Relocating to Berlin: Fear Factor

For the past several months, I have been in a constant intimate embrace with Fear and Dread.  Now, any time you are in an intimate embrace with two strong figures, the typical response is something like, "Mmmm, kinky!"  But let me remind you dear readers, I'm not talking about embracing Tiffany and Chastity.  This is Fear and Dread we're talking about. 

So, after belaboring that crude sexual metaphor rather too long for you, what exactly am I talking about?

Fear of selling the house (it closed yesterday).

Fear of leaving my comfortable and high-paying career of almost 19 years (my last day is a week from today).

Fear of taking my daughter out of an awesome school that she has attended for four years (her last day is today).

Fear of selling almost all of our earthly possessions (the final Moving Sale is tomorrow).

Fear of leaving Washington, DC, where we have lived for over 20 years (we are making the final move a little over a month from now).

Fear of leaving behind good friends and loving family.

Dread of moving to a country where we don't speak the language very well.

Dread of moving to a city that we have visited several times, but that we don't really know.

Dread of flying our cat across the Atlantic, and getting her through customs.

Dread of placing our daughter in a school that we have never visited.

Dread of trying to find an apartment that meets our needs, but that doesn't eat through our savings too quickly.

Dread of trying to furnish and equip a new household.

Dread of trying to find work that I enjoy, that also pays the bills.

Dread of trying to make new friends.

. . . oh my God, what have are we doing?!?

Being an immigrant (or emigrant, depending on how you look at it), and facing this long embrace of Fear and Dread has made me think about the experience of my own ancestors who immigrated to the United States generations ago.  What compelled them to leave their own established lives to move to a new country?

Perhaps they may have been running away from something in their old lives - I'm not sure, I wasn't there.  But perhaps they were diving into the unknown because, despite all that they had in the warm comforts of home, they wanted something more for themselves and for their children.  It has been difficult to express - and even harder to figure out in the first place - what exactly I am looking for.  Perhaps Berlin won't even provide it.  But it is this compelling yearning for something new, something different, and something better, that drove my own ancestors to look beyond their own embrace with Fear and Dread, and is now driving my own family past our own embrace with Fear and Dread.


To be honest, this embrace hasn't been all that gratifying anyway.  Fear and Dread are too skinny, and they smell of patchouli.  It's time to leave them behind and find something new to embrace.