Summer Daze

You might be musing to yourself, in all the time you surely spend thinking about us, “I thought the Wrights had moved to Cairo. Where are the pyramids, the Sphinx, the mummies, the camels, the sand dunes in the background of all their pictures? Why am I only seeing close-up shots of the children, looking like they are indoors?” I’ve been thinking about this myself as we have settled into our summer here and have noticed that we have not gone out and done anything remotely cultural, touristy or even halfway interesting.

The bottom line is… well, there are many bottom lines. For one, there is a huge difference between moving to a country and visiting a country, particularly when we had to report to work the next day after arriving, Dan to the embassy and me to childcare duty. Knowing that we have two years here, there is zero urgency to hustle ourselves out into the frenzy of Cairo to take in the sights or the sites. Then there is the simple practical matter that the temperature on a regular summer day without a heat wave is between 95-100 degrees. Because strollers are untenable around here, we are stuck with carrying our children, which is just a whole load of fun when they are strapped, sweaty red-faced and frustrated, to our chests and/or backs.

To be perfectly honest, once you’ve seen the pyramids, you’ve seen them and have no reason to return. Dan and I saw them several years ago, and do not plan to go back until we are dragged there by visiting friends or family. Sure, they are awe-inspiring in their own way, but the ordeal of getting there and making our way around one of the world’s most popular tourist sites is just fine to be done once and never again, if we can help it.

Aside from the tourist side of Cairo, there is the whole social aspect as well. Therein lies another conundrum: life gets going here starting around 9pm. A while back in June, my sister babysat for us one Saturday night so that we could go see the US’s first World Cup soccer game. As we headed out around 9:30pm, the normally mildly busy roads around our apartment were parking lots of traffic. People were heading out to various social engagements, where dinner would likely be starting around 10pm or later. It makes sense in a hot climate like this, but it doesn’t make sense for our family. There is NO WAY we could survive a single day on that kind of schedule.

I think it will take some time for us to start venturing out, and then it will be for short, manageable excursions. It is difficult to convey the overwhelming intensity of Cairo to anyone who hasn’t visited it. I have been coming here for over ten years, visiting my sister, and still find myself cowering a bit in the face of the sheer magnitude of this city. (Apparently Theo feels the same way, based on the picture of him here.) We do look forward to making our own discoveries of places to go and things to see, but it may be a while before that happens. It certainly won’t be happening until the temperature is at least in the 80s again.

The thing is, life with small children lends itself to being rather mundane. Once you have advanced beyond the portable, easily-pleased infant stage during which you pat yourself on the back for how flexible and unchanged your life has remained with parenthood, you enter into the stubborn, whiny, unpredictable toddler and preschooler phase, which can be equal parts delight and frustration. Wonderful, carefully planned outings are shot to hell in an instant with a bad toddler attitude or meltdown, whereas the most ordinary things, like eating snacks on a park bench, provide the most golden and precious moments of parenting. This holds true no matter where in the world you might be. So you find yourself getting a little less expansive in your plans and sticking to tried and true excursions that have easy and quick getaways for when your child’s mood flips on a dime. Your restaurant choices narrow, your circle of friends gets a little more defined and you learn to dramatically alter your expectations. People without children may read that and think it all sounds rather depressing, but honestly, it’s not so bad. You get used to adjusting your expectations to certain life stages and build up a stable of babysitters for when you want to periodically dip a toe in the water of your old life.

That said, we’ve had many sweet, low-key times as a family in our two short months here. Some of the highlights include our weekend afternoon swims, where Emma has taken to the water with fearless and joyful abandon. There is a nearby club for Americans (the Maadi House) that has two pools, tennis courts, a play ground, a grassy area and a restaurant with indoor and outdoor seating. We have been there pretty much every single weekend day. Each morning, Emma asks me how many more days are left to the weekend so she can go swim.

We have the incredible good fortune of living in the same city as my sister and her family, something that hasn’t happened in well over a decade. I cannot even begin to describe what a gift it is to move somewhere new and have a kindred spirit that I don’t have to work for years to cultivate. With two older cousins, Emma is in heaven, and Dan has a great friend and fellow sports fan in our brother-in-law. We have dreamed about this moment for years and my sister and I have made many plans of things we want to do together, most of which seem to not include either our husbands or our children. Hmmmm.


On weekdays, I get to spend quiet mornings with Theo after taking Emma to preschool. We pick her up in the early afternoon, a wilted and sweaty mess from a day without air-conditioning, and spend the remaining hours before Dan gets home hanging out together. She has been enjoying playing in the tiny little grass patch that borders the playground in the courtyard of our building, digging for bugs, making mud pies and watering various plants. Theo, being in that aforementioned portable and easily-pleased stage, just happily gazes up at the trees. With the return of Dan comes dinner, bedtime for Theo, bath and bedtime for Emma, then the magical moment when Dan and I look at each other and breathe huge sighs of relief that our work for the day is done. We pull out the ice cream, grab our books or pop in a DVD, and collapse on the couches. And so the summer days slip by…