Number 25
A nest for paper birds in the storm
In my last post, I mentioned that one of my travels involved a rather unpleasant surprise and that I would write about it soon. Soon is today.
In the spring of 2013, I took a suspension from my PhD studies (a thing that you actually can do at UK universities) because I needed to make more money in order to pay tuition fees to actually stay enrolled and finish the PhD. I needed a job that would make a reasonably large amount of money quickly, so I began searching for private English teaching roles in the Middle East, since they generally pay extremely well.
Much to my delight, I received an invitation to interview for a position to tutor the youngest members of the Jordanian royal family. The children’s parents and grandparents were in London at the time, so I flew from the United States to London for my interview with them.
Since I had very little money at the time, paying my airfare to fly over for the interview depleted most of my already meagre savings. And, of course, once I was there, I needed somewhere to sleep, but London lodging is notoriously expensive. I found a place in a hostel in a room with 32 bunks (the beds were stacked in towers of four high each). I was thankful to find a topmost bunk where I could enjoy a little privacy high above most of the others in the room. Despite the high number of people sleeping in the room, it turned out to be relatively quiet at night. (Or, maybe I was jetlagged to the extent that I would have slept through anything. I’m unclear on that point.)
I arrived in London mid-afternoon and was due to meet the family at one of their London apartments later that evening. Even though I was tired, I was buzzing with adrenaline. I had chosen a nice dress to wear to meet the family but wanted to iron it before stepping out. Unfortunately, the hostel’s iron was old and apparently stuck on one setting. I set the iron down on the skirt of the dress and immediately withdrew it when I heard a sizzling sound. Too late. Much to my dismay, I discovered that the iron had melted a good-size hole in the fabric, and my chosen garment now was permanently unusable. I sadly chucked it into the rubbish bin that sat nearby and went to dig through my suitcase to find something else acceptable to wear.
The family had sent me the address of the place where they were staying, and, not wanting to be late, I left my hostel early to make sure I knew where I was going. I located the building and then wandered around the neighborhood until it was time to make my appearance.
When I arrived, the family’s cook and housekeeper welcomed me in. I spoke with my future tutees for a few moments and thought that they seemed sweet. After I had sat waiting for about 30 minutes, the housekeeper came to tell me that, unfortunately, the children’s mother had other plans that evening and would not be able to meet with me after all. She would contact me in the morning and arrange a new place and time to see me.
I left in a mixture of confusion and amusement. I had heard of the very wealthy doing things like this but this was my first time experiencing such a callous disregard for someone’s time. (With my Swiss-German genetics, disrespecting someone’s time nears blasphemous behavior.)
The next morning, I waited to hear from the children’s mother. Finally, mid-morning, I heard from her. She asked to meet me at the Patisserie Valerie near where they were staying. Five minutes later, she asked to change it to Starbucks. Not being a Londoner, I had no idea where this Starbucks was but did not want to be late. I hailed a London Black Cab, gave the address to the cabbie, and he swiftly drove me there.
The meeting at Starbucks was a strange combination of stress and informality. The children’s grandparents attended the meeting/interview as well because they frequently spent time with the children while their mother traveled for her royal duties. They seemed surprised that I was studying for a PhD, and the children’s grandmother told me that she too was studying for her terminal degree. Something that the family was keen to emphasize to me was that these were not ordinary children and must be treated with the utmost care and respect. There is more that I could say about our time together, but, for the sake of discretion, I will abstain. In any case, the meeting went well, and the children’s mother verbally confirmed that they were extending an offer of employment to me. I would be flying with them to Jordan within the week.
The next day, the employment agency that the family was working through sent me my employment contract, I signed it, and I waited for my plane tickets to arrive via email. But I did not hear anything for two days. Finally, I contacted the agency to enquire whether it would be appropriate for me to contact the family and ask about the scheduled flights. That was when the agency chose to tell me. Someone who previously had worked for the family as a tutor had contacted the family shortly after my interview and asked to return. The relationship had been an amicable one, so the family granted their request.
I wrote to the mother of the family stating what I had learned from the agency, and she responded with an email thanking me for “understanding their position.” I did not understand.
What I did understand was, since I had spent most of my funds on flying to London for the interview, I had mainly two choices: 1) go back to the USA and admit defeat or 2) stay in England and try to find another job (but not necessarily in England). I opted to stay in England. The place where I knew the most people was Durham, so I headed North via an inexpensive (but long) MegaBus ride.
As it happened, before I suspended my PhD studies, a few of my friends had told me about a project they were about to start which they simply titled Number 25. Number 25 is the number of a house near the Durham University Main Library, and my friends planned for the home to be an intentional community. As a part of their intentional community, they maintained a spare bedroom where homeless people could sleep. I quickly wrote to my friend Mim who lived at Number 25 and asked if their bed was available. She happily wrote back and said that it was. My gratefulness knew no bounds.
I spent some of the happiest six weeks of my life at Number 25 as we all lived and worked together in community. We took turns cooking meals, cleaning the house, and doing laundry. An important part of living at Number 25 was rising at 6 a.m. every day to read scripture together around the kitchen table and to pray for one another before heading off for the day.
Number 25 also always was full of creativity and music. In my previous post, I mentioned listening to Sondre Lerche’s “Surprise” on repeat and that came about because of the house playlist at Number 25 (some of his music was on the list). Other artists on the house list that I enjoyed were Paper Bird and Ingrid Michaelson. The creativity of the house came out in the kitchen, in various writings, and in works of art placed throughout the home.
While having a job offer rescinded three days before you are supposed to fly out to it is not ideal, being surrounded by the love of friends helped to cushion the harshness for me. Though I felt like a fragile paper bird at the time, being surrounded by kindness and creativity helped me to internalize the lyrics of the song that my friend Mim loved to play on repeat in the house:
Let go of fear And what’s happened to you Don’t worry your mind is a river Humming silver Never repeating There is grace and there is motion In the ocean Turning, yearning and free ("As I Am," Paper Bird)
Because I landed in a community, even though something unpleasant had happened to me, I could let go of my fear of what was next and go with the flow.
I wish that for you today. In the midst of any hardships that might come your way, may your wings carry you just long enough to find a nest of warmth and kindness where you can rest and recover for your next flight.
P.S. Mim later wrote a wonderful book titled Living Together: Searching for Community in a Fractured World where she talks about the Number 25 experiment and other communities. Highly recommended!