I’ve been told that we’re not allowed to leave.

Over buzzed conversations on the back deck, huddled heads over dinner, heartfelt moments paired with glasses of wine, I’ve seen what a friend had a vision of before we left Atlanta: she saw our family surrounded by friends here who didn’t want us to go. She told me about it the next day while we drank tea at her house, one of the last days before we flew across the world, across an ocean, across hemispheres to a life we didn’t know. A life I had covered in prayer but remained skeptical about and resentful of. A life that has had both breakdowns and glorious views. A life that, right now, feels mostly like sailing of the smooth variety.

I should make clear, at this point, that I am not a good sailer.

In my mind I used to be: I mean, what’s not to like? The open ocean ahead and behind, wind whipping through hair, salt in the air. But the couple of times I’ve been on a sailboat have been…less than ideal. There was the “cruise” booked with a friend in New York, where we spent the two hours’ time sitting across from a couple who were clearly having an affair. Then on honeymoon with The Husband, we were thrown in amongst other newlywed couples who, for some reason, wanted to make friends and talk the whole time and discuss plans to hang once we got off the boat. Gross. The next day, TH told me how, while I had stepped away, one of the couples had approached him at breakfast hinting about meeting up and he had politely brushed them off. I cheered, knowing now that our marriage would last. STRANGER DANGER indeed.

And since when have I ever liked wind whipping through my hair anyway?

No, the sailing life is not the one for me. I appreciate navigational instruments that I can understand, maps that make sense and warn me of traffic ahead, roads without waves that bob me around like a rag doll, closed windows and climate control. I have been officially diagnosed by a doctor (me) with a severe allergy to the unpredictable.

This stint in Australia was meant to be three years. Now we’re talking real estate and high schools.

Who knows what will happen? Well, God, obviously, but he remains frustratingly tight-fisted with his dossier on The Future. For now we remain on an expat package that has settled us in an enclave surrounded by water and friends, ensconced in schools that the boys love, beaches on all sides, sunsets and rainbows. This is not the life I was afraid of, that I suffered anxiety about, that I wanted to run away from. This is a life of playgrounds on beachfronts, of the opposite of regression for The Kid, of his therapists knowing about our family’s traditions (Saturday donuts and trips to the mall; we’re fancy), of Friday playdates and champagne toasts. This is a life I will show to The Sis and Niece next week, two of the people who are reasons for us not to stay, and say, “See? You wouldn’t want to leave either.”

Maybe we won’t.

We’re halfway through the assignment, and I can’t imagine going back to the chaos that I watch from afar: the camps and the school lockdowns and the food that gives me diarrhea every time we visit. But I also can’t imagine Little Niece continuing to grow up so far away from me.

We’re between two homes, on the open water, possibilities all around, with no idea what could happen. It should be terrifying. Yet…there’s this:

There was another time when the fearful widening of possibilities was made clear to me, in a counselor’s office, and what I didn’t know was that I was headed to New York and a man who would stand beside me as that counselor performed our wedding ceremony. There was another time when my belly first widened with possibility and now I walk beside the one who grew there, talking about sundial watches on the way to school because that’s how his brain works and who wants to talk about the boring old weather anyway? There was a second time, with another boy, and now he curls up beside me on the couch, all “I love your beautiful face, Mommy.” There is their climbing all over me and not a moment’s peace until there is and then it seems strangely quiet and like there is both more and less oxygen where they are away and the weight of the possibilities is both impossible and certain, unbearable and dear.

I can’t listen to a podcast without going to Google images to see what the narrator looks like. But this life, it calls for me to set down the instrumentation and just live. I ask for directions and names and am responded to with another question: why do you ask for names when you see that it is wonderful?

And so we live in the moments, in the water we’re in rather than waves we can’t see, and on a Saturday afternoon we live on the beachfront playground, Little Brother mastering his climbing and sliding while, a few feet away, TK is asked to join a group of kids on a carousel pushed by a girl on skates (and later by me), and wonder of wonders–wonder-full–he says yes. “Everyone aboard!” a voice calls, and as he spins around (and later I join), the wind whips through our hair and we just laugh, and it sounds like grace in the salty air.