But, in the back of my brain, the wheels are always turning and planning. Part of it is the whole "what if we have to move" factor, the other is that we just have a small house and everything in it has to be worth its weight. So one thing I've tried to do while we've lived here, is to cycle the stuff out. By that I mean getting rid of the baby gear, clothes, books and toys that we've outgrown as we outgrow it. Sometimes, I'm too efficient as Miss B will tell you - last spring she pulled a rain jacket out of the garage sale pile that still fit her.
Garage sales in Belgium are awesome, especially within the expat community. First of all, there are a lot of online outlets, different facebook groups or email groups to reach out to. And after five years, I belong to them all. There are also organized sales, one in particular that is called the Nearly New Sale held twice a year for kids clothes, toys and gear. I'm proud to say that I've sold more than I've purchased at that one. (But that's where nearly all of Miss B's dresses come from. I'm sorry, but why would I ever pay 25-30 euros for a dress when I can get a really cute one there for 4-5 euros?)
That takes care of the kid stuff, but what about the household stuff? Last spring I discovered the beauty of a boot sale. Boot, meaning "trunk" for those of us that speak American English. Last spring I purchased a parking space for 25 euros and I could sell whatever I wanted in it. Twice. The first time, I made my entrance fee back with the sale of a stroller. For the second, I had a connection to get a spot at the American school. I brought two car loads to that one and came home with less than half a car. I worked the crowd at that one. If I saw someone looking at something, I immediately threw in an extra item (or several) for half-price or whatever I could negotiate them to walk away with. I even talked a woman into taking a broken camp bed, for free of course, but my recycling conscious self just couldn't throw the whole darn thing away after it broke before we even used it. (Ahem, no, Johnny, it does not hold the weight of your athletic 6'6'' frame.) She probably had to throw it away, the leg was broken. But the point is, I did not have to take it home. Yay!
Wait a minute. I started off this post with the intent of talking about the lady next to me at this boot sale, not the sale it self.
So as what typically happens at a sale such as this that begins at an ungodly early hour and goes until the afternoon, you start chatting it up with your neighbors during the lulls. Thanks to my wheeling and dealing, I didn't have many lulls, but when I did I started talking to my neighbor. She was a teacher at the school. She thought it was interesting that I wasn't a parent from the school (remember it was the American school) and started asking me about our expat experience in Belgium. I explained that we were in the country indefinitely and when we arrived the children were the perfect age for immersion so we chose a local french school. We wanted them to be able to play with their neighbors and join the local sports teams so we didn't always have to do everything with Americans. (I left out the part about how we never, in a million years, would have paid the tuition that the American school asks. I know the facility is amazing, the teachers are top rate, but it's kindergarten. At the same price tag that I paid for my senior year of college. At St. Thomas.) But I digress.
I told her that we had a great experience in Belgium, we loved living here, our kids were happy and well-adjusted. She too was an expat (from another european country, I'm not going to name it as I don't want to contribute to any stereotypes in any way) having lived in Belgium for a long time and raising her family here. And then it came up that we were anticipating a move in the near future. And she proceeded to tell me how awful that would be for the children. How horrible it would be to "rip" (her word) them out of the world that they knew and put them in a culture that they didn't know/understand any more. Or never knew (I had told her that Miss B was born here.)
Ahem. Excuse me?
I explained to her that we felt very strongly that the value in our experience here as expats was two-fold. And that the most valuable enrichment for the children would come after we moved back. After they learned to live life in another country, and then went back to their own. After all, if we stay here, they will only be European, they won't have the other culture to compare it to. The comparison of both cultures, is where you have the enrichment, the value. My husband and I have that, because we knew one first and then the other. The kids don't have that, yet. They only know one. The easy choice would be to stay here. But the growth will come from going back.
And I also explained that one of the reasons we loved living here so much was because we knew that precious timer was ticking down and we needed to enjoy it and appreciate it while we had the chance. And her response was still, something to the effect of "yeah, but that will suck."
I heard my mother's voice in my ear at that moment and it said, "Only if you let it."
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