It has been some time since I have written a blog post, and in a way I am not sure how to do it on this site because I am no longer "teaching in the trenches" (the current title of this site). I abruptly gave up my secure and wonderful tenured teaching position at Big Bend Community College in Moses Lake, Washington, and moved my husband, 2 dogs, horse and goods across the ocean and some land, to Switzerland. In order to do this all, I sold my sweet little house in San Diego, where the original blog posts were all written, and sold many other belongings and a second house. This might sound all very fancy from an outsider's point of view, but I can assure you it is not. Let me explain.
I have been searching for years for where I belong, and now that I have landed in Switzerland, I am not sure this was the precise answer. Likely because, as some more enlightened person might point out to me, I should belong to myself and then I will be home anywhere. Fine. Point taken. Looking back though, San Diego was my spot in many ways. Tons of events, endless trails to ride and hike, good neighbors and friends, the Pacific, and a backyard with a view to a canyon. But working three jobs was the pits. And our neighborhood, Mira Mesa, was getting more crowded by the year. And I wanted tenure. So I left gorgeous San Diego for a tenure track job in Moses Lake, Washington.
Moses Lake, the town, was dreary. I remember when my husband saw it for the first time. We entered town on the main drag, and the whole car went quiet. No exclamations of, "It's very quaint!" or "This reminds me of little towns in the midwest", just quiet. I ventured something like, "I know it isn't a cute small town". He reassured me, "No, no, it's ok. Look, there's a lake!" Turned out the lake, the one the town was named after, was polluted and swimming in it could get you "swimmer's bumps". And the town had terrible water planning which meant water was projected to be a major scarcity within 10 years. The City Council was and is responsible for this debacle. But as we settled in I loved teaching at Big Bend and puttering around in our huge yard. My colleagues were amazing, my students were mostly wonderful, and I was growing a department in a field, Communication Studies, that I love. My professional life, for once, was exactly what I had been looking for. But the town itself was a hellscape. Trash everywhere, burned out hunks of cars on side streets, people wandering through desert shrub in an opiate haze from the mall to the railroad tracks to the lake and back. Yes, there were gorgeous homes, but in many ways this made things worse. The disparity between the estate style living and trailer parks and tents was hard to take. It was a small town with a Mad Max vibe, complete with a cyclist who would make his way around town with a visor, grimy helmet, cape, and long boots. I finally had achieved career and financial security, but it seemed like all of the off kilter energy of the US had landed squarely in Moses Lake. From Trump rallies, to heroin overdoses, to gun crimes...it was all here. So this wasn't going to work as a place to grow old. And to make a finer point on it, my sister and her family moved to Switzerland in 2021, sending back reminders of a place where people seemed to actually care about where they live.
Switzerland is the land of my mother, and my father's parents. It is the land of childhood summers and many wonderful cousins and kin. For me this wasn't the place of banks and gold, but of dank old cow barns and high golden wheat fields. Though it would be remiss of me to not mention that my sister's life is one of a vastly different scale from mine financially, and so there was not a lot of insecurity as her family made the move, but it was a task as international moves are, so I saw at least how some of the logistics would go. Not long after she moved, in late 2021, our brother Bernard was diagnosed with a glioblastoma. We sat helplessly by as he lost much of his acuity and physical ability. Thankfully he seemed to gain even more of his even keeled temperament which disposed him to avoid alarm at his situation. My sister and I made many visits. My heart ached as I watched my brother slip away. The person who had taught me how to drive a stick shift, who had helped me through heart ache, and who was endlessly curious and patient simultaneously. During a family get together in Santa Barbara, where we all surrounded my brother with the love he deserved, occurred what is now referred to by family members as "the chicken coop intervention". It was an intense conversation about futures while an unexpected hailstorm thundered on the corrugated plastic overhead. We hashed out the reasons my spouse and I should relocate to Switzerland. The main themes being that the US was increasingly unstable, and that Moses Lake was too far afield in terms of connection, and was also depressingly ugly. I had been waffling until that moment because I didn't want to leave my job or my brother. I went home to Moses Lake tormented by indecision though I wanted to make the move. Then, a month later, my brother found his own way home, whatever that is, slipping from the world we all shared into the unknown. The vacuum of his death was instant. I felt my own hold loosen on this life I had always known in the US even as I grieved leaving the landscapes that had raised me. The coastline of California, the great Redwoods, the wide L.A. freeways, the dusty red dirt of the Sierra foothills, and the great Bay Bridge. I thought about hauling my horse to some remote wilderness ride, looking in the review of my Dodge and watching the dust kick up behind my trailer with satisfaction. So off to Idaho I went with a friend and spent a few days camping and riding and talking and relishing the expansive views and never-ending skies. It was part of my long goodbye to the US.
Though I grieved these landscapes as I made my goodbyes, I also reminded myself that I didn't live in them. The wilderness was a respite I sometimes had opportunities to enjoy. However, I lived in the world of people and towns where the results of decisions made far up in the rungs of government came to their final destination. My husband agreed that it was time to go. I still felt uncertain, but mostly this was my grief. I was losing access to things like the Big Horn Mountains, and I was putting important friendship through the stress of distance. I was grieving 4 adorable chickens I would re-home to a friend, and a garden and home that I had put many hours into. I was quitting a job I had always dreamed of. But despite my grief I knew that it was time to go. That chicken coop intervention in Santa Barbara had opened up a portal to other possibilities. And thanks to my Swiss citizenship, and thanks to the support of family we would be able to move.
In the Spring of 2023 I acquired tenure even as I was planning my move abroad. It felt duplicitous of course, but I was compelled to leave Moses Lake. Besides I'd seen others stay because they loved the college and their lives were not what I imagined for myself. The worst was telling colleagues I valued and with whom I had made personal and professional plans. But, as is typically the case, they supported me because they were and are, in fact, very good colleagues. They understood.
As I write this it is February 2024 and I have been in Switzerland for nearly 5 months. It has taken me this long to loosen my grip on my Moses Lake life, the fruit trees I lovingly planted in my backyard, the cozy office space I had set up for myself, the committees and department I had nurtured, and so much more. It has taken me this time to also finally let go of San Diego. I am here now. I am the principal of a beautiful little private international school called The British School, Bern. I lead a team of fantastic educators and they are stretching my knowledge and skills. I have purpose here. I trust that the financial instability we are currently experiencing will turn into financial security. In the interim I don't have to lead gun shooting drills. I will always miss my friends, especially ones I have known since childhood, but I missed them in Washington too. I will always love the grittiness of the US and in particular its wilderness where you feel small and inconsequential. But I can always visit those people and those places. When I wasn't in Switzerland I missed its landscapes and my family and friends. So now I am here and here to stay. The financial leap was such I cannot afford to go back to the US. I feel uncertain as to whether or not what we ended up doing was "the smart thing to do", but we are in it now. My heart is full, even if my pockets are empty.
Going skiing with some of my students at The British School Bern.
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