The Cost of Saying Yes
Four years ago - nearly to the day - my family made a decision that asked more of us than we anticipated. This excerpt revisits the weeks leading up to our move overseas—the thrill, the planning, the guilt, the tension, and the relationships stretched by the choice. It’s a story about marriage, parenthood, grandparents, and what gets tested when you choose change over certainty.
(the below is an excerpt from a work-in-progress memoir)
I was working from home one morning in October when a TEAMS call came through from my would-be-future Boss. I inhaled sharply and answered. Foregoing all pleasantries in his trademark Dutch fashion, he pronounces with no segue: “it’s time to your pack bags!”. I knew what he was referring to, but I played into his game cooly and coyly and asked him “oh yeah - what does that mean?” Never one to pass up the chance to riff, he went on to explain that it was finally official – that he had decided to offer me the job at the company’s headquarters in Germany – and that it was time for me to treat the international move concept, which until that moment - had been a notion my Husband and I had been downplaying for months - way more seriously. We agreed to revisit in a few days once we had more tangible information in hand, and I hung up the call and walked upstairs to find my husband.
It was an uncharacteristically quiet day in our home, for reasons I can’t recall. But, for reasons I am grateful for, I found my husband unattached to our normally affixed 2-year-old daughter catching up on his own work at the kitchen table. I didn’t even make it up the stairs fully before I stopped and quietly said: “I got the job.” Before I had finished saying those words, I burst into tears. My husband met me on the staircase and held me in a hug – also crying. I WAS happy. I was also terrified at what it meant. We both were. We had danced around this possibility for months and to have it now become a reality – was a lot. We knew what lay ahead. Countless impossibly hard conversations with our parents. Leaving all our friends and family behind. Ripping the kids from their normalcy. We wanted this – but in that moment when it finally became a real possibility – the distance from that moment to when we’d truly feel happy about it felt too far to travel. Would we survive the trip? Eventually, we worked through the tsunami of overwhelm and felt excitement again, but for the months that followed as the offer was being finalized and logistics were being ironed out, I’d find myself frequenting this space of emotional limbo regularly.
It wasn’t until after the holidays that we had a firm offer in hand and it was all a done deal. We had only floated the concept at its highest theoretical level to our loved ones – to not cause drama that in the end would be unnecessary should it all fall apart. By mid-January, however, we couldn’t delay the news any further. We had to make an adults-only trip to Germany to find a place to live and my start date was set for March 1st. Together, my husband and I flew business class (for the first time in our lives) for a whirlwind 3-day house-hunting trip. We toured nearly a dozen options – ranging from gulag-style duplex parks to quaint standalone cottages to 120-year-old villas. We were vibrating from culture shock as the local German real estate agent showed us place after place – being sure to point out to us how things varied from America with hardly masked disdain and condescension.
“You see all those kids walking home from school?” the agent asked us as we strolled through one of the potential neighborhoods. We had. “That’s because it is safe here for kids to walk, unlike the U.S. And we let our kids do things young and not protect them so much. Not like the U.S.” Okay - fair enough, we thought.
The guided tour was helpful and exciting but also exhausting. We strolled through adorable cobblestone pedestrian-only, shop-lined streets. We walked down grand avenues commissioned by Kaiser Wilhelm two centuries ago sprinkled with imposing Victorian-era architecture. We careened through the tiniest of 2-way streets strangled by parked cars on both sides. We walked from one interesting-looking restaurant to the next, getting a feel for what this new life could be. We walked around immaculately maintained public parks. We timed the distance from a potential flat to the train station I’d be using. For 2 days, all we did was walk.
“We walk a lot here. Not like in the U.S” our agent said several times with a smug look on her face. Once again, she had a point, but her lingering stares after issuing these statements were becoming harder to ignore. Her intent, it was now clear to see, was to offend. We couldn’t have known it yet, but she was giving us a complimentary taste of the world famous German charm we’d eventually become all too familiar with.
It wasn’t lost on us that we were starring in on our very own fantastical episode of the HGTV show, House Hunters International. We even went for a walk around a nearby harbor to talk through our decision, the same way the buyers on the show pretend-do before they commit. We talked through the pros and cons of the options and made the choice. In the end, we selected an exquisite, 2nd floor walk-up in a perfectly restored villa from 1900. Technically, it would be apartment-living, but we’d have the entire floor to ourselves. We didn’t have any appreciation for it at the time, but we were about to move into one of the largest apartments in the city. Clocking in at nearly 3,000 sq. feet, it was to be officially twice the size of our home in the U.S., with 14+-foot ceilings, century-old parquet floors, a grand marble-tiled foyer and hallway, four bedrooms, three bathrooms, two verandas, one wintergarden (all seasons room), original handcrafted wooden & frosted glass floor to ceiling doors, a private garage and a parking space. It was obscene opulence – for what amounts to the same cost of renting a studio apartment in Stamford, CT. It was an absolute no brainer for us, despite the concerns we had about moving two loud, active, young children into a 2nd floor apartment with a bunch of stodgy and grumpy German neighbors. Neither the threat of neighborly warfare nor the two flights of ornately carved mahogany stairs we’d have to walk before entering were enough to deter us from the choice. Because we knew we would never have the chance to live somewhere like this again. Literally – the U.S. is too young, this type of accessible vintage living just isn’t a thing. We flew home from our house hunting trip feeling a bit heady about the adventure ahead.
