HOMESICKNESS

It is a perfect summer day here. The nice thing, and I really mean this, about Holland's weather is that during the summer you get a little bit of everything you might want. It is rarely too hot - but somedays it is, so you get the scorchers in there that you miss from time to time if you are like me, and grew up in crazy New York, which could swing wildly between being snowy all the way through April, to suddenly being so hot out that there were warnings on the tv not to go outside. I remember those thunder storms and Tornado Watches... Ah, home.

But you won't find that here on a normal summer day. The weather here is mild, breezy, occasionally a bit too rainy but the sun always stays up until 11 from June until September. That part continues to blow my mind. (But remember there is a sacrifice in winter. Oh, vitamin D deficiency, thy art so cruel). Here you can easily spend time on the water if you want to during the summer, or you can just enjoy the blooming fields and markets, bringing in incredible produce every Saturday, and sip your gin and tonics with all the windows open.

Why am I talking about the weather?? 

I guess because before I go into the topic of this little chapter, I want to be clear that Holland is fantastic, and I adore it, so while you read this bear in mind that... well, we do crazy things for love, and I love the Netherlands.

Giethoorn, Netherlands. 

I was so clingy as a child that my mother has told me on more than one occasion that she thought I would never be the one to go far from home. I remember sobbing my way through my first overnight camp experience when I was about 8 or 9. Pretty sure I got picked up early from that one, establishing myself as emotionally inferior among the other Bible-Camp-Going child badasses. 

I cried when they would drop me off at ballet.
I cried all the way through ballet.
I cried on stage during my first ballet recital.
I cried when I was dropped off at school.

There were many reasons behind my middle-child fragility but ultimately, I just really loved my mom and dad, brother and sister, felt safest when they were around, and was (am) a homebody by nature. Major kudos to both my parents for royally kicking this out of me by the time I was a teenager. I learned to look forward to bible camp - and made some of the best friends of my life there. By the time I was 16, I was spending the summer at the Saratoga School of Performing Arts, playing violin with some of my favorite people in the world (to this day) and crying, this time, when it was time to leave them all.

But the yearning for travel came much later - in the middle of graduate school, when I found myself spending an entire summer in Paris, France, with one of my best friends, and truly, deeply, fell in love with Europe. I could not get enough of the sites around me. I spent full afternoons wandering Musee D'orsay, singing French melodie and embracing the countryside nearby. I learned French, or, at least, enough French to get by. I learned how to cook potatoes with bacon and throw them on top of greens and cheese I found in the tiny market next door. I drank incredible red wine from bottles costing no more than 3 euro. I sang one of the whackiest operas of my life, painted practically from head to toe in glitter and makeup, and adored every second. I do not think I have ever had a more poetic, independent experience in my whole life. 

I know it is a massive cliche, but I found myself that summer. I had gone from an insecure, worried, people-pleasing little girl, the same girl who clung to her mother's leg before music lessons, to a woman who had the best days of her life wandering along the Seine completely by herself.

The dream had begun: I wanted to move back to Europe some day. I didn't know how or when, but I knew that it needed to happen, and as fate (and about 7 years....) would have it, I wound up here in the Netherlands, where I now sit, where I have made an indefinite home with my love.

This time, my love is a man, and not a European capital, but do not be fooled - that is just as good. 

I am happy here. The Netherlands - though, clearly, not France - are a completely different kind of beautiful, and the calm I have found in the countryside here is unmatched, truly, in any other location I have wandered. 

But the one problem, or - challenge - of living this dream, is that homesickness is inevitable.
Sure, I call my family every week, talk to my sister and brother regularly thanks to Gchat and WhatsApp, and my mom and I can still talk for hours about everything as if nothing has really changed, but the absence of their presences are painful, and felt all the time. And the reality of this time in my life is that, even if I win the lottery and can somehow afford a jet to fly them here or myself there whenever I want, my parents are school teachers, and have their own lives and THEIR own mothers to see and tend to. I can't just uproot them. And I can't uproot myself constantly either. So, for now, four visits a year is the most likely possibility, and man does that feel terrifying to me sometimes.

I have always recharged at my parents' house. During the hardest of times, it was their kitchen, which I could easily get to in just about three hours from new york city by train, that heard my worries and softened the blows of hard career moments, break ups, toxic and horrible roommates, with their understanding, wisdom, and bottles of wine.
Helping my mother cook in our kitchen, singing through full requiems or symphonies from my Dad's ancient record player, and simply sitting there in my sweats, no make up and 100% me-ness has been enough to drag me out of the worst slumps. My dog's gentle support has been there since I was 18 and graduating high school (he is not a spring chicken!), and my endless stack of journals and letters between friends in my childhood room is enough of a reminder of my incredible life to bring me back to reality.

So, in a place like this, where I arrived with one suitcase of my stuff and have pretty much started from scratch on all fronts... sometimes I can feel a little bit unsure of who I am. Who I am becoming. Does it match up to the family side of my life? Will they be as happy as I am with the home Bruno and I have built in our little apartment here? Would they worry about me if they saw the amount of butter I put in my food?

