Houston Day 276 - It's a boy!

We have been in Houston nine months today.  And - in the language suggested to me by a conversation many months ago with the inimitable Janet McLeod - about the time we're birthing our Houston baby.  See one day (I think it was in July last year), I was Skyping J-Mac, whining about homesickness and not feeling comfy in Houston (although now I realise no-one feels comfy in Houston in July).  She reminded me that international relocation is quite the massive life-change, and compared it to another massive life-change, having a baby.  You've got nine months to grow that change.  It made me remember one of my sisters saying to me while pregnant that she appreciated all those months to get used to the idea of having a new person in her family, and that give or take a few weeks, the baby came at the right time, when she was really getting over being pregnant.

So let me introduce you to my Houston baby.  I call him Kevin.

• A large part of feeling at home has been having a job that I love.  Things got off to a little bit of a false start for the first month or so, but Express Theatre has given me a place to belong, and enough challenges to keep me growing without challenging me so much I lose my mind.  Freedom Train is the third show in a row I've done with them over the last five months.  I have played both Tom Sawyer and his girlfriend, an ambitious reindeer, some instruments of racial oppression and a German.  And, according to Shemica in yesterday's question time, I have been credited with freeing the slaves.
• I have become acclimatised to the sights and sounds of the city, to the point where I don't notice things that used to surprise me or surprise our Aussie guests.  Today while watching the special features on Lucas' Lord of the Rings DVDs, I also realised I'm losing my ability to tell the difference between an Aussie and a Kiwi accent.  End thet's just tirrible.  Houston for the most part is not an attractive city, but I can forgive Kevin for that.  I live in a nice bit of it, and there are other nice bits, but I have come to terms with it not being a street-front culture and designed for people to enjoy walking around it.  A lot of the time you just travel from inside to inside, and the rest is purely functional.  It's also really flat, so when we drive out toward Austin or visit Idaho we feast our eyes on the sight of hills like we've been starving. 
• Our marriage has definitely grown through this experience.  When we were almost the only people we knew here, we still (fortunately) really enjoyed each other's company.  It was so good for our relationship to start again from scratch and have no other commitments to clog up the time together! We have a shared sense of adventure, and Lucas' support of me through my bad homesick days has been just beautiful.  Now we are at an interesting juncture: we have enough of a life here that if we want to, we can stop clinging to each other for dear life.  We both enjoy our separate and very different jobs, have some different friends, etc: some of our Houston baby is shared, and some of it isn't...ok the metaphor breaks down there...but the challenge now is to love each other the best we can in this new phase of feeling at home here.

• I really treasure my half-day a week at Hope Stone and the opportunity to be creative and loving in a slightly different way to just me being on stage.  It looks like my responsibility (although not my hours) will increase there in the fall - I'm so glad!
• A pleasant discovery has been that I still like my in-laws when I see them more regularly than once every two years.  We've taken three trips to Idaho so far, and each time I've really enjoyed spending time with my brothers- and parents-in-law.
• One journey that I am really enjoying, but that I am definitely still wanting to work on, is my spiritual journey.  It was convenient enough for me to make a clean break from Christianity and church at the same time as moving countries, and I have found my hypothesis that you can meet God and "do church" outside of church to be true - I wanted to find God more organically than that, with friends, with Lucas, reading and meditating by myself, in the creative process - and it has happened over and over again.  However, without a structure, I feel my spirituality losing depth, and I really miss Stone Soup especially.  We enjoy talking and reading sacred writings with James and Aria (who unfortunately I don't have a photo of), and there are other friendships that are feeding me spiritually; we've talked about joining a more formal community but haven't found one that really rings the bells yet.  Watch this space.



Nick



Leslie



Derrick

• Friendships are a huge part of the emotional landscape.  Before we moved here I knew I'd meet new soulmates, but I didn't know what their names would be or what they'd look like....photos of some of them are on this page!

  

  Maggie (don't have a photo of her husband Scott, but he's also important)

Bekah (yes, I did just pull her headshot off the internet, but I promise you she is really my friend...)

 

Benito