“Screw you guys! We goings to Amsterdam!”
This was an email I got on my phone recently from my husband Donnie. Understanding why requires knowing the context.
After a December layoff and a dismal job search, Donnie had an interview in St. Petersburg, Florida last week that went exceedingly well. Getting hired would mean high pay with excellent benefits, with health, dental, and life insurance. The job is as close to ideal as anything can be.
The week has been nothing but torturous waiting, trying to imagine what the interviewers are thinking, hoping but preparing for disappointment.
Some disappointing things have already happened since the new year began, small things that sink my mood when combined: my rejection letter from Harper Collins, my broken aching tooth that needs an expensive crown, being kicked off Reddit without a fair trial.
If the Florida job falls through, our backup plan is to sell everything we own and move to Amsterdam. Donnie has a phone interview next week with a company there, and to save ourselves from the pain of waiting for a call from Florida, we have been plotting our Amsterdam move.
We have even done research on how to get our cat Tubear across the Atlantic and discovered that she will need a passport with a photo I.D.
“Heck,” I told Donnie. “Forget about Florida. If they make an offer, turn them down. Just tell \’em we\’re moving to Amsterdam.”
Donnie liked this idea and began composing an email on his phone, which he sent me. The subject line said, “Suck it, FL!” with the note, “Screw you guys! We goings to Amsterdam!”
Looking at this note was the best either of us have felt all week.
Every time the suspense gets to be too much, when frustration spills over, we have conversations like this:
\”Ready to move to Amsterdam?”
“Hell yeah, Amsterdam!”
“Hash bars, yay!”
“Tubear will love all the herring.”
“We can discover the ancestral roots of our pasty skin.”
“If America won\’t have us…”
“Amsterdam!”
We never consider that the Amsterdam job may not happen. The images are too wonderful to be spoiled by realism.
I have great visions of how Amsterdam would broaden my perspective and give me exciting new things to write about. I envision myself writing languorous poetry in street side cafes, coasting down bicycle trails, thoughtfully viewing the countryside through the windows of sleepy, rattling trains, vacationing in France during the summers.
Goodbye drugstore dental putty! Goodbye overpriced medications! Goodbye bad healthcare system!
Hello bike trails and flowers and raw herring!
Of course, Amsterdam is far away from here, a dream, separated by an entire ocean and a lot of paperwork. It would mean leaving the safety of a lifestyle I know and embracing an entirely new way of doing things.
It would be kind of like when I changed my major from liberal studies to art my junior year of college. Who knew I would ever do such a thing? No one. Not even me.
But Amsterdam is not the art department. It is far away from anything I know or have experienced. Beneath the flowers and bicycle trails, it is a void of uncertainty. It might as well be Mars.
But I have the space ship of my imagination, and it is Amsterdam bound, docked, and waiting. It does not even needs any fuel.
In my mind I am already there.