But at the end of the day, it is simply faith that helps me understand the purpose. It will never be easy to be so far from home, and from the memories I built there. But it is exciting that this life is so different, and so free to be made whatever I want of it. I can choose to embrace this place, the quirky language I feel I will never master, the confusing weather patterns... and I can look forward to a day when I can show it all off to my parents. Or, I can worry every day, feel lost, and let the homesickness take over.

Or I can just accept that it will never be one or the other, and allow them both to take their place in this awesome and enlightening chapter of my life. I think I'll go for that, for now.

CLAIMING 2017

I am sitting in my parents' upstate New York home, looking at the snow outside and surrounded by a calm I don't normally feel anywhere outside of this house. I am home.

I use that word, "home", to describe a number of places in my life. By some stroke of luck I have finally learned that, no matter how foreign I feel in it still, one of those homes is the Netherlands. In the last approximately 10 years, I've rented apartments, single to triple, decorated, maintained, and tailored to also feel like "home." Yet nothing quite matches the complete relief of being back at the Norman residence, where it all began: failures, losses, grief at times, serious illnesses, and also - not to be forgotten - triumphs and celebrations to match it all. My dog, a blind and almost-deaf yellow lab now aged almost 14 years, has a whiter face than I remember, but still wedges himself by my legs with his tail slowly wagging as if we were both 10 years younger again.

The one prevailing thought I found myself waking up to today, the first day in the new year, was: I'm doing just fine.

For so many years, I was, honestly, not. I was weighed down by unhealthy relationships, with friends, family, co-workers, roommates, but most importantly myself. I was plagued by a seemingly constant guilt from everywhere across the board: my student loans and subsequent financial inadequacy, my inability to be good enough in any job and on the flip side- the successes I found in traveling or in performing, which inevitably felt like things I should apologize for (for some god forsaken reason I'm still trying to figure out). I found myself doing that - apologizing - constantly, endlessly, for things no one should, especially if they are trying to make a life they are proud of (and avoid being walked completely over). I would see the way others were suffering and begin sacrificing what I really wanted in this world for hoping to be liked and accepted. In short, I gave up me for them - all of them. Whomever they even were. The result was a feeling of loneliness like none other - the very thing I thought I would be avoiding.

So, while waking up on January 1st thinking "I'm fine" may seem pretty lame considering I lead a happy life and had many blessings to count when I cheered for the new year with my family last night... it was actually one of the bigger triumphs. For the last five years, for many reasons, I would wake up worried. I would think over the bank statements. The harsh words spoken with a friend or colleague. The threat to my job security. An upcoming audition. Or, I would wake up feeling lost without any idea why. Seeing exactly what I did not want from my life transformed the entire landscape, however, and led me to now.

I concluded 2016 with a resolution never to wake up unsure again. Here are the rest of my resolutions, and I hope you'll do them with me:

• It begins with work. Work I love to do, not necessarily what others want me to do. It may not always be convenient, easy or fun. But it will be what I do because I'm called to it and it fills me with purpose, and it will be prioritized. After years of always saying yes to things I wasn't completely passionate or sure of, I'm the most nervous for this one, but also ready. 
• I will learn to stop apologizing. I am clumsy. I am the girl who crashes into things or drops things or spills. I am learning a new language, so I misspeak at times, or struggle with being clear. I make mistakes, sometimes need to take space from others and don't always make the right jokes. These things will all continue to happen, no matter how hard I'll try to fit the expectations of others, but on that note...
• I will stop trying to be what others want me to be. I am not yet a mother. I am not yet fluent in Dutch. I am not always grounded, zen or profound. Sometimes I'm average, and that's the best I can be that day. One day, dammit, I will learn how to do laundry without losing half of the socks. But this year might not be the year for that.
• I will volunteer more, because while my work is not for free, the desire to help others certainly is and should be utilized. It is not enough just to say I'm there and concerned about worldly matters - I will get over my shyness or stage fright and put some elbow grease into it from now on. 
• I will make my health, exercise, and time a priority. No matter what. I will ignore the unhealthy influence that is my inner Julie nudging me towards the box of chocolates, bottle of wine, or extra hour of Netflix when it is already 11PM. 
• To be every single women's catalog cliche (and about two years late to the party): I will say NO. I'll say yes to the golden opportunities that arise (auditions for productions I know I want to sing in, travel experiences, blogging, getting more creative with youtube, whatever fits the bill), and NO to the things that I know deep down I do not want to do, no matter what price is on them, and I will stand my ground.
• I will speak more Dutch. (<-gonna hate this one in a few days when I'm jetlagged back in Amsterdam).

This list will undoubtedly be added to and changed, but there you have it.

So here I sit, starting yet another new year. At home, for another few days before it's back to expat-land. I brought bags from Amsterdam (along with a few from the past year), a very tall, dashing Belgian who is crazy enough to come along for the ride, and I find myself in my PJs, makeup-less, and recycling some ancient thoughts I work so hard to rid myself of each year but never quite do. It's the end of one year, and although the changing of months to the 1st of the next all other 11 such periods of the calendar never seem too ceremonial, this one  - of course - always does. Goodbye 2016. You were quick, heavy, important, and I for one (seemingly the only one) am actually somewhat sorry you're over. But I was ready for that.

Happy New Year.