meatballs & hamburgers

mmmm.... Hamburgers. Sounds pretty good about right now. I can't say I've arrived at making them but man, I've come a long way. 2 lbs (1 k) lean hamburger meat, three minced garlic cloves, some bread crumbs, grill seasoning, a slurry of sauce (I prefer A.1. marinade + a little Montgomery Inn BBQ sauce for sentimental sake), blend together with your hands until consistent and then form into patties. Place the patties on a plate in the fridge until your grill is ready. Grill, but don't over cook them. Serve on a fresh bun with traditional toppings or for a little flair top with country french dressing (a sweet mustard dressing). Bam! Wow does that dressing bring out the contrasting garlic flavor of the burgers. Ahh....

Meatballs are pretty good too. My wife always made them back in Ohio when we lived there. She made them by hand a couple times though we found a couple frozen brands that were decent and more convenient, especially on a week night. Heck, back home they even came in different flavors too including Italian in case you were having spaghetti or another pasta. Meatballs are huge in Sweden. They are one of the more reliable dietary mainstays here that most kids get excited about. You find them in people's homes and you find them in public. Grown ups like them too. We even had them on our Christmas table here at home and they were on the one Julbord I made it to this year. One of Sam's favorite meals is meatballs. We watched him eat ten one night, plus five chicken nuggets. We thought he would blow up. I think it was his birthday so we let him indulge a little. Most the time in Sweden meatballs are served with a side of plain elbow macaroni. Sometimes this American in the kitchen forgets and accompanies them with something else. Either way, with meatballs in Sweden you can't go wrong.

Right now, we are caught between hamburgers and meatballs. A friend of mine, Kurt, gave me that analogy so I have to give him credit. When you think of Sweden you think of meatballs. When you think of America - after the financial crisis, the Iraq War, the new president, the new season of Amazing Race, friends back home, blah blah - you might think of hamburgers. Okay, so the analogy has to stay very simple to work, but you get the point.

For the last 20 months or so we have been investing in Sweden. Schooling, working, befriending, building up. It could even be said it started a year before that on the American side in the prep to get here. The reality is that it's time to start focusing on the US and what it will take to make the move go as smoothly as possible. It's time to start focusing on hamburgers.

What does that mean in every day life? Not sure. I don't think there is an iron clad road map where one size fits all. For us I think it means getting our 'house' in order, tying up our Swedish businessy stuff - financial matters and legal documents. It also means planning the exodus, buying plane tickets, figuring out how to sell stuff. It also means trying to figure out a game plan for the other side when we touch down including housing, jobs, school(s), vehicles, what to do with kids. Phew... Take a breath.

It can get a little overwhelming if you lose your focus. But we've been down this road before, Mon assured me. We went from there to here. And we can go back from here to there again. Did we really come over in seven suitcases? All the toys fit into ONE?!

The physical stuff is the easy part. What of all the new people we have met since being here? How do we get them on the plane? Like the other parents and kids at the boys' schools. Or kids from the neighborhood. Or my Swedish for Immigrant classmates - the ones from Iraq and Australia and Egypt and Philippines and Portugal and Eritrea. What of my new expat friends in the writers group? What of our friends at the church where we've been going? And what of our Swedish family?

One of the easy things about going back to the US after only two years is knowing that for the most part the communities we left behind are largely, largely still intact. The flip side is that here the reality is our communities and their various components will never be quite aligned again just as they are now. Never. The young kids, the classmates will never again be as young as they are now. Nor our boys. They simply won't. And though friends will stay in touch it will be different. In a sense it's almost like we are in living future history right now.

I can't think too much about it or I get sentimental. Maybe even a little sad. We are richer for having come here. But having given our hearts, it also stings to pull away. Maybe that's the way it should be. We are hoping that the internet (Facebook, skype, email, blogs, etc.) will keep bonds strong once we leave. We will see.

We've come to love our meatballs but it's time to start thinking about hamburgers.