WHERE TO NEXT? WE ARE READY TO MOVE ON DEC. 1991

As I said in my last post from Kuwait, I had escaped and was now back in Calgary. The time was late December 1991. From here I will continue my chronology of events in our life, as I now remember them. The girls had been waiting for me on our property just west of Calgary in the Springbank area. My one striking memory of arriving there direct from Kuwait was “geezus it’s cold, how do you live here?” This directed at Deysi when she gathered me up from the airport. She didn’t see the humour in my remark, although it was the same one she used on her arrival to Canada in Jan. 1980.

She gave me one of her long, stern sideways looks and said sarcastically “live! live here! what do you mean? Don’t you remember that you abandoned us here while you were off having fun in Kuwait!” Ouch she knew how to hurt you. I shivered all of the way home. Remember at this time we had been gone from Canada since 1983. Our travels in the last few years had taken us to Japan, California, Utah, South Africa, New Zealand, with side trips to Swaziland, Mauritius, Seychelles, Fiji, Australia and Hawaii, and then me to Kuwait. Other than our stay in Utah, none of our travels were in places that compared, climate wise, to our home in Calgary.

I might say, that I had mostly replaced the memories of a good old fashioned Canadian winter, with memories of sun, sand, palms, beaches and heat. Arriving back from +37 degree weather in Kuwait was a shock. After her snide little comment at the airport about abandonment, I didn’t have the guts to tell her that in a few days my ass was gone again. This time to Philadelphia. I thought maybe a nice family Christmas and then break the news.

Well it didn’t quite happen like that. Firstly, you never got anything over on Ron. She still had clear memories of me depositing her in Calgary and heading off into the blue a few months earlier. She asked me “ok dad, when you left, remember you said you wouldn’t be gone long and then we would be moving away again?” Ange’s like “yeah dad remember, remember?” So all hopes of a quiet stress free Christmas were gone. Deysi was keeping her eyes on me to make sure I didn’t forget that I had promised never to leave her behind again. Seems like I just can’t win.

Carefully I choose my words and say “who would like to go to New York?” I got a lukewarm response, not real full of enthusiasm. “Well then, how about Philadelphia?’ Ange’s like “is it warm there, can I have a maid, what about a pool?” Ron’s like, “I don’t know, maybe” and Deysi says one word “when?”. I’m boxed in, with no place to hide. I’m like a caged animal. Fight or flight instincts take over. I know I won’t win in a fight, there is no place to run to, so I just fall on my sword and spill my guts. As gently as I can and with a little self pitying whine in my voice I say, “well they want us in Philadelphia a few days before New Year.” Deysi says “I can’t possibly get ready that fast.”

Ange says “mommy can I take our new kittens?” Ron is kinda silent but you can smell her gears burning. She is weighing the pros and cons of this news. My next words were “kittens, kittens, what kittens?’ It seems like Ron and Ange, invited a stray that was passing thru, to spend a few nights in our basement. After all what could it hurt, dad was gone for a while. That apparently, is where the kittens came from. I then gently explain to Deysi, that if she couldn’t get ready and needed some more time, then maybe I would just go ahead, find us a house, start work and come back and get them once she had organized the move of our goods. Well how do you think that went over? Not good I might say.

So we settled in for a family Christmas, invited all of the family and jammed as much fun as we could, into a two week period. I got to see the girls in their Christmas pageants at school, got to see some snow and got acquainted with our property on the outskirts of Calgary. It is worth mentioning that along with my brother and two of my brother-in-laws we had acquired 20 acres of land and a substantial house, just 10 minutes west of the Calgary city limits. While I was in Kuwait the girls made this, their, home. It was a beautiful place with views of Calgary centre from one side and of the mountains by Banff from the other.

The girls were enrolled in Springbank school, a couple of miles from our home. Deysi dropped them there and picked them up in her new vehicle (that we had bought on my first R&R from Kuwait). The girls had settled in nicely and were doing well in school. Neither had suffered by not having any schooling in Canada prior to this time. They both excelled. Ron was in grade 6 and Ange was in her first year. Christmas passed with lots of fun, and soon it was time to face the reality of another move. Look out Pennsylvania here we come!

Christmas came and went. It was an idyllic time. The stresses I had felt in Kuwait were wearing off, now to be replaced by the stress of uprooting the girls, once again, and throwing them in to a whole new life of chaos. It may seem that my life was that of a “blue assed fly”, flitting about here and there, seemingly at random. However we never made a move without agonizing over the impact that it would have on the girls, the family unit and our future. I would like to say our path had been precisely plotted, however that was not really the case. There still was an element of randomness in our journey.

There was no question, however, that Deysi guided the ship and firmly steered the family unit forward. I must say that by now we were becoming used to the disruption of moving, that the girls were 100% behind me and that Deysi was, by now, a professional mover. So once again I leave all of the worry and work to Deysi and get my butt onto a plane and head for the unknown, Philadelphia and a new job. My task was to get grounded in the work, scout out the area(s) to live, check the schools and find a house. All the while under instruction “not to have to much fun” until they got there. Luckily we were rejoining our friends from Japan and New Zealand who were already there and who had much of the “scouting out” already done.

That was a big comfort. While I was gone, Deysi scrambled around packing, organizing and otherwise preparing for another major move in our lives. She was like Wonder Woman. The girls were still refining their lists of “must haves” as a condition of agreeing to this move. You could also feel the stress in the girls. As little as I seem to pay attention to it, their burden of uprooting, joining new schools and finding new friends, was also substantial. Their voices rang out in a higher pitch, their laughter was nervous and they became a bit more sensitive. That being said, they were very, very tough and resilient girls. Although it was sad to leave Canada and my 3 older children (D1,D2,D3) again, after a very short time back, I don’t think any of us regretted leaving the Alberta winter behind.