International Women's Day in Rome

A reflection about moving around while I've spent the past month sitting still.

My dog Zaby window-shops mimosa cakes on International Women’s Day in Rome.

In celebration of International Women’s Day, I’m giving a shout-out for the extraordinary traveling spouses I’ve met around the world. You know who you are, my friends, so, stand up, and take a bow. You are some of the strongest women I know.

Many of you dislike being described as a “traveling spouse.” It’s better than “trailing spouse,” which makes us feel like debris, or “wife of,” which makes us feel like an accessory. But, like it or not, it’s what I’ve been for the past twenty-plus years. I consider myself a plus-one with opinions, as I struggle to be diplomatic while married to a diplomat.

You are women (and also some extraordinary men – but, for today’s sake, I’m talking about my girls) who pack up your family every few years, and pretend that life is a traveling, sold-out Broadway show full of fabulous entertainment. The truth is that you’re not always sold on the show, and you often wish an understudy could take over for you.

You are wives or partners of diplomats, entrepreneurs, doctors, academics, journalists, missionaries or simply adventurous sorts, to name just a few of the fields in which you are embedded. Often, before joining your spouse at a work evening or picking up your kids at school, you wipe away tears because you are usually thinking about having left one place you loved and moving to another you did not choose.

You are women who do acrobatics to get their kids into new schools at the last minute. You are veteran reporters as you research a new pediatrician, general practitioner, dentist, vet, eye doctor, and dermatologist in foreign cities. The last person you find doctors for is yourself. With every new container that shows up to be filled, shipped to a foreign land, and floated down new channels, you look in the mirror, count the grey hairs, and you wonder if you’ll ever find as good a colorist as in your last post.

You pull out your back as you tug masking tape over hundreds of moving boxes. You then unpack those boxes and question why you keep any of it. You make executive decisions on whether Lego should be tossed. You secretly throw out books, clothes, board games, and kitchenware when your husband and kids aren’t looking. The clutter of your life disgusts you, and you contemplate the appeal of minimalist life in an Ikea showroom, a convent, or jail.

You might not say much at the start in your new post because you are exhausted. Emotionally and physically. You are coping with kids who don’t have friends yet and miss those they spent years making. You console your spouse in the learning curves of his new position. You are FaceTiming with your parents who are growing older and needing you closer. You are screaming on the phone with the local utilities’ company (often in a foreign language) when all you really want is WiFi so you can call someone you miss -- which is everyone from your previous posts.

The wrapping paper of most bouquets bought today in Rome.

You probably don’t own a home. But you make a new one wherever you go. And people who visit say: “I don’t know how you do it.” Then, they add: “I could never do what you do.” You reflect on whether that’s a subtle compliment or a blatant insult. It drives you crazy every time you hear it, but, you grin and bear it.

You feel judged when you are introduced as the “wife of,” as if there’s no time to tell your story when the small talk has already transitioned to broader conversations. Chances are you have given up something that you loved doing before you started moving around. It might have been a job or a hobby or a friendship that gave you strength and a sense of identity beyond your team partnership with your husband.

You try to live in the moment but you can’t help but always worry about the future. You hold your breath until you learn of your new destination.

“Where next?” friends often ask.

“Who knows?” you often reply.

You are fully aware of your privilege in moving around and being exposed to other countries and cultures. And, rightly so, you understand that no one has patience for anyone moaning about a move to Italy. Yet not everyone understands that it’s not about the destination — it’s the journey that guts us.

You are the backbone of the family and the household. You have learned how to read road signs in foreign languages, navigate illegible ingredients in supermarkets, find and manage new babysitters and housekeepers, and sort out vaccinations in another language.

You find yourself morphing in a constantly-changing landscape. Once you show others that you can laugh and cry about it all, you find your people. Those people become your family overseas. And, then, just as you feel settled, you say goodbye to all that you accomplished and all those you loved, and walk away from it. And you start over somewhere else. Over and over again.

All florists in Rome sell symbolic mimosa flowers on the 8th of March to celebrate women.

So, often, you hide from it all by obsessively sorting out closets. You’re embarrassed by how much you accumulate, how much you drag along with your every stay, how much you grip on to out of security and nostalgia.

As I rest my healing ankle since my ski accident a month ago, I am thinking about all of you as I weed through my closet in a burst of spring cleaning and Marie Kondo mania. As I sort through my trousers, dresses, and blouses, I’m discarding identities of an earlier age, costumes of chapters of my own adulthood. I may arrive at one post serious in high heels, but I aspire to leave laughing in sneakers.

With each article of clothing I attach to a hanger, I can’t help but pose these questions to all of you as I struggle to find answers myself:

How does a family that rips up its temporary roots in one country and replants them in another commemorate a past? Are clothes something we hold to as costumes of our former identities, snapshots of a former life? Are my clothes, and those of my kids, better off with those in need or archived in an attic (which we will never have) as scraps of our family history?

These are the sorts of seemingly superficial things we all think about as we transplant our lives from one land to another. And I’m not sure any of us has found the answers yet. But, perhaps, that is what makes the journey, ultimately, as great as the destination. All the questioning and reflecting. Which we do — all the time.

My husband and I have no plans to go anywhere soon so there are no hidden messages in this post. Instead, in spending the past month waiting for my fractured ankle and torn ligament to heal, my mind has been abuzz, in reflecting on all the great women I’ve met who have also weathered injuries or illnesses as they try to keep the wheels of life in motion.

As I hobbled around Rome today (in athletic gear and sneakers, post physical therapy), I heard women everywhere wishing each other “auguri,” as they celebrated sisterhood today, using the same affirmation they do for a birthday. Florists are selling bouquets of mimosa flowers everywhere, and men, women, and kids are lined up to buy bundles. (My husband is allergic to the symbolic flower so I don’t count on a delivery.)

Even the Monte Bianco gets decked out with mimosa flowers on International Women’s Day in Rome.

If I could, I’d send a Mimosa Monte Bianco (as featured above) to each and every one of you that I have met and admired over the years throughout my travels and postings in Rome, Brussels, Tel Aviv, and San Francisco. You have given me strength as you’ve empathetically shared your stories about hardships and hiccoughs with me. We’re all in this together, regardless of the profession, as we pick up, pack up, and plod forth.

So, my sister friends, I leave you with this: As we bump around the world and turn into different women than we were at the start, and don different outfits that we may have outgrown, we must be patient with ourselves, with where we are and with all that we have accomplished, which we never seem to think is enough.

But, it is enough. It’s more than enough. It’s A LOT. So, let’s celebrate that today. And tomorrow. And the next day. And the one thereafter. Evviva, le donne, evviva! Enjoy your Mimosa Monte Bianco. Believe me, I’ve had a couple today.