Just Breathe

You ever see that movie Ever After?  It's a spin on the Cinderella fairy tale starring Drew Barrymore as "Danielle" (a.k.a. Cinderella) and Anjelica Huston plays the wicked stepmother.  Well, there is this wonderful scene as Danielle hurries to get to the royal ball, all decked in a gossamer wings and glittery eye make-up, and as she gets to the gated entrance she stops, maybe overwhelmed, maybe unsure of herself and she whispers "just breathe".  Simple words, but meaningful ones.  I love that line. Just breathe. 

When our flight landed in Hong Kong in July, I hit the ground running.  Determined to make the most of this experience, it was just a matter of days before I was enrolled in activities, taxi-ing to meetings, doing the "smile and wave" of my Miss Polonaise days.  Shaking so many hands, my palms were numb; committing to memory not only names and faces, but names, faces, children's names, where they came from, how long they'll be here, where they are living, and is your daughter in Girl Scouts? Is your son in the R2 4 cluster or the R2 3 cluster?  Do you belong to the American Club?

Once school started, the childrens' activities easily filled the blocks of my calendar.  And where there were gaps, I filled them in.  Trips to shop for housewares, coffee dates, tours exploring wet markets, classes on using mass transit, lunches with my hubby, dinners with other ex-pats.  Does it sound fun?  Well, yeah.  But is it exhausting? You know it is!

Night after night, after getting the kids tucked into bed, I collapse on the couch and glare at my laptop.  I know this blog is sitting out there, just waiting to be updated.  My husband has reminded me time, after time, after time.  And the funny thing is, I've got all these stories in my head.  Stories about the Stanley Market where I like to wander, and the style of dress, and how it feels to be a white woman in a sea of Asian faces.  Tales of taxi drivers who give language lessons as they drive and the young Phillippina helper who greets me with "good morning maam!" everyday when I walk Reagan to the school bus.  Photos to share of the smokey temples I've ventured into and the colorful streets of the flower markets.  That's what I want to record, but in my end-of-the-day, numb stupor, all I can do is sit and stare at the keyboard.

Hong Kong didn't do this to me.  I did this to me.  So determined to build a life for myself here and pass the time so I'm not sitting around lamenting my life back in North Carolina, I've over scheduled myself to the extreme.  And I've done it in a way that I can't even enjoy what I'm doing.  Instead, I'm running from place to place, jumping from taxi to taxi, checking my watch to make sure I can share lunch with Tripp and squeezing in an hour to shelf books in the school library.  It's time to stop.  Time to just breathe.

So, from here on out, I am going to try to slow it down and ENJOY where I am at and what I am doing.  It's not quantity, it's quality, right?  I'm going to get back to basics, get back to my bog, write about my life here as I originally intended. And if the blocks of my daily planner start to get crowded with dates and times and places again, I will step back and tell myself, just breathe.  Just breathe.