the jump

While my boss went on a tangent during our staff meeting last week, I checked my phone for upcoming appointments and saw that I had new email. I hesitated, because I was expecting to hear back about the job in Newfoundland, but I wasn’t sure I wanted bad news at that exact moment. I put my phone away. 

…Maybe those emails were just delivery notices and gallery stuff, though. I opened my phone back up. There it was: an unread message from my interviewer in Newfoundland. I scrutinized the partial sentence visible under her name. It said ‘Hi Holly, hope all is well in Hawaii! I…’ Hmm. That could go either way. If it was a gentle rejection, I would be back at square one and feeling depressed. If it was an offer, I would be at the start of something huge and feeling big feelings. I put my phone down again. 

Picked it up a moment later. Nobody starts a rejection letter with a first name and an exclamation mark, I decided, and tapped on the message. Tim must have seen my face do something, because he suddenly changed the subject, jumped ahead to Round Robin, and asked if I had anything to announce. He was smiling, but it felt like being pounced on by your mother-in-law at a family dinner after turning down a glass of wine. Announce? To the entire staff? With a face like a boiled ham? Definitely not. I turned my phone face-down and talked about the young homeless guy who had been masturbating through his pocket while asking me to explain WWII fascism a few days earlier (“So, what is fascism? Is that, like… Italy? Hey, can I ask, how old are you?”).

It was considerate of my contact to send me the offer at the end of a Friday, to give me the weekend to panic and discuss with family before formulating a reply. I sent my acceptance the same day anyway. 

Adding to this, two days earlier, Zenny was discovered to be hiding three failing classes and a long list of unfinished assignments. She has only had a phone - with parental controls - since she started middle school a few months ago, and it immediately became a huge problem. She began hiding it, pretending to do homework with it in her lap, and shutting herself into her room to FaceTime with her friends all evening. She stopped reading books and drawing, too distracted. We talked about it, timed the apps to shut off at bedtime, and tried to interest her in books she'd enjoy, but it wasn't going well. With this new crash in her grades, I took the device away, checked her messages, and found a group chat with her friends that was filled with swearing, racism, anti-school/parents rants, and borderline-too-sexual anime images. The worst texts were coming from one girl in particular, while the rest of the group tried to ignore her comments and continue conversations about Halloween costumes and k-pop around her thread spamming. I care a lot about children, but this girl needs help I am not able to give, and I can't have my own kid hanging around with someone who calls Black Santa the ‘N’ word (a lot of local kids think they get a pass on using the word because they’re not white, while still using it with the hard-R to insult Black people). I was really angry to see zero pushback from her or her other friends. I have hammered this into my kids for years: when someone says something gross in front of you, you need to say something. Anything. ‘That’s not okay”, “that’s messed up”, or just "NO", at MINIMUM. If edgelord teens don’t get called out by their peers, they become asshole adults.

We locked the phone down until it was basically just a brick that nags her with texts from immediate family, and we’re sitting with her to make sure she gets caught up on all her work. She's already doing better, reading books and making crafts again, but the friend group at school is still a problem, and in the course of helping her catch up I was alarmed by how stupid her homework is. They are giving her lower-elementary work, with coloring sheets and things like "Join these two sentences with the word 'and' or 'but'." In Honors English. No wonder she thinks homework is a waste of time.

So I'm taking her with me. Initially, I was going to let her finish the school year while I got everything set up, but I decided that she can sleep on an air mattress and eat ramen as well as I can. Once decided, it was a big relief -  I didn't want to leave her in the first place. I imagined spending the winter alone, cold and scared at night in an empty house, questioning all my life choices and dreaming about not being able to find my babies. She's excited to go, and I have just a slight pang of guilt about dropping a kid from Hawaii into freezing slush and darkness. It'll build character.

Leif is staying; he's graduating and going to university in a few months anyway, and he has a great girlfriend with a great mom who likes to feed him. He hugged me when I got sad about the thought of leaving him, and said he was glad I was going for it and taking a big chance. Also, he looks forward to getting my car. Gavin is just happy to have another place to visit - he's busy with university and not worried at all.

This is going to be a build-your-plane-on-the-way-down kind of situation. I am preparing to hit the ground like a guillemot.  

Don't worry, they're supposed to do that

Meanwhile, the man and I are still approaching this as a 'healing separation', because I'm giving him time to accept that I'm gone and get right with himself. Now that everything is in motion, he's starting to see this as an opportunity, and getting excited. Yesterday he said, "This can be good! We'll use the time apart to work on ourselves and focus on our own goals. I'll finish my tattoo coursework, do the blood-born pathogen training, and get certified. And then when you're all financially stable over there - like in the next 6 or 18 months or whatever - I can just quit my job and move out there with you!"

orly?

I put a few paintings up for sale on my website (hollybraffet.com). We are going to arrive with nothing but two suitcases, so it's time to try to scrape up whatever money we can. We are going to be really broke for a long time, but I will apply for grants and write books and sell art! It’s better to risk it all and fail than not try at all.