Not all those who wander are lost

We are at a turning point again - once more, the (remote) prospect of a new job in a new country surprised us, has our imagination captivated, has us excited and anxious.  It makes us want to go on and want to stay at the same time.

As always, it also makes us stop and think about our life and whether we are still okay with wandering around the globe year after year after year. 

So far, the answer is yes.  We feel no compunction to move to the US at the moment, even though the last home visit made us realize just how many comforts we miss in our daily lives. (Book stores, so plentiful!  Ice cream, so yummy! Good roads!  Safe swimming pools!  Deep-fried Oreo cookies! [Just kidding.])

However, the housing market is still strong, we do not want to be part of the rat race in an international consulting firm's home office, our trust in the Democrats to turn the current political trend around is fickle to say the least, and we believe that our kids (and we ourselves) do ultimately profit from living abroad.

But this last visit also confirmed a growing sense of loss.

My niece and nephew went away for summer camp this year, and as part of the preparation their mother pre-addressed and pre-stamped envelopes for the children to "make it impossible not to write" to their parents, grand-parents, and godmother.  Doug is the nephew's godfather -- but there was no pre-addressed, pre-stamped envelope for him in that pile.  It hurt.

This is only one example of how "outside" we feel when it comes to family matters.  We hear about news last, phone calls are rare, birthdays are often forgotten or remembered belatedly, family affairs are discussed without us.  We keep being surprised by events just because nobody thought of telling us.  When family members bought a lake house last year, it came as a complete surprise to us.  But apparently, this had been in the making for two years, with everybody but us in the know.  It's hard to swallow that sometimes, and it's hard to complain about it, too. After all, the individual event is rather inconsequential.  The cumulative effect, however, is grating.

Almost two years ago, I wrote a series on Halfway down the Danube [link to new site] about what is like to be an Expat - about those little things that non-Expats rarely consider but that determine our daily lives.  In the light of recent events, I decided to repost it, heavily  edited and updated. 

Here we go.

Being an Expat is -- more often than not -- a chosen way of life. The people who live abroad are as diverse as any random group of people -- they are missionaries, high ranking CEO's, diplomats, impoverished language teachers, engineers, aid workers, military personnel. Some have a vision, some don't. Most are curious about the country they live in but many live in bubbles, barely touching the outside world. A large percentage is moving from country to country, while others just venture outside their homeland for a year or two as some sort of family sabbatical.

However, Expats also have a lot in common.  One of the elements less talked about is the loneliness.

It's you and your family alone in a way that not even those who coined the term "nuclear family" could envision. Consider for a moment a typical nuclear family: wife, husband, child. Consider now the context within which that family system functions when it has lived in one place for an extended period of time. Ongoing relationships have been cultivated: friends, colleagues, neighbours, doctors, teachers, religious leaders, shopkeepers... These extended relationships surround and enfold the nuclear family. In most societies, and often even in the United States, you can add relatives to that web of relationship: parents and grandparents, siblings, nephews and nieces, aunts, uncles and cousins live nearby. The geographically-stable nuclear family is part of a larger relationship system that nurtures and supports the family as a whole and is available to help its individual members.

Consider now a typical internationally-mobile family: wife, husband, child. No relatives nearby. No web of ongoing relationships -- except those renewed on home-leave, those cultivated at a distance via annual holiday greetings, or, for the multi-mover, those expatriate friends from prior postings encountered again in the new location. The larger support system available to the internationally-mobile family consists of the wage-earner's employing organization, the school(s) the children attend, and the expatriate community itself. This support system, however, has some fundamental limitations.

[..]

Thus, given these realities, the internationally-mobile family is the ultimate of nuclear families. Members must rely foremost on one another: spouse on spouse, sibling on sibling, child on parent and even parent on child. In the final analysis, an internationally-mobile family must sink or swim on its own.
www.worldweave.com

Visitors often complain about the Expat community. It's so tight, they say. Why don't you interact more with the locals? Why do you keep to yourselves so much?

Well, it's because being around other Expats is easy.  We are all in the same boat, we share the same hardships and frustrations.  Consequently, we welcome new members with open arms, we share advice and tips on shopping, moving companies, traffic rules, shortcuts, piano teachers, gyms, suitable swimming pools and playgrounds. We are not indifferent to new people in our community because we were all newcomers not so far back, and we will be newcomers again in the not-so-distant future. You give what you take. We are on the whole less critical of personal quirks and more flexible in the choice of friends than we would be back in our home countries.  That's a good thing.

A good friend of mine recently moved back to the US.  The boys and I visited her for a day when we were there, and at one point she turned to me and said, "you know, it's not only that all of a sudden you have to scrub your own toilet - it's that nobody commiserates with you about having to scrub your own toilet".  Nobody understands, so you don't even mention it anymore.  That makes you lonely.

