Ultimately, I don't know what will happen (and sometimes I fantasize about K getting an offer to go somewhere after he gets tenure, but that's sooooo unlikely!). as I contemplate many years living in this area, having the boys grow up here (OK, they're pretty grown up by now, poor things, having moved a lot too), I feel torn between that old desire I had of putting down roots somewhere, and the impulse to experience new things. I had a hard time adapting to that kind of thinking, but when we left Brazil and moved here, I think that changed. However, in these 21 years together, I seem to have changed and become just like K was/is: he has always said that after the first traumatizing move he remembers in his life - when he was 6 years old and followed by many others - he just can't stand living in the same place for too long, that he needs new adventures. The funny thing is that when I met K, my biggest desire in life was to be able to have what I never had - a stable place, give my children a 'childhood home' and roots. because this is just what 'normal' is in my life. Unconsciously I keep thinking that we'll sell this house again and move elsewhere and start from scratch once more.

In fact, the idea of settling down sounds nearly incomprehensible to me after so many years in my life - actually, my whole life, all 40 years of it - moving from place to place and not knowing where I would end up. We calculated once that in 20 years K's family had moved, I don't know, 13-15 times (including a house or apartment a year in one city).** A few months ago I was having a hard time thinking that we had finally 'settled down' somewhere, but I didn't blog about it at the time because I didn't really know how to say this (not that today I'm going to be any better).

Five years was the most I ever lived in one house (I did live in the city of São Paulo for 12 years, but moved a few times during this period). A good metaphor for how 'unsettled/unsettling' my life is and has been is my 'birth country' trauma, caused by the fact that I was born in a country which doesn't allow me to have its nationality.* And then there are the many times I moved (either places or from one rental house to another. I've never had a 'hometown,' I've never known what having a family home (where you spent your childhood) to go back to feels like. You see, that never really happened in my life. and I am beginning to think that maybe we will live in this house for a long time (we will? really? the skeptic in me cannot reconcile to this idea). Not that I didn't like it before, it's just that it is hard, nearly impossible, for me to imagine how it feels like to live in a place for many many years. Where translation and 'in-between-ness' have become a way of life.

(Up)Rooted Source:, Posted on: 09:48 PM by LilianĢ sons, 2 languages (Portuguese and English), 2 countries (Brazil and the U.S.), 2 'worlds' (academic/ home-front), 2 PhDs (mine & my husband's).

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