It’s been three years since Tom and I left Poland. We’re now settled in Perth, Western Australia. With its relentless blue skies, sprawling dry suburbs and alcohol controls, it’s about as different to Warsaw as it’s possible for a place to be.
And my life is about that different, too. A week after I arrived home I swapped my jeans and down jackets for the latest season’s tailored suit, and I have reported every day since to the sixth floor of an office tower on the main business strip, where I write reports about improving government service effectiveness and draw flow diagrams of process inefficiencies. Turning my head from my computer, I enjoy the sort of views over the Swan River and the Perth hills that make you understand why people call this place paradise. You can see the smoke from the bushfires as they consume the outer suburbs from up there, too.
Before I know it, my three years off seem a distant memory, and I find myself waking up on Monday mornings, counting the weeks to the next public holiday … But then I think to myself: Do I really want Dee’s life? Or even Anthea’s? I jump out of bed and head for the shower. All things considered, I choose this life. I now see, though, that one of the many privileges I have is that choice. It doesn’t mean I have escaped office politics or demanding bosses. But I have another Polish proverb up my sleeve now: Nie mój cyrk, nie moje małpy. Not my circus, not my monkeys.
As for Tom, he took some well-earned time off. He went fishing with his mates, and cleaned and cooked for us. When I told people he wasn’t working, they would look at me sideways and say things like, ‘So how long are you going to let that go on?’ or ‘How can you afford to have him not work?’ and various other things no one had ever said to or about me when I didn’t work. Tom tells me he never minded picking up my drycleaning and cooking a nice meal for us, and just saw it as a useful contribution to our mutual well-being, rather than a demeaning task. All things considered, he is a much better wife than me. It’s almost a pity he decided to go back to work.
Few people I meet in Australia are curious about my time in Poland. ‘That must have been interesting,’ they say, when I tell them I lived in Warsaw for three years, before they change the topic. Bathroom renovations, football, and the next barbecue are all popular options. It is unfathomable to many people I meet that, given the opportunity to live in Perth, you wouldn’t. I see their point when, on sticky summer nights Tom and I head down to the beach before dinner for a quick dip in the turquoise waters of the Indian Ocean. But now I see these things through the eyes of someone who’s seen other things, too. The joy of fresh seasonal fruits and vegetables arriving on the street corners. Carrying your nationality in your heart – one you know that millions have fought and died for. Boil-in-a-bag rice.
Tom and I have made what some might call heroic efforts to keep up our links with Poland. We’ve travelled an hour to Perth’s Polish club, with its mediocre pierogi, warm vodka, and surprised but welcoming old timers. We listen to Polish radio on the internet, and are watching the latest season of Days of Honour, ordered from Empik over the internet. We’ve accosted Polish-speaking people in the street from time to time – in faltering Polish that has proven to be easier to lose than it was to gain. Either they look at us suspiciously and hurry on, or invite us into their homes and won’t let us leave until the vodka is finished. And I simply can’t stop myself correcting people of Polish descent who do not pronounce their names correctly – there’s a prominent Queensland politician who does not even come close. So perhaps there’s a little Polish babcia in me after all.
None of our expat friends are left in Warsaw. Shannon and Paul went to Bucharest, where two daughters and salsa dancing keep her busy. ‘Everything is worse here,’ she tells me by email. But they’ve found friends there to share their trials and successes with on Friday nights over take-away Indian. Some of them she met when she joined the IWG and volunteered for the organising committee, she confessed to me once. I promised not to tell.
When Bluey’s work cut Julie’s Lisbon posting short and wanted to move them to China, their now high-school age children revolted. The family decided to try life in Melbourne for the first time in more than twenty years. Work as an English teacher is proving harder to get for Julie than she’d expected – she’s not such a rarity in Australia. In our latest skype chat, she tells me she’s started a business doing champagne tastings for corporate executives. ‘You gotta work with what you know,’ she tells me. No wonder she was such a successful expat wife.
We haven’t heard much from Alex and Magda – a quick wedding and the birth of twins for them that spring have taken precedence over correspondence. While Stacey has added ‘raising puppies in Accra’ to ‘real journalism’ on the list of things she’s doing with herself. Being the author of a worthy guidebook to Poland is, however, not on that list. Despite having paid (meagerly) for her to travel the country seeking out the best of its big cities and its remotest corners, the guidebook company didn’t end up printing the update. ‘There aren’t enough tourists in Poland to make it worthwhile,’ her publisher said when they canned the project.
Meanwhile Hannah’s emails from Washington, full of news about her job at the Smithsonian and peppered with words like ‘psyched’ and ‘Beltway’, grow more despondent as her return to Warsaw grows closer. ‘Although it will be nice to escape the terrible weather here at least,’ she says. Something tells me I wouldn’t survive a posting to DC.
I get chatty missives from time to time from Natalia, Elena and Tomek, but underneath I can feel an undercurrent of worry, as rumbles from the east ripple over the border towards them. I don’t follow the details of Eastern European politics as closely as I once did, but one thing’s clear: Once again, powerful people have their eye on these wide brown fields, and history suggests that the people who live on them will not be of any concern.
All of them ask, from time to time, if we’re looking at doing another posting. ‘Maybe one day,’ I reply. For now, I’m enjoying my life in Perth, with a cat called Very, a houseful of Polish memories, good friends – old and new – and an easy stroll to the cafés of Fremantle with our new boxer-cross puppy, Charlie Too (Charlie, for short). That’s where Tom and I can be found most Saturday mornings, with a cappuccino, planning trips to visit other friends in far-flung places, and reminiscing about the years we dined with presidents and couldn’t be bothered going to Rome.
I guess in many ways our life here looks a lot like our old life in Canberra did. That’s good enough for me.