Another reason is that you know your time is limited.  You pick up the random word of the local language, and if it's a relatively easy one, you'll learn to get around fairly quickly.  But you limit your immersion in the local culture because it's just one other culture and next year, you'll be far away.  It sounds condescending and arrogant but ultimately, it's a form of protection.  The more involved you get, the harder it is to leave.  We had an awful time leaving Romania.  So we stick with the Expats, who are always on the move anyhow, and this makes it easier.  It's probably a deplorable trend, to be avoided even if it is painful - but the truth is, one tends to avoid pain.

More than anything else, though, other Expats understand.  They understand the stress of home visits.  They understand that if you don't keep in touch with relatives and friends, connections will break. They understand the guilt about ripping the kids out of school, planting them into yet another new country with a new language, a new culture, new friends. They understand the importance of maple syrup and cheerios. They understand $600 phone bills. They understand the frustration of seeing eyes glazing over when you start a story with "when we...".  They understand, it's as simple as that.

Let me elaborate this a little.

Keeping in touch

It's one of those little rules of life that you won't encounter until you leave -- the one who goes away has to keep in touch. The simple truth is, life goes on without you. You're just one person missing from a big social net, and that's barely noticeable.  Ultimtely, this means that it becomes the Expat's responsibility to stay in touch, to send photos, to write emails, to call home.  In the days before Skype, we regularly had phone bills in excess of $600.  Per month.

Asking relatives and friends why they don't call us sometimes, we used to get answers like "it's so expensive", "we didn't have a calling card", "we didn't even know they have phones in Romania" (I really did hear that once). Hm. Most of our relatives don't even read our blogs, although Halfway has started out as a sort of bulletin board for the family (the focus has shifted since, partly also because the family isn't reading it anyway).  These days, we have two Skype-In phone numbers, one for the US and one for Germany.  Calling us these days is easy, and cheap.  We don't get any more calls than before.

In our life, there are only three exceptions to this general rule -- and those are my family, my mother-in-law, and our cybernet friends. My family lived as Expats themselves (strictly speaking of parents and brothers here), so they know the feeling and especially my Mom is very good about keeping in touch -- we talk once a week, at least. My family also regularly visits our blogs to see what's up. My mother-in-law writes emails on a regular basis. The cybernet friends, who often became friends in Real Life (TM), are an exception because our friendships started off with emails and chats, so it's not awkward to continue staying in touch that way. They also read our blog and even comment (my family usually comments to me on the phone).  My best friend calls me regularly on her cell when she's on her way to work. I really appreciate this interest in our lives. It makes me all warm and fuzzy inside.

However frustrating it is to be the ones doing the relationship maintenance, we are keeping it up. Sometimes, we get annoyed. After years of sending out 80+ Christmas cards, and getting five or six back, we finally decided to send fewer cards in 2004. Invariably, we received three "firsts", felt guilty about it, and resumed to send out mass mailings the following year, only to receive not one single card that time. We're calling relatives and friends for their birthdays, we send presents and cards, we call when we haven't heard from someone in a while. We spend a lot of time on the phone.

But even so, often friendships don't survive an international move. They just... cease to exist. Or they take on a different dynamic. I have a friend who I talk to once or twice a year, but then we talk for hours. We still are friends and I value those rare talks. It's very different, though, from our daily phone calls when we still lived in the same city -- and saw each other almost daily.

(I also have to add that although we try, we are by no means perfect at this relationship upkeeping. We do forget to answer emails, we do drift out of touch with people not out of malice but out of sheer laziness. But overall, the points made above do apply.)

Ultimately, it results in a lingering feeling of being left out - however unfair this perception might be.  Seeing this from the other (the relatives') side, it probably isn't all that dramatic.  But for us, it is - relatives and friends are the umbilical cord tying us to the homelands.  If this cord is cut, a little bit every time, then we lose our connection and ultimately, we lose our home.

[Tomorrow: the stress of home visits, eyes glazing over, and how to get excess luggage on board without excess fees.]

Comments

[Christine]

Good luck with your decisions. Love the family photo on this blog page!! :)

[Will Baird]

You have my sympathies and in some ways I can relate. My family is somewhat of that to each other just naturally: we're like cats. When we see each other, we fuzz each other big time (or yowl, spit, and hiss as the case may be), but when out of sight, out of mind.

OTOH, Lyuda's going nuts because even with the ability to call frequently, her family isn't keeping her in The Loop with a lot of decisions about her family.

So, even though we're not expatriots, we understand.

[Natalie]

Ooooh, I make someone feel warm and fuzzy? That makes me happy. I can only hope that someday we will live in the same time zone (I'm not greedy enough to ask for the same *&^$%ing area code).

[filkferengi]

I enjoy reading your posts; thank you for sharing your insights about your dilemma.

Is there any chance of y'all making it to Denvention next year? I could guarantee you'd be swarmed by a mob of enthusiastic listies & feel all kinds of loved & wanted. :)