2009 - What a year!

Well, let us not complain that 2009 was uneventful for us. It was full of non-stop action, stress, and exciting events. Here are the highlights (from my perspective more than Ian's, but undoubtedly relevant to his life, now and future):


Falling in love with our boy.

Although we were glad to have Ian right from the start, we are not exactly baby people. So in this year, when Ian became old enough that we got the first glimpses of his unique personality and could see (and most recently, hear) what he was thinking, we started to really fall in love with our little boy. I realized as I was contemplating my New Year's resolutions that none of them have to do with Ian, and to me this signifies that we are already comfortable with our ability to be his parents. We can now spend hours at a time with him, enjoying his company and not feeling burdened (days on end of this does begin to feel burdensome, but not because he's not the cutest and most delightful small boy ever). To use the term of Penelope Leach, we now care for Ian with the "fierceness" of a parent's love that is unlike anything else.

Transition to our new life.

Wow, what a year. Let me say that again. Wow, what a year. We have moved twice (with first a baby and then a toddler), sold, rented, and bought three properties, left the vast safe and boring suburbs of North Raleigh for the rough and tumble intrigue of downtown Durham, moved from 2500 sq. ft. to 1400 sq. ft. to 1000 sq. ft, and dealt with the normal demands of work (in Doug's case, always abnormally demanding), raising a toddler, keeping our pit bull girls from going nuts, adjusting to the comings and goings of Uncle Greg as a sometimes member of the household, and dealing with the annoying realities of life (car break-ins, etc.). Not an experience I'd want to repeat, but in the end we are settled into a life with which we are much more at peace in many ways.

My friend and co-worker (unknowingly) has articulated two things this year that sum up some of the reasons for our nutty move (in addition to the desire to radically simplify our life):

1) "North Raleigh is a soul-killing wasteland". (No offense to all our buddies over there). The term "soul-killing" expresses our dissatisfaction very well. No one specific thing we disliked about our previous life can get the point across -- the point is that our souls were being smothered in several ways (my experience with the inanity of the HOA helped drive it home).

2) "They weren't my people". Although we have several amazing friends in Raleigh (more than we have yet in Durham), it was because we attended a church that attracted the most crazed and awesome minority of North Raleigh inhabitants. The population as a whole were just not "our people". Downtown Durham is populated with an eclectic mix of bobos (coined by my beloved David Brooks, see here), academics, impoverished people, artists, and others who in general value passion, renewal, and adventure more than safety, property values, and security (we don't particularly find Durham to be dangerous, but a drive for whitewashed safety at all costs is not the overriding vibe here). Can't say exactly why, but these are just "our people".

In addition to making our escape from Raleigh, we also radically simplified our life, getting rid of a vast amount of our stuff, adopting some seemingly spartan restrictions on possessions (yes, we now admit that three forks is not quite enough), and eliminating the desire to spend money on things that take away more than they add to our life (including the cookie-cutter house in the soul-killing wasteland). This has been largely successful in helping us minimize the time we have to spend on things that we find tedious and non-life-giving (like cleaning parts of a house that we don't use daily) and more on our top priorities (Ian, work, people, spiritual life).

Weathering the storm.

We were fortunate enough to come through 2009 without any major negative effects of the economic crisis (or other multiple associated crises). Doug's business continues to grow (although we like to think that he has earned this through blood, sweat, tears, and talent, very little luck involved), I am still employed in a job I love and for which I am well paid, and we were able to sell our house when we wanted to (albiet missing both ends of the new tax credit by just a bit on each side, darn it). So, while we feel a bit plagued to be part of a generation that has spent the entire decade since college graduation in an essentially stagnant economy, this year we survived pretty much unscathed.

Entering our 30's.

Well, technically Doug turned thirty in 2008, but it's all pretty close. Noa Noy, a principal investigator at Cornell under whom I once worked, once told my thirty-turning labmate that the 30's are the best decade, basically because you have figured out who you are and what you want to a large extent (using up your 20's to do so . . . ) and can start doing it. I think this is largely true for us:

- We have both completed graduate school and have found work we love and can make a living at in our chosen fields (for both of us this involved several false starts, a lot of pain and soul-searching, and some miserable jobs post-grad school). This is particularly a victory for Doug, since he had to create a company in order to do it.

- We have decided that we do want to be parents after all and are in possession of the bestest little boy we could hope for.

- We have seemingly resolved the struggle we found ourselves in with our previous lifestyle, feeling that we were living out of line with our values and couldn't fix it.

- We have a "sense of place" here in Durham and are pretty committed to being settled here long-term.

- We have apparently, now being married over seven years and still liking each other quite a bit, succeeded in finding permanent companionship.

- We have come into our own in our spiritual journeys, ever ongoing but (for the moment) feeling at peace that we are pursuing God without undue baggage, lethargy, or hypocrisy.

And, remembering that this is Ian's blog, I trust that our state of being will impact him, as we continue to make important choices about his life and be his key people. Hopefully we can provide the solid yet flexible foundation that he needs to become a passionate, creative, thoughtful, and intelligent human being.