A Couple without a Country

Chase at one of their famous parties

Chase and Isobel are friends of ours whom we met through Overlook Hospital's Mother's Group class. Our son Alex and their daughter Brittany were born at Overlook within days of each other a few months before we met. Vince and I had taken our Lamaze class there before Alex was born and at the suggestion of our maternity nurse I signed up for their Mother's Group class which would begin a couple of months after his birth. The class consisted of lectures and hands-on demonstrations on infant nutrition, baby CPR, ways to baby-proof your house, etc. I signed up for the class partly because I wanted to learn about all that of course, but quite frankly even more because I wanted to meet women in my community who were going through the same things as me at exactly the same time as me. I didn't want a mentor; I wanted soul sistas!

I had taken a maternity leave from work about a month before I had Alex and very soon after he was born, Vince and I made the decision to make my leave permanent and for me to stay home with Alex until I felt comfortable going back to work. (It took me 21 years to feel comfortable by the way!)

Isobel @ the same Halloween party!

This was a shocking decision that was wholly unpremeditated. I had been an ardent feminist since high school having been extremely influenced by the women's movement of the 70's. I did not change my last name to Vince's surname after Vince and I were married, was a card-carrying member of the National Organization for Women and had even attended NOW conventions in the past. I supported Planned Parenthood and subscribed to MS magazine. I had majored in the male-dominated disciplines of math and computer science in college. I had two Masters degrees (an MBA and an MS in Computer Science), wore "power suits" to work in venture capital in NY and pretty much defined myself as a PROFESSIONAL WOMAN (all caps).

The phrase "having it all" had not entered the vernacular yet. That ideal would come in my younger sister's generation. For my generation, we either had careers or we stayed home with the kids. Anyone who tried to do both risked doing them both very badly.

But even  as a little girl, I never once daydreamed about getting married, never mused about what my wedding dress would look like, never played "Bride and Groom" with my brother, never practiced writing my name as "Mrs. John Q. Anybody". (Oddly enough I did play "Nun" when I was little which I consider the world's second-oldest profession.)

I didn't babysit in high school. I didn't particularly like other people's kids and never really yearned to have children of my own. I didn't necessarily "not want to have children." I just simply never thought about it. We had waited five years after we were married to have our first child and totally enjoyed the yuppy phase of our marriage. Once I got pregnant, I had planned on giving birth and going back to work after three months, the standard maternity leave at the time. Stay home with my baby and "just" be a mother? If a fortune teller had predicted this future for me from her crystal ball or tarot cards, I would have told her, "You have got to be kidding! You might as well tell me I will be joining the Contras and running guns to Nicaragua! That's how ridiculous it is! I want my $2.00 back."

But what I didn't foresee, what I was totally unprepared for actually was the truly life-changing effect motherhood would have on me, the amount of love I would feel for my son and the amount of anxiety and dread I would experience at the thought of leaving him with a nanny to go back to work. So I didn't. Instead I crossed the bra-burning, Equal Rights NOW picket line to the other side (or that's what it felt like anyway). And it was the best decision we ever made.


But with every decision comes unforeseen consequences. Once I stayed home I felt like the proverbial fish out of water. In addition to the exhaustion and the post-par tum depression many mothers feel, I suffered from a kind of post-life depression. I had completely chucked my old life and had entered the brave new world of the stay-at-home mom. It was as if I had a life transplant or was swallowed alive or abducted by aliens and dropped into an episode of Leave it to Beaver and I was expected to be Mrs. Cleaver, wearing my pearls while baking a pie.






I needed to find out if the aliens had abducted anyone else so we could band together for survival like in Planet of the Apes. So very early on in the first months of stay-at-home motherhood, I brought Alex to an introductory class for Gymboree. We sat around in the Gymboree circle and introduced ourselves. We were asked by the group leader to tell everyone a little bit about ourselves, where we lived and the name of our baby, etc., and as an ice-breaker, to also tell the group of anything that had changed in our lives since becoming a mother. One by one the other mothers went around in the circle, introduced themselves and said things like, "Things have not really changed that much for me and my husband. We were always homebodies and now we just stay home with our baby" or "I don't get enough sleep but that's about it."

I was dumbfounded. I was in a circle of Stepford Moms! When they got to me, I launched into a tirade that lasted about a half an hour. "What has changed in my life? How about everything," I started, "I do not know who I am anymore. I am lonely and sad and miss interaction with adult people. I love my son but I miss my independence, dinners out, the excitement of my old life, the fast pace, the accolades when I did a good job, the power I felt making my own money, the constant boosts to my self-esteem. My life has been turned upside down in every conceivable way, my equilibrium is completely off. Nothing is the same. My entire life has done an about-face. I miss getting dressed in the morning and going to work. Blah blah blah!" They all stared at me in shock. I might as well have said I had joined the Contras and was running guns to Nicaragua!

I didn't go back to that particular Gymboree class. I was afraid they would chase me out with sticks like Mother-stein for not immediately embracing the joys of motherhood as they all had. But before I went back to any Gymboree at all, I went to my first Mother's Group class at Overlook. There I found many confused and bleary-eyed women who had had big jobs before they had children and big dreams besides motherhood and were having similar feelings of life vertigo. Sue was a chiropractor, Dede had worked for the NJ Division of Motion Pictures promoting New Jersey as a location for the film industry, Adria was in PR on Madison Avenue, Aleece in Finance on Wall Street, etc., etc. Then there was Isobel. Isobel was a Professional Expatriate. Whatever, she was a professional and they were all my soul sisters!!! We all clung to each other emotionally, shared our similar stories of self-doubt and loneliness, sought and gave advice without judgement, slowly started becoming ourselves again, and vowed to meet weekly with our babies alternating at each others' homes once the hospital class sessions ended.

Now back to Isobel, the Professional Expatriate. She and her husband Chase were both serial expats, a kind of couple without a country. A British citizen who had never lived in the UK, Isobel grew up all over Asia. Her father had been in International Finance and she had lived in Pakistan, Hong Kong and Singapore, among other places. Chase was originally from Arizona and had become an expat in the days following the Vietnam War representing American Express in Saigon. (I wish they had blogging back then. His stories were unbelievable!) They met in Hong Kong and married there, lived in several other Asian countries before moving to Chatham, NJ to give birth to their daughter Brittany at Overlook. They had adopted the expat experience as a permanent lifestyle. They were wild party animals who lived the life of the international jet set. And they added just the right amount of spice to our new Overlook Mother's play group.

farewell dinner menu

Isobel and Chase lived in Chatham for seven years, the longest they had ever lived in any country. Then as we all expected would eventually happen, they were transferred back to Asia, to Jakarta this time. However, just as they were about to move to Indonesia, Isobel found out she was pregnant! With seasoned expat aplomb, they altered their plans and based themselves in Singapore instead to take advantage of the more modern medical maternity facilities. Vince and I visited Isobel and Chase in Singapore after their son Cameron was born as part of a big Asian trip we took that also included Bali, Hong Kong, Japan and Thailand. I got to see a Professional Expatriate in her native habitat!

Singapore

Unfortunately we and our Mother's Group all lost track of Chase and Isobel after they had been gone from the States for a few years. Chase changed jobs from American Express to work for the Bank of China and the last thing we heard via their Christmas card was that they had moved from Singapore to Hong Kong. I still wonder about them especially now that Vince and I have joined the expat community ourselves.

If you are out there Chase and Isobel and you read this ... call me, soul sista!