state of the repat, one year in

I’m trying to write about what it’s like a year into repatriation without giving advice on how to get here*. It wouldn't help to hear there will have been unexpected growth and grounding when you’re only six months in and it’s the dead of winter and you still don’t have any friends in your tiny village (why did I think I would be happy in a tiny village anyway after decades living in cities??) and you’re missing all your old friends like crazy.

Maybe this is more about commiseration with other people who've made it through a year and might recognize themselves a little bit, and maybe also for those of you about to leap to help you, during the part while you’re wrenching yourself away, pretend it will be ok later. It will be ok, but it will also be much worse, in ways you didn’t expect. And then it will be spring again and the neighbors will come out of their houses in your tiny village and they will be friendly after all. And you’ll be able to think back to this time last year and remember how wretchedly wrenched you felt and all scrambled up about home and identity and what you wanted new people to know about you and on top of all that there was no furniture in the house. What a blessed relief that part is over. 

So for my cohort of yearling repats and those about to leap, I’ll say this: it got better and I didn’t realize how until I let go of trying to recreate things I’d lost. My Doha expat routines and community simply cannot be replicated in rural Vermont.  I made it through the year thanks in part to Netflix, sugar, a few friends both here and far away who did some propping up, a couple of snow adventures, and, now that spring has come: lakes, a paddleboard, and acceptance of this new version of home and my evolving place in it.

*I don’t like to write to give advice, because for the most part I like learning by doing. I don’t like reading what smug people write, from the other side of the problem, about how I should best navigate it. Does it even help to read those lists of things that dying people regret? They didn’t figure this out until they were old and certainly not from someone telling them. It’s related to letting go of being able to talk your kids through all the hard parts. They need to do some of their own messing up.  We only provide the base. I’m only starting to get a hint of how my older kids are choosing to navigate the world and all I’ll say for now is that I’m mostly very relieved, especially about the oldest one because it’s the first one that’s probably the most mis-parented. If he’s lucky he’ll get a good graphic-novel-memoir out of it.