“Sitting on packed suitcases”

All my bags are packed.

I’m ready to go

I’m standin’ here outside your door

I hate to wake you up to say goodbye.

John Denver. Leaving on a jet plane

Day 44. The minimum processing time for a work visa in Australia these days. Average time: 3-6 months. Yikes! What took four weeks last time I applied, can now take up to 12 months: obtaining the permission to enter the land down under and start my new/old job in Sydney, Australia. Since Covid, everything is backlogged: visas, passports, medical procedures… I really shouldn’t complain. 

Day 44. Sitting on packed bags. Looking at my ready-to-go luggage, my mind starts wandering, and a memory pulls me back to 1997.

It is Christmas Eve. A roasted turkey sits on the small dining room table in our tiny one-bedroom apartment in Hong Kong. It is hot and humid. The air condition unit in the window is rattling, drowning out the traffic noise sixteen floors below.

Swiss scalloped potatoes with cheese, German red cabbage, Canadian gravy sauce and cranberries, and Cantonese sweets for dessert. In the background, the illuminated Hong Kong skyline provides some sort of festive holiday lights.

One Christmas dinner, four guests, five nationalities, and two babies on the way. Both my Swiss neighbour and I are pregnant with our first child. Both are due at the end of January – until I am no longer. Thrown off by the measurements of my enormous belly, my doctor decided to move my due date ahead by a month and declared that this would be a Christmas Baby instead! Hallelujah!

So here I am, sitting on packed bags on Christmas Eve, ready to enjoy my last supper and await the arrival of our firstborn child. Except that it doesn’t arrive  – at least not on Christmas Eve. Or the day after.  Nor the week or even month after that. While my Swiss labour partner gives birth to a healthy baby boy at the beginning of January, I am still sitting on my bags until I start unpacking them again. I need fresh underwear. I am looking for our Scrabble game. Eventually, I even consume the snacks I had packed for extra energy.

In the end, Calvin was born on February 2, six weeks after the newly proclaimed due date – a whopping 10-pound baby. I blame it on the turkey!

Almost twenty-five years later, I am sitting on packed bags again. Suitcases this time, as I am not leaving only for a few days to go to the hospital, but for a few months to go back to Australia. My job with the German School Sydney starts on July 21.

It has been 44 days since I applied for a work visa, and so far, the whole experience has been rather anticlimactic! The joy of being offered a job in March, the excitement to sign the contract in May, and my flight booked for July 1. And since then, a lot of waiting. Eventually, I had to cancel my flight. Packed my suitcases and unpacked them again. Purged, rearranged, added items, and took out others. Not much longer, and I’ll unpack the whole damn lot.

Sitting on packed suitcases – a word-by-word translation of the German idiom, meaning you are ready to leave. Having done all your preparations, but are still waiting for someone (the Australian Immigration Office) or something (my visa) to signal that you can go now. 

I grew up on meaningful sayings like this one. The German language is full of them, and so was my childhood: “Mit dir muss ich ein Huehnchen rupfen!” (I have to plug a chicken with you – meaning, I was in trouble). “Kleinvieh macht auch Mist!” (Small animals poop too, meaning small things add up, so don’t be wasteful). And my all-time favourite (though much dreaded as a child as it meant even more trouble): “Komm du mir noch mal auf mein Klosett Wasser trinken!” (which translates roughly to “Don’t you dare come and drink from my toilet water again”!??? Why anyone would want to do that? And what does that even mean?)

So, concerning my visa application – I only understand train station! I am done and ready, sitting around, waiting for the commando. And if that Lappen doesn’t arrive soon, we will have the salad! But I will stay at the ball – you can take poison on that! Sooner or later, I will make myself off the field. Because everything has one end – only the sausage has two!

Press me the thumbs! Wish me luck!