Moving is hard

The deed for our new home was signed in our absence on Dec 8.  We had the realtor do a walk-through and record a video of the condition of the house and the yard to make sure that it was not left with a lot of junk that we would have to take care of.  

This was a lesson learned from our previous house - it is amazing how easily things can slip through if you don't make it a condition of the closing on the sale.  We were so naive when we bought our house in Essex and the realtor so useless, that we ended up with piles of bathroom tiles and bags of rock hard grout (expired) that we had to lug down from the attic and then figure out how to dispose of.

After getting the video walk-through we sent a message to our attorney to sign on our behalf and we got confirmation that the deed was signed.

Back in Massachusetts we had a few house-sits lined up.  We have a really good record with our house-sits - I suspect as with anything you get a mixed bag of people looking after your house when it is a free service in exchange for pet sitting, so it is rewarding to get a good rating and positive reviews.

We looked after houses in Salem (the witch city), Falmouth (Cape Cod), Swampscott, Gloucester, and Westborough (about 40miles west of Boston) each of which had animals with unique characters and quirks.  If you pause to think about pet-sitting, the profile of a household that would prefer well reviewed and vetted strangers over other options is one where the animals probably do have some quirks.

One of the households had a pair of large dogs and we were told they would be fine if we didn't allow them on the bed but they usually slept with them.  It became pretty clear on the first night that there was no way that the dogs could be put out of the room (scratching on the door) or forced to lie on a bed on the floor and so we each had a heavy dog more or less draped over us all night long.  

Sea view in Falmouth

We figured out that we could have one of them sleep on another bed in a second room with Matthew, but the one who insisted on sleeping with us ended up draped over three quarters of the bed with us scrunched up on the edge with Anne desperately trying to avoid plummeting off the bed onto the floor!

Dogs after a snowstorm

At two of the homes we asked the owners if they minded us having guests to visit - in one case a dinner party and in two other cases one or both Matt and Nick stayed with us.  We were able to celebrate Thanksgiving with both sons, Nick flying up from Mexico and Matt visiting from New Haven.  This is a very generous act in my opinion - the owners happy to trust us and our boys in their house.

Sometimes you don't get to meet or socialize with the pet owners - at one house we discovered that there were other pet-sitters booked to follow immediately after us.  When the owners returned, they contacted us to ask about some damage to the comforter (duvet) on the bed that we had slept in.  Apparently it looked like it had been used outside on the ground and was dirty and torn.  It was a pretty awkward exchange with them.  The owners were in somewhat of a bind in this situation - clearly the people who came after us would have complained about the condition of the bed if we had left it in that state for them so I guess the fact that it wasn't mentioned before they returned validated us.

We met some amazing new people during this trip to New England.  In 3 of the houses we met the owners before they left, having a meal with them and hearing their stories.

There was a family where the mother had taken the 3 sons to Spain for 3 months - walking the Camino Santiago for part of it and writing journals about their experiences.  The children are all at university now but their trip was still a vivid memory for them 3 years later.  

Then a couple with a beautiful large dog who are involved in projects that have been influential in shaping legislation for the climate in the USA who offered to have us stay with them if we ran out of places to stay (when they learned that we are moving from one house-sit to another).

And finally a woman with a really timid little cat who encouraged us to swing from the rafters if we wanted to while she went on a fantastic adventure vacation where she mushed a team of dogs for 7 days.  In her case, she is still friends with a couple in England who were her first house-sitters 10 years ago!  We are sure that we will hear from her again having invited her to keep in touch for when she visits Europe again sometime.

We also spent time visiting with friends.  One of our friends stepped in to do some last minute coordinating to help us get a few things that couldn't fit into our shipment to Portugal sent off as donations.  In America you can't give away used furniture - most frequently you have to pay people to take them away.

We were also invited (again) to stay at the homes of friends we have known since we came to New England in 2001.  We are of course aware always that we are in their space and no matter how much they love us there is a limit to how long before they start to feel less comfortable with us being there. 

My grandmother once told me that friends and family visiting are like fish - they go off after 3 days!  We stretched that to a couple of stays of a week at a time and it was always at their objection that we moved on somewhere.  But these are delicate alliances, you know that you are loved and welcome but you also know that you are just a little bit in the way.

That said.  We are really tired of moving every week or two into some new accommodation where we have to adjust to a new set (or lack) of cooking utensils and appliances.  Anne calculated that we have stayed at 41 places all told counting some repeat stops at friends' houses in the last 16 months.

We yearn to start building our new home - the house sitting empty, waiting for us to get there with the front yard calling for us to build a garden.

Our empty house

The current step in the process is that we are waiting for Anne's temporary residence visa which will be issued by the consulate in Boston.  She visited them last week with a few questions - in particular whether there is any way of knowing how long it might be before they will issue it.  They assured her that it had been approved by them but was now at the government department in Portugal that adjudicates residence applications.  Unfortunately they have been stalled for now because of a massive backlog and because of changes that were made last year in their department and so there is no telling how long it might be.  It may be weeks but could also be months.

So we have decided to return to Portugal on our tourist visas so that we can start getting our house in order.  The shipping company collected our worldly goods a couple of weeks ago and they are waiting to put them onto a ship for us.  We expect them to take 3 months to get them to us.

Why on earth are we doing this to ourselves again?

Moving to the USA was tough.  We had few resources and knew only one family, who were friends from South Africa, and a very generous friend I had reconnected with who I met in my first year at university.  He lived in Baltimore and offered to sell me his car for very little.  I remember driving back from Baltimore to Massachusetts along the New Jersey Turnpike in a vicious winter storm belting out the Simon and Garfunkel song "America" because of the reference to the highway.

We also basically took our "family home" away from our children.

Even though the culture felt pretty familiar - we'd watched enough American TV and movies to recognize the run of the mill, we had no idea how to navigate health care and the bureaucracy of the Registry of Motor Vehicles, Social Security admin and, of course the whole visa thing.

A big advantage was the language - we could at least understand and be understood.  We came to realize that in some cases our accents sounded like we thought we were "better-than-you" and ended up being treated differently in some places while in other places we got credited for being smarter than we might have with a different accent.

So here we are - having sold the "family home" again - heading to a place with a reputation for a tough bureaucracy and a massive language barrier and a culture where we will continue to be aliens - although from what we've seen they are a lot more accepting of foreigners.

Shaolin Liu theater in Rockport - a favorite theater

We are totally down for this, but we know that we are giving up a lot - connections we have made over 20 years here.

We do have valued friends in South Africa who still keep in touch with us, but we discovered that it is hard for most people to maintain friendships over this distance.  We are out of sight and our struggles are not the same as theirs any more.  

I suspect the same might be true with friends that we have made in the USA, we might lose that connection with them as well.  A move like this comes with the cost of losing big chunks of a community.

View over Rockport near our last AirBnb in the USA

But we are going to be embarking on a late-life study of a new language, which is exciting.  After learning Spanish for a few years, Portuguese is proving quite difficult but once we are immersed, we expect it will be another way of keeping our minds sharp and learning new things about a different culture.

So all in all, as big a change as it will be, we decided not to let it intimidate us, but rather see it as another new adventure.