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.

expert novice

All these moves have made me practically expert at being new, so wonderfully experienced at being inexperienced.  Irony and contradiction, both. I’m writing to work my own way through how I’m feeling about the latest bout of repatriation and maybe help some others who are trying it for the first time. It’s the new ones who look for input from the outside and thus will follow whatever tags led them here. Those of us on our umpteenth new home know we have to look inside ourselves, there's more help there than we might imagine.

The circumstances of being new have shifted since my own first moves. Starting out in Kosovo, Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Bangladesh, my initial contacts were torn stubs of paper with scribbled telephone numbers. Vietnam, Atlanta, San Francisco, and Doha had various levels of online groups to join.  With this one somehow I’m back to having no online group and with social media-based connections that seem more flimsy than those penciled phone numbers.

It’s hard every time in new ways, partly because the kids and I are all at different stages in our lives, partly because moving is hard work, no matter what. I read this article recently that I liked, about how it feels to repatriate to a place that you felt was home and how it won’t be, it can’t be. Making it work requires lowering and shifting expectations. I do love it here and I suspect the bouts of struggling with it are just phases. I’m hoping intensely that it’s just a phase. Isn’t that the base of so much? Trying to decide if whatever you’re dealing with is worth it to work hard on and pass through or if you should abandon it because staying’s worse than leaving. Three years is our max in one place, let's see if we can beat that this time around. 

What follows are some loose suggestions and ideas for you new ones and you experienced ones who want to commiserate, and for me to read every once in awhile if I'm losing perspective. Really they apply as much to new expat homes as to being a repat, though remember that as a repat community-building and friend-making go soo muuucchh mooorrrre sloooooooowwlllllyyyy than in the speedy expat world.

Rules

There’s only one, with a twist: accept all invitations, complicated by the combination of remembering that you don’t have to pretend to be someone you’re not while trying to keep conversations going with people to see where connections can be made. I suppose it comes down to “stay interested but don’t lie.”

Choices:

A few weeks ago I had a choice: drive a couple of hours to go skiing with people I have known for a long time, with whom I know I have things in common, or go to a village event where it’s likely I will meet new neighbors and just maybe some of them will eventually turn out to be friends. Against my own rules I opted to meet up with the old friends and was glad. We skied, we caught up, and I reconnected with fellow Vermonters, even if they live two hours away.  Lessons: make time with people who share some of your history, and break your own rules once in awhile.

Roots

I don’t think the roots are a given, that you can do those on purpose. I think those grow and then after years and years you just realize you have them.  I thought I had them here- I grew up in this state after all and worked here and finished undergrad and went to grad school here and I love it. Isn’t that enough? I’m starting to think no. On this return I’m feeling like an imposter, ready to hand in my Vermonter credentials and pretend I have to learn everything from scratch. But I shouldn’t, right? I know where maple syrup comes from and how to get around Burlington on foot, bike, and in a car. I know back roads in three counties. I remember when the Nordic ski center at Bolton Valley was a little shack with a woodstove in it. It’s confusing to be both native and foreign at the same time. I’m not worrying about it too much. 

We serial expats benefit by letting go of our identities being tied to any one place, and that becomes most clear upon repatriation. There has always been some contention over who gets to be American, with the most recent arrivals being the ones who are least welcome to claim it, as though it’s a single continuum of arrival. Those of us who started here and then left and came back and left again, or stayed away for a long time, may have USA on our passports but feel less American than some who have most of their lives here and aren't yet citizens.

Reading about it

You can read all the blogs and memes you want but really you are the one who has to make it home. Reading just puts it off so don’t overdo it.

There’s a genre of repat narratives that mostly involve complaining that people don’t “get” us, that they have no interest in where we’ve been or all the places we hold inside of us, and that’s why it’s so hard to assimilate back into our home country and make friends. In my experience a good number of the people who are interested are often more interested in the story, which in Vermont just emphasizes our differences.  It’s valuable to find other ways to connect than just talking about yourself.

Finally I can’t be much help to my fellow recent repats, except for the same old thing I tell myself: that as long as you make some effort and some occasional progress, little by little the new home will feel like home eventually or you will give up and move back abroad. (we have not gotten to this phase yet, so don’t even think about starting to worry, parents and other concerned friends). Big world, lotta people, lotta possibilities, don’t beat yourself up.

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:

leaping into the void

Or at least that’s the way it feels, five and a half months from the leap. We’re intending to return to my home state, our home country, at the end of this latest bout of expat-ing.

This choice, more emotional than logical, was based in part on how I was feeling two summers ago, after our first year in Doha- so enormously relieved to be back in a place with mountains and green and people who drive slowly. Back then I decided we should make moving back there the goal for when my husband’s contract finishes in Qatar. Since then I can’t say I’ve grown to love Doha but I have grown to tolerate it, with great affection for certain people and certain corners. The whole process has reminded me that anywhere can become home eventually and has weakened my resolve that there is one most perfect place for us to move.

Another factor is that in all our moves, none have landed us in places where we knew more than a handful of people. My home state has a web of connection with family and friends and the idea of that is very appealing.

  

I have fears and misgivings. Having never, as an adult, lived in one place for more than three years, I’m not even sure that I can, even while we talk about this next move being to the place where we will see all the kids grow up and graduate from high school.  As if we can possibly know enough to make the right choice, especially as the stakes seem to get higher with each successive move. The part that doesn’t let me go back to sleep when I wake up at 3am is the part about how there is no long-term anything without an income, and the planning so far has not included jobs.

And then recently, just when my trust in my own decision-making was at a very low point, one of my favorite people suggested moving to her hometown, and except for the fact that it’s thousands of miles from my home state, it has everything- mountains, friendly people, indoor and outdoor climbing for one kid, horses for another, great schools for all three. I couldn’t not put it on the list of possibilities.

I know that it’s better to talk about this in terms of “intentions” rather than “plans,” as I'm aware from abundant experience what can happen to plans, and very quickly too. I also know how hard it is to “re-pat”: to re-orient and re-calibrate to the culture and pace of one’s home country after living abroad. We surely have plenty of work ahead of us, no matter where we end up.

P.S. also going to keep in mind this one, about how it isn't really a void at all.