And the endless journey back and forth

Amman, Jordan – January 2022

Good morning my dear ones. The sun is shining and it’s frigid in our apartment. Our fake-wood floor feels icy through sock feet. It is strange being back in Amman after almost two months away in the US. I’m drinking my favorite coffee: Velo from Colectivo in Milwaukee.

It happened again this past weekend – my brain and heart and the Atlantic Ocean got all tangled up. When I was little, my family and I would drive every summer from Wisconsin to Delaware to visit my grandparents at the beach. It was what my sister and I most looked forward to for the whole year, and especially when school was out for the summer and we knew it was getting close. The Delaware trip!

It would take us 16 hours to drive there, my parents taking turns driving. There, we would spend long days at the beach, and lazy, slow evenings eating dinner and ice cream with my grandparents. There, I developed a love for the Atlantic. The frothy waves, the bright surface of the water, the way the current bobbed you up and down. Though I was a Midwest kid, I always loved the ocean.

Nearly seven years ago, I moved across that same ocean for a post-college job and set up a life for myself in Amman, Jordan. I liked the job and kept it for a while; four years later, by the time I was ready to quit and move back home, I had met my then-boyfriend, now-husband, and so I stuck around for a while longer to be with him in Amman.

But still, all those years before and after my wedding, I had no problem flying back and forth between my new home and my old home. It was expensive, sure; always at least $800 for a round-trip plane ticket and usually closer to $1,000. The jet lag would sometimes get to me, and I would sometimes stress about packing. But it was okay; I’d chosen this life for myself. It was an adventure; it was my adventure. At least for a few years.

Only in the past two years has the Atlantic risen up to bite me in the chest and throat. It swirls up, huge and threatening every time I’m on a plane flying 35,000 feet above its surface.

It has lodged in my mind, taking up more than its fair share of space, and the sheer size of it, which I can’t wrap my head around, is my constant reminder of how far I am from home – or at least what used to be my home, because now with my apartment and husband in Amman, home is a more slippery concept.

My old home, my new temporary home, the Atlantic and I: we have a close, tense, and ever-shifting relationship. And this is what I want to write to you about: how I left; how it was, here; and how I’ve been trying for a few years now to get back (or perhaps forward?) to some kind of home.