or three. I do all of the cooking and pretty much always have done. It’s not really optional with Levy. Seriously. I’ve seen her screw up instant ramen. “You have to take out all the little packages before you pour the water, love.”

South Korea, 2012. Levy at 28 years old - Proudly posing in front of one of the first meals she cooked for us. Only to find that she forgot to take some of the plastic wrappers out.

Sometimes we just stop in front of the house and take it in. It’s been a few months now but it still feels new. We feel real gratitude to have it. While we certainly worked for it and made our own luck up to a point, we know how lucky we are. For the first time in our near-decade together, we know with reasonable certainty where we’re going to be next year, in five years and beyond. We even purchased a real bed.

We didn’t have all of our stuff when we moved, we had to spend the first few months on the floor. We did have an inflatable bed but we also have three cats with claws so you do the math. The bed took a couple of weeks to arrive so we bought a couple of mattress toppers and made do. Old habits die hard I suppose. Other little things like a proper dining table and a sofa set arrived over the next few weeks. It seemed every weekend of that first month was occupied with assembling the latest thing we bought.

Now our little home has more or less taken its final form. Sure, there’ll be some additions over the years and maybe another cat will wander in but we’ve finally settled somewhere. I never thought it would be here but I never doubted who’d it would be with. One minute someone insults your (non-existent) tie, the next you’re buying a house together in central New York.