Our family is well into our adventure of being separated from Nate while he pursues is summer fieldwork in Bolivia. He will be gone a total of three weeks, and we have one week down. Natalie and I are in San Diego, running the house and staying distracted. So far some of those distractions have been in the form of visits from Oma and the Batstones and visits to the France and Portacio homes. It's been great to be able to visit like that with just a phone call.
I feel that Nate and I are falling into an established pattern during crisis: one of us is able to remain a bit more objective if the other seems to have more immediate needs (read: I'm the objective one in this case). #568 on the list of reasons why marriage longevity suits an immense change such as this. I feel Nate's work has taken great leaps in the short time he's been there. The implications of that are tough to think about, but there are some indisputable directions his work can go whether he pursues it or not. He's made a herculean (I seem to love that adjective on this blog) effort to connect with many historians and archivists since his arrival in Bolivia and much of it has had immediate returns. A lot of it has highlighted the need to spend more time there in the future but has also raised some concerns of his about how his work will be received in a community of folks we considered our neighbors while we lived there. During the last quarter of the school year he completed a paper (more like a "down payment on my thesis", he said) that he's using as the basis for most of the information he's trying to obtain in these three short weeks. Specifically, he is doing a study of a population of people he believes to have been integral in the founding of the town of Vallegrande, a town in a province of the same name situated in the valleys of Bolivia. Current scholarship doesn't recognize their existence in the area, though other records and works by Bolivian historians wrote of their presence during the founding of the town of Vallegrande. Nate's work seeks to address the validity of their presence, how they were effectively written out of Vallegrande's history, and the implications for their contribution to the cultural and ancestral roots in the town and province. These folks were of black African ancestry, which potentially poses issues of rejection and dispute in Nate's pursuit of primary resources in Bolivia with local historians, parish archives and the general acceptance of the province's denizens.
Emotionally it's been a trip through the more figurative Valley and I think Nate is struggling to see how far he has come. Already raw from end-of-school year burnout, this trip, just one week after finals, has been almost more than he can bear. He's ready to be full-time Papa and hubby the way he wants to be and not how it's been dictated to him by the constraints of academic time and responsibility.
Natalie and I are doing fine, despite the new challenges we're facing in his absence. These things will change us all but the loneliness and struggle to get through each day are only temporary. I'm one month from being full-term with this pregnancy and my challenges are pretty base and visceral: parenting a toddler amidst constant fatigue. I'm also coming to the end of my work time pre-delivery with only two weekends left. In that respect I am feeling physical limits as well. But I don't see this time as a negative: our daytime routine is much like it was during the school year, we have awesome opportunities to connect with family, and I am not afraid of the solitude during the evenings. In a sense our path to this point was by choice, but I wouldn't say I chose this role during this time. But I do it willingly, maybe not always gladly, because I love the guy. This is so far from any martyr sentiment that I have been close to on other occasions that I was ready to jump right in, big belly and all. He would do the same.
So, we are reserving the right to live even more isolated lives when he returns and we get ready to welcome our new baby. You don't need to remind us of the transition issues, just politely listen when we start complaining about it during our bi-monthly phone calls. Maybe, if you can't resist sending advice our way you could at least put it in the form of a song or haiku.
Advice and all, we could never do this on our own. The contribution of all is not lost on us, so here is my one-line thanks that inadequately reflects the gratitude in my heart.
