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.

temptation, hard work, appreciation, relief

Last summer was magical.  It was stark contrast to my life in Doha- the people, the hills, the air, the water, the lack of traffic, the music. The peace.  Coming back was hard, but then a job posting came up that seemed to offer an opportunity to bring us back to that area year-round. It was work I could surely do well and was qualified for, a chance to move somewhere that wasn’t entirely new for a change, to be the one with the anchor job, to stop trailing once and for all. 

I applied.  I got an interview.  You can’t interview for a job without wanting it completely and convincing yourself that you would be the best possible match for the position.  You have to tell yourself that it’s better to go than stay, find reasons to justify that the move will be worthwhile.

Hope is ridiculous and wonderful. We keep doing it despite overwhelming evidence that life is hard and often unfair. I know that it would have made more sense to let go of all hope the instant the interview was over –and then it would be that much more exciting if I was chosen, that much less painful if I didn’t get it. I didn’t let go entirely but I did work hard on keeping it in check.

It’s been a strange week, full of rich conversations with friends and lots of thought about what it would mean to go, what it would mean to stay.  I’ve been able to see, for a moment, what I gain from  living in a place that is hard, that contradicts so many of my values and that deprives me of so many of the things I thought I needed in order to be happy.  My search for beauty here has made me more appreciative of my surroundings, and having shared it with others they now encourage me to keep up the practice even when I’m wishing I were elsewhere. 

I’ve also thought deeply about how wonderful it would be to move someplace where I already have friends, where I know my way around, where there are seasons and mountains to climb.  It seems worth the stresses of looking for a new house, figuring out schools for the kids and easing them through the many layers of their transition.

Today, checking my e-mail before I even got out of bed, I received an impersonal note thanking me for my efforts and informing me that someone else had been chosen.  I got up, made a sandwich, and walked out into the cool air of the Doha winter dawn, surprised to be more relieved than sad.  

I’m sure that over the next few days and weeks there will be moments that I will be more sad than relieved, wishing that the next time I get on a plane to leave Qatar I will know I don’t have to return. I don’t have a lot of time for internet lists that tell me how to behave and feel, but I came across one the other day that had a point that has carried me through the suspense of this application process, and continues to comfort: 1. Know that you’re not seeing every option. This is not new news to you or me but still a good reminder when I thought my heart was set on one particular way that my life could play out.

when stuff matters: worthwhile materialism

Moving, especially internationally, has always been a time that we shed many of our belongings, whether because we have a limited shipping allowance, are moving to a furnished residence, or because I am so sick of all the clutter and take advantage of the opportunity to simplify.  This last move all three of those reasons forced drastic cuts to our accumulated family stuff- all the furniture went, as did ¾ of the books, many of the clothes, toys and bedding. 

We donated some to good causes, sold some at a yard sale, sent some to the dump. The hardest to give up were my kitchen tools, the main instruments of my creative expression for the past four and a half years. My favorite ones I gave to good friends who are using them still. Friends and their children are also sleeping in beds that we passed on to them at that move and the one before it, beds that we had acquired from friends in Bangladesh and Vietnam.  I love to think about this chain of things that are more than just inanimate objects, that help us stay connected and in each other’s consciousness, even when we are far apart and rarely in touch.

The emptier our house became, the more I felt liberated, freed from material possessions.  I started fantasizing about tiny minimalist houses or how nice it would be to have no house at all, just live out of the car and camp. At some point I realized that it had become a kind of destructive rampage and I should consult some friends before I threw away all my old journals and photos.  In the end the camping equipment, photo albums, art, bicycles, and a sewing machine stayed in a storage locker in San Francisco, 500 lbs of clothes, instruments, art supplies and books were crated up and loaded onto a ship bound for the Middle East, and what was left was loaded into our minivan for our drive across the country.

I know the whole point of them coming and packing it up was so I could have it again later, but I also had a friend once whose husband worked for Maersk and heard about how many of those containers are swept off the ships each year. Ever since then I have let go of my attachment to everything in that shipment the instant it’s wrapped and boxed, and don’t truly believe that I will see it again until the truck pulls up outside my new home.  And, despite that complete letting go, there are not many moments that match seeing your possessions again after months away from them.  No matter that I had felt so relieved to have them gone- having them again always had me blessing the foresight that I had known these particular things would help my new house really feel like home.

to my friends who want to live abroad

I have wonderful friends who have expressed their desire to live abroad for a spell with their kids, immerse in other cultures, try new foods, learn new languages, make new friends. 

First, I think this plan of yours is awesome. And so much more welcome to hear than “you are so brave to be doing that with your kids,” which really means, “I would never subject my kids to the stress and trauma of having to adapt to a new culture.”

Second, I thought I’d tell you about how I don’t think any of us fully realized how many of our social values we’d have to shelve or re-work in order to function day-to-day in a different country or culture. I don’t mean “reconsider your decision.” I mean keep this in mind and think about the limits of how much you are willing to change your own behavior and how much conflict between you and your host culture you are willing to live with.  Of course all this varies from country to country, culture to culture.

Depending on where you go, you may have to deal with being part of a class system that will feel uncomfortable at times, possibly all the time. Friends who are concerned with issues of equity and privilege may find them much less subtle than they did in the US.  It can be hard acknowledging that you will have privileges that you wouldn’t in your home country. Here, and in many places I have lived, the color of your skin, gender, national origin, and size/make of your car make a huge difference in how you are treated. This is certainly the case in the US as well, but can be much more obvious and socially acceptable in some other countries, with less opportunity to speak out about inequality due to dominant culture or your desire to keep your visa and stay out of jail.  More about this here and here and most recently, here.

There’s also unfamiliar and unwelcome etiquette: The other day I walked up to a door in the kids’ school, opened it, and attempted to wave the man behind me through. I have no idea where he is from but it obviously would have been a mortal wound to his ego to have walked through that door that I was holding. So I went first. Then there is “ma’am.” I know some people are quite offended by ma’am, but in some countries (and much of the Southern USA, thank you, ma’am) you would have to get used to it.  Ma’am is the mildest version.  The manager of our compound here inserts “madam” into every sentence he says to me.  Our driver in Dhaka also used madam, and paired it with a slight bow.  There’s no one way to deal with it- you can live with it and go ahead and call them by their first names like most everyone else does, you can try to insist they use your first name also, you can call them sir and madam as well.

I have found that one of the most challenging parts of being in a new place is adjusting my sense of my own freedom of expression and freedom of movement, with both of those seeming more limited by social influences than anything else. Of course there are so many other things to take into account –so much that you need to learn as you go along, because no one person’s advice or even a whole shelf of travel books can replace just stepping out, paying attention, and starting conversations with the people around you.