excuse me, just a tiny glass of repat whine

I’m not an expat anymore.  For the first time I’m experiencing the peace that comes with moving to a once-familiar place I actually want to live in, rather than choosing a job and making the best of the new destination that goes with it. I’ve been longing to live all four seasons in these hills for years now. I thought repatriation would be a cinch. 

Doha was a challenge, to which I had to rise or let it crush me. I did, with plenty of hard work and good company, and it didn’t. I miss it hard. Not in that freshly wrenched way of the first couple of months, all raw and halfway still there in my head, but with an ache that knows I’m probably never going back and probably never going to see most of those people ever again in real life. Social media keeps us connected but nothing replaces random encounters and regular adventures around the city, tea and world-problem-solving in each other’s kitchens, shared hilarity and despair. 

I dress like anyone else and drive an old Subaru Forester. I can pass for a Vermonter at first glance and probably even second, but locals know I’m new to town and ask where did I move from? They expect me to say Tinmouth or Pittsford or maybe something more exotic like Massachusetts or even Virginia but then I say Qatar and the conversation has been efficiently and effectively killed.  I stopped offering it up, but word has probably gotten around the village by now anyway. I know my way around, but I’ve been too long gone to quite remember how I’m supposed to behave and where I’m welcome.

I love where we’ve landed. It’s the green and hills I’ve been missing for years. I love seeing the clear light of New England fall and eating fresh macs for the first time in ten years. It’s just tricky to work on feeling at home and making it home at the same time and I’m lonely for easygoing company.  Cold dark weather looms. I’m envious of my youngest who started at her new school last week and is already planning who will be at her birthday party at the end of the month. I wish we could all be thrown into first grade again upon arrival in a new home. By the second day on the playground who cares where we’ve lived for the past three years, we just need to figure out how to do the most scary trick together on the big swing without getting hurt. 

repatriation, here we come! part one...

We’re moving and it’s a big one. For the first time in our history as a family we are not moving to a city, or to the site of a new job, or to a temporary home where we will wait for the new job to materialize somewhere else in the world.  We’ve bought a house in a little town in my home state, though not a town in which I’ve ever lived. A couple of years ago I might have described this as moving from a place I hate to a place I love but turns out Qatar is not just a place, it’s home, and I don’t hate it anymore, and that an imminent move to even a beloved place can produce a good number of concerns. 

Just lately I’ve become aware that I have a much better handle on my current life here than I will for at least the whole next year in the place we’re going. I resisted Qatar for so long that I thought I never quite considered it home, even as I learned my way around, made friends, and settled into routines.  There were hints that I ignored- like when I was happy to return to the wide-open streets and familiar routes after being away, or when I actually missed it from my green and cool summer in my home country last year.  Only now is it starting to be clear what an important home this has been and that no matter how much I am looking forward to where we are going, I will be sadder than I expected to say goodbye to it.

This move marks a shift away from living in a place with a fixed end date and ultimate move. I wonder how long it will take me to gain a more settled mindset. I don’t know if I ever can, though the fact that we’re moving for place rather than for job does make it seem like this home might hold us longer than the others have. Up until now I’ve observed that the point of view of settled people and that of more nomadic expat types is very different and while we can all be great friends, some things seem easy to them and are not for us and vice versa.  Messy transitions have been a part of life for us and while not easy, they are expected and the work involved is something we made a choice to do. That kind of uneasiness about the future is a much more painful weight on people who have rarely had to carry it.  We also have to refrain from belittling how overwhelmed they can be at making transitions as small as daylight savings time (Really? You’re complaining about a time change that didn’t involve transcontinental flight and culture shock? Sshhhh). We can’t take personally their suggestion that our children will never be able to put down roots anywhere since they’ve attended seven schools in three states, five countries, and nine years. I hope we can hold onto our resilience and broad perspective while we learn how to make a home last for longer than a few years.

Luckily there’s too much to do preparing for the move to let the worries be too distracting. When they start to pile up, I am grateful to social media and those friendships that have continued strong beyond the stints living in the same place. There is usually someone awake out there who will have the right response to my culture-confused trans-global existential angst, whether it’s a cartoon about not wearing pants, the wise-ass response I should (but shouldn’t) have said to the person who made that comment about roots, skimming off the drama by changing the subject, or even just a long line of hearts.

Onward and outward and homeward.  

From this clear water

to this clear water.

From these hills

to these hills.

From this road

to this road.

 And a most important reminder for anywhere: