A week or so ago I was pondering this question: Do I get a power adapter for my cute, little, orange tea kettle or do I get a new tea kettle? You see Kettle Talkers, me, the husband and the kids are moving to Iceland this summer and some difficult decisions regarding packing will have to be made. No sooner had I written about my adapter conundrum than the kettle up and died. It began turning on by itself and then wouldn’t turn on at all. Such a good kettle, making things easy for me in this time of transition. I loathe transitions of all sorts. I hate the saying, it’s more about the journey, than the destination. The journey can be fun, yes, but often it is uncomfortable and it takes too damn long. If transporter technology were to become a thing tomorrow I’d be the first in line. Beam me up, Scotty. One for transport, O’Brien. Scratch that. Transporter travel would probably do something weird to my body rhythms and I’d break out in hives and have insomnia for days. It’s much too sudden now that I think about it. These processes are uncomfortable yet necessary, like mosquitos. They’re little biting, disease carrying jerks but if they disappeared from the face of the earth everything would be thrown out of balance.
My point is that transitions are stressful and we’re undergoing a big one. With the addition of myself and my two kids to Reykjavik we will push the population of black residents well into the teens. I haven’t combed through the city’s vital statistics but I doubt that I am far off in my estimation. I wouldn’t go so far as to call myself a celebrity in Iceland but when I walk the streets people do sometimes stare and I’m pretty sure they’re thinking, “Hey, isn’t that Snorri’s wife?” because everybody knows just about everybody in Iceland, “I heard he married a black woman.” I’m not a seeker of celebrity, but as is said about greatness, some strive for it while others have it thrust upon them. I could parlay that celebrity into something I suppose. The idea of becoming a You Tuber has crossed my mind — check it out, it’s a black woman living in Iceland – but it runs counter to my core way of being. Random people would comment and some would say some pretty horrible things, because that’s what humans do, and then I would feel the need to respond and I’d hear Michelle saying, “When they go low, we go high,” in my head and I’d be like, bump that, Michelle, I need to tell Becker about his dumb-ass self and it just would not be a good look for me…. Or it could be really fun. But the whole walking around with a camera all the time thing…that’s just weird and the whole vibe is a bit narcissistic in a way that doesn’t fit with my natural shy introversion. And yet, I feed the You Tube beast myself. I have fallen down many a You Tube hole and discovered some very interesting people and places. Decisions, decisions.
Downtown Reykjavik is walkable so that’s great but going anywhere outside of that kind of requires car travel which I don’t enjoy but, I grew up in Texas, I’ll get used to it. There is one thing about moving to Iceland that will be a real challenge for me — the climate. The lack of real heat in the summer and soul crushing darkness in the winter is worrying to me, to say the least. I need four seasons to feel at peace but could make it if I had a hot summer in there somewhere. I was born in the summer in Texas so I’m not talking a little warm I am talking H-O-T hot. It is nice to have cold, snowy winters — perfect weather for drinking lots of tea and hot cider — but…. Iceland has plenty of sunlight in the summer but the heat, not so much. This will undoubtedly call for an increase in tea consumption just to stay warm but too much caffeine turns me jittery. I’m going to need a LOT of herbal tea. Let me know what some of your favorites are in the comments below.
