Coming Home

Revisiting Inequality

Our first stop in the USA was our 15th Harvard Business School Reunion. We didn’t realize until we got to our AirBnb that  it was in a food desert, which also happened to be a low income, Black, Spanish-speaking neighborhood. The boys looked around and asserted that Boston was likely a Black, Spanish-speaking city. They were unfazed by the fact that each front yard was enclosed in chain link fences, and locals' eyes seemed to follow us as we walked down the street. To them, it was just a new city on a long journey. To me, it was distressing. Coming from the Nordic countries where inequality seemed so low, we bounced across America’s full spectrum of wealth in the span of 2 miles from HBS to our AirBnb. It was the most unequal place we had visited our entire trip.

Reconnecting with old classmates, I wondered if my joblessness would make me uncomfortable among the alpha professionals. To my delight, it didn’t. I reveled in my lack of professional identity, and felt more comfortable in my skin than I ever was as a student there. When Abby and I went to the black tie gala, I only had the clothes I had taken around the world. Turns out running shoes and a long sleeve T-shirt can double as black tie in a pinch. One classmate commented, “Your outfit says ‘confidence’ like you’d just sold your company.” Another noted that my hair grown out long suggsted I had a $100M exit. Apparently I looked like I had “made it” by HBS standards.  I had never felt so accomplished among this group. 

Harvard was never home, but the HBS campus felt even more foreign this time. Its brand new buildings, leather couches, manicured lawns, and gourmet catering were spectacular, but  in my mind, they were also haunted by the inequality required to create and maintain such an exclusive institution. I felt some shame as an alumnus of one of America’s engines of inequality. For the most part, the primary pursuit of most HBS alumni is enhancing shareholder value. I imagine our kids may look back on ignoring the drivers of inequality the way I look at our predecessors’ willful ignorance of climate change. 

When we got back to Oakland, opening the door to our house with everyone healthy and happy was a delight. While I never felt like we were in serious danger on our trip, travel carries inherent risk, and I felt a relief and gratitude to acknowledge that we had made it back without incident. Even better, everything about our neighborhood had the freshness of a new country with the comfort of familiarity. Entering the supermarket felt new, but I could navigate it with the fluency of a native. I knew where to find peanut butter, and could easily differentiate fat free vs whole milk yogurt without studying the pictures on the container. 

But there was also a feeling that our neighborhood had changed in ways that made it feel less comfortable or familiar. Three families with kids on our block were moving away, in part due to rising violent crime. Our former au pair was the victim of three attempted muggings within blocks of our house while we were gone. A neighbor was carjacked at gunpoint and another followed home from an ATM and robbed on her front doorstep. Even yesterday afternoon, October 1, a neighbor was robbed at gunpoint across the street. I could hear him yelling from the desk where I wrote these words. But none of this compares to what happened on July 14. That evening, our dear friends were driving to dinner when their 8 year old, Asa, (a close friend of our boys) was hit through the window by a stray bullet. He survived, miraculously, and remains hospitalized, months later, paralyzed from the neck down. 

It’s hard to write anything else after that. Grief, rage, and fear have been constant, if silent, companions since this happened. Like (literally) thousands of others who have shown up for Asa and his family, I desperately want to do something – whether it’s to “fix” what happened (impossible) or to prevent it from happening again (seemingly impossible, too).  Across 15 countries and 7 months, we never thought about guns. Coming home to the only wealthy country where gunshots are the leading cause of death among kids 1-17 has been a sobering reminder of the choices we make as Americans. The hardest part is that it’s completely unclear what can be done. When our neighborhood quiets down at night, I hear the “pop pop” that I had always thought were fireworks. Now I know better, even if I don’t know what to do about it. 

My material world also changed. For the first couple of months since return, all four of us just continued to wear the same clothes we brought on our trip. It was clear that we hadn’t needed more, so why bother opening the boxes of clothes we had stored in the attic? 

Beyond the wardrobe, however, I watched my time get pulled into the acquisition and maintenance of physical objects. The catalytic converter had been stolen out of our Prius while we were gone, requiring heaps of attention to find a junkyard replacement. Eight months of deferred maintenance on the house had piled up. Now that I wasn’t on the move, I had the ability to buy new objects. I watched with joy and a tinge of shame as the Amazon boxes started to arrive on a weekly basis again. 

The boys are now back in school, delighted to be reunited with their friends and teachers. They're happy we went, but also happy we're back. They occasionally talk about the freedom they felt at their school in Spain, the way the Thai school supported creativity, or the sprint of keeping up in Nepal, 2 grades ahead. Thankfully, they appear unruffled by the series of bomb threats our local school received after proposing a special playdate for families of color.  

Professionally, my biggest concern before the trip was that I would feel adrift without a conventional job, both on the trip and upon return. For the most part, that hasn’t happened. Now that I am back, I am so grateful for the space and flexibility I have to explore what brings me delight. At the same time, I see how my surroundings trigger professional questions. LinkedIn makes me question what my profile should say next. Visiting Google stirs a social pressure to have a job. Right now,  I’m enjoying consulting on how AI might (or might not) transform education in least developed countries. As Abby and the boys settle into their Fall routines, I anticipate mine will eventually include full time work too, but hasn’t quite yet. Perhaps the greatest luxury in coming home is the opportunity to redefine what a full and fulfilling life at home will look like, and the gift in knowing there is no rush. 

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