The Woman with Her Heart in the Highlands

Sooo, I guess it's time to reveal the deeply-hidden secret that there'll soon be another Eggers on this side of the pond. (Er, one that's immediately related to me, at any rate!)

Let me start off by saying that my parents are my role models, albeit in very different ways. In my Mom's case, this is a woman whom the backs of romance novels would describe as an "indomitable spirit".

Most people wonder idly what's "out there." But Mom has never stopped going out to see what's out there. She grew up taking care of her own family, doing all the cooking and cleaning and grocery shopping and paying bills and everything an adult does to care for a household... from the age of ten. Mom is no stranger to adversity. If we're talking about novels, this woman's life could easily comprise one -- although it would likely be rejected by editors as too dramatic to be believable. Her biological mother died when Mom was seven, and she was adopted by her invalid grandmother, who then died three weeks before Mom's eighteenth birthday. She married when she was eighteen, divorced, and joined the Air Force to see the world. She married again while her brand-new, premature son breathed oxygen in a tank in the hospital for seven months, finally surviving against all odds and to the astonishment of his doctors; less than a year later, she added some twins; hopped around from base to base; and six years later busily packed up the young family to move to a foreign country. I still remember standing in the dining room in our house on-base in Spokane: Mom was on the phone with Dad, who had called from work, and they were talking excitedly about incomprehensible grown-up things when Mom almost fell out of her chair. They talked a bit more, Mom hung up, and she turned to me looking like someone who has just been told they're actually the emperor of China. "Pickle!" she said. "We're going to Germany!" (I think my response was something like, "Oh.")

Mom's enthusiasm, though, was catching. The night before we left -- all three of us kids snuggled into one bed in temporary base-housing -- she described how magical it would be to see the world, how much mystery and wonder was Out There.

And she was right. Mom spent the next six years soaking up as much Germany and Europe as any single human could. It was not long after we arrived and she got her own bearings that she took over the USO's "Guten Tag" program, an orientation program geared toward introducing other new Americans to German culture. The Guten Tag program was her pet: just as she continued to do for us, she was devoted to spreading the love of discovery and travel to others. She gently encouraged frightened new G.I.'s and their families to explore their surroundings; to meet the people; to learn some of the language; to try new food and experiences; to blend a bit with -- and appreciate -- the culture; in short, to recognize the opportunity for what it was and not be afraid to discover what could be Out There. She was tour guide and language teacher and cultural liaison all at once (though somehow this woman still found time to bake us cupcakes for school birthdays and chaperone every single field trip!).

Mom's involvement only grew. I think, at one point, she held five different part-time jobs. She found herself mixing cement in Belgium, marching in a Karnival parade in the Pfalz, driving a brand-new Mercedes down the Hockenheimring (the most famous Grand Prix track in western Germany), even delivering newspapers in Landstuhl on the weekends. She still laughs when she recounts sitting in the front yard with her best friend, Nena, as the two of them relaxed in the sun with a bottle of wine. "Oh, damn," Mom had griped, "I can't go shopping in Strassbourg this weekend. I have to lead a tour to Paris!"

When Mom and Dad weren't running around Europe for work, they were packing us up to run around it in their free time. We poked through Italy, Spain, Bavaria, Holland; Mom can still tell you the best places for lunch in random, tiny French villages, how salt is mined in Austria, or which trains to hop through Switzerland.

Of course, when you're a kid, you just accept this as life. It doesn't occur to you that any of this could be unusual, because you don't know anything else. It's only later that you recognize your extraordinary luck in growing up with such a multifacted, various, and yet safe exposure to the New. I sometimes complain about the fact that I don't really "come from" anywhere -- especially in comparison to the bogglingly deep roots that anchor Bert to the very soils of his homeland. But to tell the truth... I wouldn't have it any other way. Maybe that's only because I don't know it any other way.

But Mom does. She grew up thinking of Europe as "a place where rich people go." If anyone had told the overstressed thirteen-year-old, surviving off hard work and government aid, that she'd someday picnic in castle ruins in Germany, she would have laughed before turning back to washing the family's laundry by hand in the bathtub.

So you can imagine the guts it took for her to leave it all behind when her marriage fell apart. Mom and Dad finally admitted, toward the end of our six-year stay in Europe, that it probably Wasn't Meant to Be. A few short months later, Mom found herself in the desert in Arizona, 36 years old and sharing a bedroom with her friend's daughter and wondering how she was going to start all over again.

Well, of course she did. And by 2007, Mom had built up quite a life in Tucson. She had learned a new trade, cultivated a successful career, and even actually owned a house -- her first one -- which she then slowly filled with nice furniture. As she describes it, this seemingly mundane detail was what allowed her to finally feel like a grown-up: gypsy no more! She wasn't moving every couple of years! She was established, had friends and a career and a life, three kids grown and through college, and matching furniture.

And she looked around and said, "This is it?"

I should mention that, while Mom has certainly been persistent in attending college off and on again over the years -- even getting her Associate's Degree while we were little and taking night classes at Pima Community College while I was at the UofA -- she's never had the luxury of being able to study full-time. Yet the woman should have. She loves to learn. I think she was as fascinated by the material while I was in school as I was, and we would stay up long into the night talking about history and language and politics. Especially in recent years, her book collection has become almost exclusively non-fiction, and she's grown into a veritable unofficial expert on the history of the British Isles. She especially loves Scotland: I think something about its wild, dauntless spirit calls to her own.

Well, after a lifetime of taking care of everyone else around her, my mom is finally doing something for herself. She sold her house; she left her job. She said goodbye to her friends. She packed up her car and drove to Pittsburgh to stay with her nephew and sister-in-law for a while.

And in August, she's moving to Scotland.

Congratulations, Mom. Let's go explore the wide, wide world again together!