Rawalpindi and Disney (Housing Memoir Intermission)

The Rawalpindi International Airport is, let's say, an adventure. The airport and I first met in May 2011, a few days after Bin Laden was found a few miles north. I had just completed several days of training designed to dramatically exaggerate the risk of happening upon a terrorist. And I fully internalized the message.

The plane stopped on the runway, a rickety metal staircase was pushed against it, and then it was a mad dash across the tarmac to the "reception hall." Hundreds of passengers, two guys checking passports, no cultural conception of a queue, and I'm the only one who uses deoderant. Everyone is shouting in Urdu or Arabic. And I'm realizing for the first time that I didn't bother to ask who to look for to pick me up. Oh, and everyone is, you know, a terrorist.

Apparently I didn't blend in, because a guy with a wrinkled, ripped piece of paper with my name written on it in ball point pen approached me and asked, "Are you Tim Hart?"

To which I cleverly replied, "I don't know. Who are you?" So Jason Bourne, right?

Then he goes, no joke, "I see, it's your first time. Yes, I'm from the embassy. No, I'm not a terrorist."

I went full Stockholm Syndrome at that point. Nobody else was offering help, so I agreed to go wherever he was taking me...which was the embassy.

My last, and likely final, meeting with Rawalpindi International Airport, almost exactly one year later, arrived with great anticipation. Before entering 20 hours of radio silence, I talked to Katie. She and the kids were just heading out for Orlando where I would meet them at Disney World having planned the most meticulous 4-day itinerary in the history of the esteemed park.

About 30 minutes before boarding, we were told lighting struck the tarmac and no planes could depart. By the way, it wasn't even raining. Nevertheless, by the time I said a not remotely nostalgic goodbye to that dirty airport, I had already missed the Dubai connecting flight to DC.

So I got to sleep on a faux leather armchair in the $30 per day lounge of Dubai International while Katie added an extra day to our reservation and scrambled to reschedule all the dinner plans and pirate dress ups and so forth.

I remember the customs agent at Dulles welcoming me to America, and I cried. And then I remembered what not being stressed felt like.

Later that day, I got off a shuttle at the Disney World Contemporary Resort and walked into the hotel where my kids were waiting with balloons. I can still feel the hugs. Those were special hugs. The kids didn't let go. Literally. I had to carry all three to the hotel room.

Katie, of course, shared the tragic tale of my delayed flight to the concierge so she could help reschedule everything. So when I met the concierge, she welcomed me home and mentioned that her son, in the Marines, was on his way to Pakistan the next day. I recalled the day a mob marched toward the embassy gate and while we civilians were running away, the Marines were running towards. I shook her hand, teared up, and said, "God bless him." Then she teared up.

Later, we were greeted at the pirate dress up-face paint event with a "thank you for your service" and a "this one's on Disney" because the concierge called ahead.

A Memoir of Housing (Part 2)

I used Pakistan a bit ahead of schedule for dramatic effect. We first moved to Arlington, Virginia for the job that took me to Pakistan 8 months later. Katie and the kids stayed in Arlington for another year.

We were the small, poor rental house on a mostly well-do-do street of large owner-occupied homes. Strangely, I cannot come up with any memories of the bathroom of this house, though I suspect I used it. I remember the Oreo that for some reason stayed on the back porch for several months. I remember this because I became fascinated that not even the ants would eat it, which gave me second thoughts about Oreos.

We painted Maddie's room pink, again, but this time, having not hired a professional, I learned about how colors appear lighter in the can then on the wall. She had the Pepto Bismol room.

We barely fit a couch into the basement where one could sit to watch TV with one's knees about seven inches from the TV, which was good because it was only a 19-inch TV.

About two months in, we learned that I would be going to Pakistan for a year, so the subsequent six months in the Arlington house have exaggerated emotional weight in my memory...but not the bathroom. Caleb coming up the stairs with his Calvin and Hobbes facial expressions when he would smell dinner. Glow-in-the-dark dance parties in the boys' room. Walking to Ashlawn Elementary down the little path through the woods at the end of the road.

Then, the bleak day that we told the kids I was leaving. Maddie cried. Caleb was aloof until I said, because I didn't really know what to say, "You'll be the man of the house, buddy." Then he broke down. "I don't want to a man of the house. I'm only five years old." And I realized it was kind of a dumb thing to say.

A few days later I moved to the lonely house. An empty, quiet house. One year in Pakistan. I learned to survive, but I don't want to write about the Pakistan house other than that when I returned to it after my second and final two week visit home over the course of the year, and I got to the house and felt relieved because I was "home," I knew I needed to get out of there. That's when I realized I was dying a slow spiritual death without my family.

The year ended and I met Katie and the kids at Disney World.

A Memoir of Housing (Part 1)

Reflecting on 2018 got me thinking about my married life in terms of the spaces we've lived in. And then I started typing.

We had smallish condo in Cambridge when Madeline arrived in the world. The yellow building on Putnam. We cleverly selected the third floor of a three-floor building with no elevator. Having never previously attempted to simultaneously bring groceries and children up three flights of stairs we knew we'd made the right choice. And taking out the garbage down the narrow, creaky back steps and through the "Silence of the Lambs" basement was a cheerful highlight.

On the other hand, hearing the cheers from Fenway while watching the World Series in our living room was magical. We painted the nursery the lightest shade of pink visible to the human eye. My conservative estimate is that I sang "Give, Said the Little Stream" approximately 18 million times in that nursery.

The kitchen overheard many arguments as Katie and I figured out how to be married. The neighbors might have heard a few as well. I learned that Katie doesn't yell. Rather, she makes her points with heightened emphasis.

That kitchen also hosted the young men of our church congregation every Thursday evening for about a year as we helped them with homework and college entrance exams. That kitchen saw the first steps of two children.

That kitchen heard me say to Katie, "That lump on Caleb's neck doesn't look right." And then we were in the hospital for two weeks. Sacred space.

After adding Caleb and Henry, we moved to a smallish, shabby gray house in Provo so Katie could rediscover the joy of living like a student, but now with three kids and after acclimating to having income. Especially appealing was the vintage heating system (think of "The Christmas Story") that doubled as the wall between the kitchen and living room. Imagine a helicopter taking off from a landing pad that is attached to a rickety old wooden roller coaster and that is the sound of this unique piece of heating history.

The sewage pipe broke somewhere under the front lawn and when we flushed the toilet, that which should have been flushed came up through the shower drain. So we got to stay in a hotel for a few days, which was special.

On the other hand, Caleb and I spent countless hours on the dull brown carpet in the front room playing a game I called "fumblerooskie" with a miniature BYU football. Henry spoke his first word in that dumpy living room: "football." No joke. That was his first word. His second word was "cookie." We raise them right.

The fateful decision to pass up an attractive job offer from Union Pacific on a gamble with Cambridge Associates was made during a rushed and stressful conversation while we were at our sleep-deprived worst, with that insane heater ushering in the apocalypse behind us, like it was trying to warn us. The gamble didn't pay off and I landed on the fall back plan...in Pakistan.