As we proudly shared pictures of our future home with skeptical and sort of annoyed family and friends (I don’t blame them - rent for mediocrity in the U.S. is egregiously high – we were hardcore humble bragging and it was admittedly obnoxious), I was anxiously trying to make sense of how I’d morph this palatial space into a cozy home. I hadn’t a clue how we were going to jump from our “little blue house” as we all affectionately referred to it, to an entire floor of a once-mansion with its own ballroom. So, I did what anyone overwhelmed by such a grotesque first-world problem would do: I turned to Amazon. I ordered large, luxurious carpets to help minimize the echo caused by the untouchably high ceilings. I purchased a 20-foot hallway runner – something I recognize I will definitively never need to do again. I bankrupted Costco of their large wall photo canvases to try and populate the vast open walls. We borrowed furniture from my in-laws, knowing we didn’t even own enough of our own to fill the rooms we were about to inherit. It was all very surreal.
It was also exceedingly whirlwind. We returned from our house hunting trip on February 11th. By February 28th, our entire home had been emptied. Three and a half weeks. That’s all the time that passed between scouting a place to live and watching our entire life disappear into a shipping container.
I don’t often pause to reflect on the magnitude of what we did. We packed up everything—our house, our children, our certainty—and put it on a boat. We didn’t have time to second guess any of it. And in retrospect, I think that’s what saved us. If we’d had more time, it might’ve broken us. But we didn’t. We had just enough time to find a home in Germany, pack up another, and put our life in a 30x30 steel rectangle. It was snappy. Brutal. And oddly, kind. There was no room for emotional processing. We had to move. So, we did.
No one prepares new parents for how to cope with and navigate the universal phenomenon that is “grandparent guilt.” It is a non-winnable dynamic because no matter the situation or the variables, if you are the party removing a grandchild from a grandparent’s imminent contact zone – you are guilty -- of many emotional crimes, punishable in the galactic court of grandparenting. This being the case, I knew we’d be carrying quite the burden after delivering this news to our respective sets of parents. We were fortunate to have both of our parents at the time, and both of our families are large, lovably (dis)functional, relatively co-dependent, and most relevantly in this scenario, local. So, there was no way around it - we would be upending the world of no less than four highly beloved and gratuitously loving grandparents in one foul swoop, by absconding with their precious grand spawn. I woke up in a cold sweat for many nights before we broke the news. The guilt of it all – especially after several years of broken contact due to COVID – was immense. To their credit, when the time finally came – they were extremely cool about it. All of them, even my mother – who’s penchant for overreaction and emotional histrionics had me losing the most sleep. They all recognized the opportunity, saw the potential in the experience, and were overwhelmingly supportive. It was almost as if I had trained and conditioned for a race I never had to run. In fact, I was sort of disappointed. I had a library of imaginary come-backs and dramatic monologues waiting in my brain, at the ready, should the argument arise – and not even one needed to be accessed.
Relieved doesn’t begin to describe what it felt like to have such a support system surrounding us. But still, the ever-present sense that we were doing something wrong haunted me in those final weeks before leaving.
Perhaps to only ourselves, we had built a reputation as being rather “safe and steady” and “reliable.” In other words, we would never be described by others as risk takers. My husband is an uber Type A with a passion for personal finance and a Polymath’s brain whose pet peeves are spontaneity and plans that change. And I am a lifelong people pleaser who is Type A about things I enjoy and Type E (E=for gives an “ehhh” effort) about everything else. I like big ideas and abhor details. He is a perfectionist who thrives in the minutia. I believe life exists in the gray – in the ‘in between’. He is comfortable when conditions are more straight-forward; more black and white. I know how it sounds, but believe it or not, it’s a partnership that works. But it's one that requires a lot of planning to be successful. So, that’s what we did, what we have been doing for 16+ years. We activated our inner doers and killed it as operational rockstars -- truly great partners in crime just straight getting shit done. And this well-tested team dynamic was a huge benefit to us in these days leading up to our move. Tragically, however, he’s a first-born son and I’m a first-born daughter – which means, we are both hardwired to serve others. And this equally well-tested people pleasing dynamic was far less beneficial to us as we prepared for the unthinkable – prioritizing ourselves for once in our lives.
After all, we were leaving everything—our families, our routines, our self-proclaimed identity as the ‘safe and steady ones’ – and it all felt exceptionally selfish.
But at the same time, it felt brave. More importantly, it felt like survival. After years of numbness raising small children during a pandemic, and with more than a decade of marital experience under our belts, we both felt like this was the thing we needed to break a heavy monotony that had started to accumulate. It wasn’t until the opportunity presented itself that the crushing weight of our staleness revealed itself. It became quickly clear, though, that we were stuck – physically, spiritually, emotionally, and relationally. Being the types of people we are, we also knew we would never un-stuck ourselves without cause. We worried that if we didn’t do this thing – this big, crazy, unexpected thing that dropped down on us out of the blue -- we just might not make it.
So, we put our house up for rent, threw together 9 duffle bags of clothes and toys, downloaded Duolingo to practice German, and boarded the plane with no clue what would happen next. But we were together. And that felt like enough.
I sobbed most of the way to JFK airport. I remember wearing sunglasses to mask my tears from the kids. I didn’t want them to think I wasn’t excited about this “family adventure” we were embarking on. The further from home we got, the calmer I felt. Somewhere near Jamaica, Queens, though, I decided it was time to snap out of it and fully lean in. There was no turning back now.
10 hours later, we touched down in Frankfurt, Germany.
As we navigated the iconic German autobahn for the first time with precious cargo in tow, we were still running on a potent cocktail of optimism, adrenaline and jet lag. When we finally pulled up to our new apartment I loudly announced “Look kids! Your new house!” in the stylings of National Lampoon’s European Vacation.
In response - and with impeccable timing - my son popped his head up from his car nap against the window and promptly vomited all over the rental car floor.
Subtle.
Turns out, we should have taken the hint.