The Foreign Service Journal, March 2014

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MARCH 2014 43 twist. Even if we find ways to pack days to the brim, and score an amazing role of a lifetime at our new home, we live with the constant, nagging awareness that when our spouse’s job is done, we will be required to pick up and pack out and move on and start all over again. Leading, Not Trailing But recently, I’ve been inspired. I have met many a trailing spouse with enormous credentials who is doing magnificent things alongside their partner. No matter where they live, they find meaningful work, are graceful parents and become the backbone of their families’ lives. Plenty of spouses like me are assuming the role of freelancer, consultant or telecommuter, because the same online presence that feeds the Me Genera- tion’s self-absorption also facilitates working from home, and much more. Most of these Foreign Service spouses are in their element, on both a personal and professional level, and are the precise opposite of “trailing.” In the end, it’s not the process of finding work overseas that’s hard—because frankly, that’s hard every- where. It’s also more than finding a good OB-GYN, driving to four neighborhoods to find the right (safe) dog food or avoiding a pesky gluten allergy that would be a breeze to work around back in the States. If anything, as I suspect most trailing spouses will profess, we thrive under pressure. We may shed a few tears every now and then, but handling overseas life is easy, compared with answering what seems like a simple question, “What do you do?” Coming to terms with that has replaced cooking a perfect pot roast as the million-dollar dilemma. I wrote earlier that I’m a trailing spouse, thanks to my husband. But, of course, my husband isn’t tying me to the seat of every plane he boards. And I wouldn’t trade in my marriage, our travels or my job, however undefined, as a writer, for any- thing. My husband and I make some decisions independent of one another, but most are made together, including spending his career overseas. At the end of each assignment, when our worldly goods are being carried out the door in a crate that will spend eight months in storage, I can always bow out of this difficult role. But I ask myself: Would living in a shoebox apartment in a fifth-floor walkup in New York really be more glamorous? More fulfilling? I don’t think so. Trailing spouse? To me it looks more like prevailing spouse! n