Where should we live next year?  It’s a question that not many families get to ask.  It’s also a question that we’ve been asking for a year now, without coming to a firm conclusion.

At first, the array of possibilities was infinite.  Should we take advantage of the opportunity to live near my family in Vancouver or Atlanta?  Should I revive my fading knowledge of French and live somewhere sunny near the Mediterranean?  Should we learn more about the Netherlands, from which Steve’s great grandparents immigrated?

Two years ago, when I briefly co-led our English department’s study abroad trip to Maastricht, Steve flew over with me to make it a vacation without our children.  Even as we sat on the train from Schiphol to Maastricht, bleary from the intercontinental night on the airplane, Steve looked out the window and commented on immaculate urban planning and garden upkeep. “I want to live here,” he sighed.

So here we are, where we started two years ago, planning to live in the Netherlands.  We have contemplated France, Vancouver, Atlanta, even took a two-day jaunt to Barcelona on Ryan Air from Groningen to consider Spain (since Steve knows some Spanish not French).

We haven’t, however, decided which town to live in and which school to which to send our kids.

Deciding is maybe too strong a word.  Even though we began with infinite options on the table, external contingencies began limiting them pretty quickly.  I don’t know French well enough to have a conversation about my scholarship with any academics there.  Steve can’t navigate a restaurant in France on his own. We learned from online research that we can’t just up and live in the Netherlands for the year for fun.  We need a visa-criteria-worthy reason to be there.

I spend days reading who was doing what at which universities in the Netherlands.  I emailed professors with whom my own work intersected, asking if they wanted to have coffee.  Everyone was nice.  I drank lots of espresso.  The University of Amsterdam Department of Argumentation and Rhetoric offered to sponsor my status as a visiting scholar.  There we go: a pin on the map.

Now we have work for me.  Next we need a school for our kids. With our pin in the map, we need to live within an easy commute of the University of Amsterdam.  Sadly, the Amsterdam International Community School does not have space for our two kids. There are five more international schools that are within an hour on the train.  One is too expensive.  One other one is full.  That leaves three: Hilversum, Almere, and Bergen (near Alkmaar).  These three may all have space, but it’s not confirmed.  Again, external contingencies may limit our options and make our decision for us.  If all three were possibilities, how would we make our decision?

For years, I have been teaching argumentative writing.  Over and over again, I have encouraged students to write about topics about which they felt genuine ambivalence and about which they genuinely cared.  “What is an actual decision that you need to make?  Write your way through it.” I have given teacher-education students their lesson plans back, requiring that they revise to model writing about more meaningful topics.  I still remember my conversation with a student who aimed to teach the skill of comparing and contrasting to 8th graders by comparing and contrasting apples and oranges in a T-chart as a model.

“Apples and oranges are not worth comparing,” I said to her during office hours, “That’s what the meaning of the phrase ‘comparing apples and oranges’ is.  We say someone is comparing apples and oranges when they are comparing non-comparable objects.  By contrast, you want your students to actually compare and contrast two or more things that are worth analyzing.”  She argued with me for a while, defending her work, which, sadly, she had invested significant time completing.  She relented, and following our conversation, rewrote her model essay as a comparison and contrast piece on her life as a summer employee in Yosemite on one hand and her imagined life as a teacher in Michigan on the other.  Which life should I choose, she was asking.  What are the pros and cons of each option?  What aspects of myself are consistent no matter where I live and what I do?  When she turned in her final portfolio, she volunteered that the shift from apples and oranges to relevant life choices was a significant one.

So here I am.  I need to write my way through to a choice.  Practice what I preach.