Life in Reverse
My friend Tom is on the road north and will, within a month or so, land back at his starting place in Australia. He is the son of two Czechoslovak parents who left the country as the Communists took over with Soviet assistance in 1948. They left with their two young sons via Italy and eventually landed in Perth, Australia in a refugee camp. It was there that Tom was born into the family in a place where six families had to share one kitchen. A few years later, the family emigrated to the United States and landed in California where his father reconnected with his career path in the oil industry and rode that horse to a good deal of fame and fortune with J. Paul Getty. Tom and I met in Rome because we went to the same high school, but Tom was there because his father was assigned to be the President of Getty Oil Italiana.
For thirty or so years, Tom and I went our own ways, me on the east coast and he on the west, where he and his family moved after Rome. He followed his passion in a right brain sort of way into a career in various forms of photography. I found my interest in business and pursued my left brain vocation in the world of finance. He found fulfillment in his career just as I found fulfillment in mine. He and I reconnected some twenty years ago and have stayed loosely in touch since then. He married three times and I attended the last of his three marriages out west (in Santa Fe). I have been married three times and he attended my third marriage ceremony in NYC. We have since caught each other up with the intervening years with the biggest difference being that I stayed in love with motorcycling and he gave that up forty years ago. None of the differences seems to have diluted the connection with have and the sincere affection we hold for one another. This recent visit proved that as we spent several hours just discussing our philosophies of life, which are quite compatible with one another.
In the last few years as we have both agonized over the direction taking form in our national politics, Tom has gotten it in his head that he is meant to return to the land of his birth in Australia. It started as a simple walkabout to see what he was missing. The next trip found him reclaiming his Australian citizenship. Then last year, he and Brenda, who had been drawn to Santa Fe by the spiritual Navajo interest she holds, went and lived in Brisbane for six months. The bottom line is that they both loved it, and especially loved the things that their shared liberal sensibilities saw resident in Australian society that were absent or embattled in American society. With the growing angst over the reascendency of Donald Trump and the MAGA way of life, Tom decided that it was time for him to emigrate fully to Australia, the land of his birth.
When I dutifully argued with Tom that we all had to work together to preserve our sensibilities in the American way of life, I said that we all have an obligation to stay and help make things better. The truth was that as much as I did, indeed, feel that way, I also knew that Kim’s and my family were here for the duration and that neither of us were upset with the political landscape enough to do more than give mild lip service to moving from the U.S. and giving up our citizenship. I had fought too hard in my youth to return to and take up residence here to do otherwise and Kim is the daughter of an American Army Colonel and would never be comfortable being anywhere else. It was then that Tom reminded me of his heritage and that his family had benefited greatly by getting out ahead of the Communist Anschluss of Czechoslovakia. I found it a strangely compelling rationale and it settled my mind that Tom would end up going through with his emigration plan.
During this visit, I was curious if the revitalization of the Democratic ticket prospects under Kamala Harris and Tim Walz would have changed his perspective. Perhaps if the election was behind us and Harris was they president-elect, things would be different, but I suspect not. Some life plans once set in motion do not easily reverse themselves. Tom, and with him, Brenda, were on their way to permanent residence in Brisbane and they would arrive in Sydney on the Queen Elizabeth II ocean liner from San Francisco on October 18th, 18 days before the election on November 5th. Tom has his Australian citizenship and Brenda has her permanent residence papers. That seems an appropriate status for the two since I told them I sensed that Tom viewed this as a permanent move and Brenda viewed it as a move for an indefinite period of time with the possibility that she might return to the U.S. down the road.
Tom mentioned that he felt like he was living his life in reverse by design. He seems to think this was a last leg of a voyage that he was meant to take. It’s funny to me that one would think that way. I was born in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and lived most of my first four years in Venezuela before repatriating to the U.S. (specifically to Santa Monica, California). I would no sooner consider moving back to either Venezuela or Fort Lauderdale than swimming to Australia. It has never occurred to me to try to reverse course on my life. I may not know how long I will live on this hilltop, but I know that wherever I live next, it will be a move forward and not backward. Kim and I have both agreed that we could never move back to New York, where our journey together began. We all have to follow our hearts and my heart tells me that the only way to move is forward and not back. But that said, I have spoken enough to Tom and feel that I understand his thinking well enough to respect that this is the path that makes most sense to him.
In the darkest moments of the Trump/MAGA moments, Kim and I have talked the issue through and we are here on these shores for the duration. We watch people making different decisions on International House Hunters on HGTV and know that that is not for us. Whether we have the benefit of a Democratic administration for the next 4-8 years or if we have to suffer through a second Trump administration (God forbid), we will stay with it on this hilltop. I guess that means that whether we are in any forward gear (low or high), we will keep moving forward. There used to be a joke about the Italian tank that had no forward gears but seven in reverse. I guess Kim and I are the exact opposite. We have multiple gears to operate in going forward and none in reverse. Onward and upward.