We Always Have Someone to Miss
When I was growing up, my parents often floated the idea of moving and I was always horrified. The thing is, when they brought up the idea, I wasn’t in the happiest of circumstances. When I was a child, or under 14 at least, my best friends were my brother and sister. At school I was either bullied or shunned and always felt more comfortable with adults. This was before bullying was taken seriously by either parents or teachers and so I had to deal with it by myself. Why then, was I so worried about going somewhere new? I was worried that the new place would be even worse. It never occurred to me that it could be better and no one suggested the possibility because they couldn’t know how miserable I was. I am not sure that I was “different”. I think most people subscribe to the better the devil you know philosophy of change.
Given the kind of person I was growing up, I guess it is a surprise that I live an international life and have worked primarily in technology industries. Combined, the two make for a life full of change. There is nothing from my own childhood memories that can help me understand what my children are experiencing as we divide our lives between Germany, Canada and Bulgaria.
That’s left me with books for guidance.
Well, this book anyway.
Its the tome every English-speaking mother reads upon bringing children into this basically rootless lifestyle. While the book has many positive passages about the richness of growing up in a culture different than that of our parents, I still have a pessimistic streak and this is the kind of quote that hits home to me:
- Grief is a current that goes unarticulated in may people’s lives and even within the very organizations that seek to understand and serve global nomads, grief seems almost like a taboo subject. There is a public reticence about publicly exploring this key aspect of our experience. Informal discussions of grief as a global nomad issue are often characterized by hyperbole and judgmental generalizations: “Everyone who says that they had a great experience growing up and that they are now content is in denial.” Or “Everyone who is grieving is using their global nomad background as a crutch, as a catall excuse, for all their current problems”; they are “wallowing in a victim mentality” and need to “get a life.”
As you may have guessed, combined with my educational angst, not knowing what my children are going to experience as a result of our their father’s decisions, often drives me to distraction. Books like Third Culture Kids don’t make me feel any better. For the most part, ours is a very close nuclear family. We go about our daily lives taking whatever comfort we can from routine and knowing where we can expect life to go as we expect it. Then, we go away to re-affirm our relationships with our families.
“I miss my cousins so much,” or “Grandma misses me so much” are constant refrains when we are in Germany. Then again, so is “I miss Treehouse so much.” When we are in Canada, the kids expect their Bulgarian cousins to come visit and when we are in Bulgaria, they as for their Canadian family too. The baby often confuses the words telephone and Grandma and the response to hearing both words is “Hello? Hello?”
At the same time, there are positives. My kids are multilingual. My five year-old can speak English, Bulgarian and German and our toddler’s vocabulary is made up of words from all three languages. They have an understanding of diversity, of difference and sameness that I think makes them more sensitive to other’s feelings. In social situations both rush to comfort other children who are crying or in distress and have since they could move.
Ultimately, I don’t know if this sensitivity will make them more vulnerable or more resistant to bullying when they start school. I just hope our international lifestyle doesn’t make it more difficult for me to infuse them with optimism. I do believe that there is a solution to every problem and that efforts to make things better are always rewarded in some way. Das ist was Ich glaube. Even if I am not sure that I am using the right grammatical structure when I tell you what I believe.
Tags: International-Families, Living-abroad, Third-Culture-KidsRelated Stories
POSTED IN: Baby Care, Mental Health
1 opinion for We Always Have Someone to Miss
Third Culture Kid or Parent of One?
Nov 13, 2007 at 7:00 am
[…] written a little about my family’s adventures living in a country and culture that are not our own. If you’ve had a similar experience […]
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