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.

beyond belonging

This bird in the cafeteria at the kids’ school made me start thinking about belonging:

My first thought was oh no she must be miserable inside a man-made space without any other birds, she is so out of her element! Then... maybe she likes it- she’s out of the heat, has access to food and safe places to perch, maybe there are more birds living in there than I thought- who are we to say she doesn’t belong?   

The next day I went for a walk (early before the streets got too hot) and saw this: 

It was about a week after I’d returned to Doha after the summer break and it made a lot of sense. Of course I don’t belong there, obviously I belong in a place with green and hills and rain. Humans only survive in Doha thanks to air conditioning, desalinization plants, imported workers and imported food, though I’m pretty sure that’s not what they meant.

I never expected to belong in Qatar, and ultimately Qatar decides whether you belong or not anyway. There was an article this summer in the Doha News about a man who put together a film of Doha, where he was born and raised, and it described him as an expat (Qatar expat produces 'mega' time-lapse marking nations development), which was shocking to my American self. Several days later there was another article about the performance of a Qatari athlete, who will almost surely be stripped of his Qatari citizenship and sent back home to Sudan when his contract is over (Qatari athlete becomes first national to reach IAAF World Athletics Finals).

The news is full of people deciding for others whether or not they belong, for example this story about a boy with Down Syndrome who was asked to leave his school, and this story about a boy in Texas whose teacher decided he was a threat because of a science project he brought in. 

And clearly any concern I have about belonging is completely insignificant alongside the apparently never-ending crisis of refugees fleeing impossible situations around the world to seek haven in places they cannot be sure of welcome (here's an article about mixed receptions in a town in Germany). They are trading belonging for safety.  It’s completely different to be my kind of expat, because we chose this, have the resources to work with it, and know we’re welcome.

It would be such a relief to stop thinking about belonging, which implies requirements and approval by a group, and replace that with working on welcoming and including. I’d like to think we’ve moved beyond the primary and secondary school social scenes, where the popular kids decide who’s in or out, but replace "popular kids" with "rich countries" and it just keeps continuing (read Who Qualifies for Asylum, from the New York Times)  On a personal level, it’s taken longer to stop caring whether people will accept me or not than I thought it would, especially with this moving every few years and having to start new in a neighborhood, at school, and in jobs over and over again.  Here especially the heat and traffic can be so isolating. We “non-working” expat spouses in Doha have to be deliberate about connecting with other people and so it feels like there’s much more at stake in making a positive first impression.  I don’t want to worry about how people are going to react to me as long as I'm interested and respectful, and I don’t want my kids to worry either.  I want them to care about making connections with people but not if they feel that would require presenting a fake version of themselves.  I want us all to think about how to work to make everyone feel welcome.

Is this my career?

My son called to say he had to stay after school to complete an interview, then stayed up late transcribing the info in order to make a poster. Turned out the interview was about geology and it was for his careers class.  I asked if he had an interest in geology but he said no, there had just been a limited availability of interviewees.  I said what about my career and he just rolled his eyes.

Wait a minute.

I never thought about this, though I’m sure lots of other people have.  There’s plenty of writing around about the worthiness of being a full-time parent in lieu of a paid work, if we’re so lucky to have a co-parent whose job can pay the bills, but we are never ever invited to talk to the class about our career.  What would the kid wear if they wanted to dress up as a trailing spouse for career day?

I never intended to check the “housewife” box –to be the primary caregiver for the kids and to cook most of our meals. I didn’t ever consider it when I was growing up and people asked me what I wanted to be when I was an adult. It’s not the actual work of parenting and home-making that I don’t like. What bugs me is my own expectation, supported by my education, media, and peers, that I ought to be doing something else. 

I’ve been talking with a friend lately about her impending return to full-time work and her concerns that she will not be spending enough time anymore with her three young children. I have encouraged her, saying that it’s fine for kids to see her working. There are a lot of ways to raise kids and a lot of ways that they will turn out fine. I think it’s most detrimental to them for their parent to be dissatisfied with how their life is turning out. I’ve spent years being dissatisfied, just perpetuating the message that not having a career outside my home leads to frustration and resentment. It’s not the example that I want to be.

Do I need to package it up to make it worthy in my eyes? My kids eyes? It’s hard to say how I’d want to promote this lifestyle as a career anyway, since it seems like it is a very dependent and vulnerable position. I tried putting all the pieces together of everything that I do and turning it into a positive spin description: joining forces with someone who you enjoy and explore the world together, open to possibilities, home-making in the most creative and challenging sense, as home changes every few years, exploring new cultures and cities, forming friendships around the world until it’s impossible to go to a place where you know no one. Learning to drive in all kinds of circumstances- how to dodge rickshaws and drive on the left (Dhaka), avoid hitting cyclists and spaced out pedestrians and to parallel park a minivan into a tiny space on a near-vertical street (San Francisco), and I will spare you another rant about Doha traffic. It sounds good for a minute, but I didn't try it out on the kids. 

Message is, you are going to school in order to be a person who gets paid money for the work you do. Staying home is a fall back. None of this is good for a trailing spouse’s self-esteem, no matter how hard he or she works at helping kids adjust to a new country and culture, learning his or her way around town and dealing with medical care, maintenance, procurement of everything from groceries to gas bottles to smoke detectors. There are even a lot of perks, including being able to be available to my kids during our major moves, take art classes, walk around Doha, all the way to the most mundane, like being able to grocery shop on weekday mornings.

There are a lot of memes out there saying live your dream, follow your passion but that’s not realistic for all of us, or at least it can’t be an instant fix. Qatar is a prime example of this- the millions of migrant workers here are not living their dreams, in fact some of them would likely describe it as more nightmare, though I have met people who have made it work- earning money here has enabled them to build houses, educate children, and start businesses in their home countries.  Others are lucky to make it home alive.

I went to college and then grad school and then started having kids. When the first two were big enough to be in school full time I got jobs at a couple of international kindergartens in Hanoi but then the third one came along and I stopped working again. here.

Last summer I worked full-time at a camp and I think I was a better parent than I had been in a long time. I still was primary parent for them because my husband had stayed in Doha. I loved it and I wrote about it

This story doesn’t have an end. I’m not done thinking about it, not done working on it. I love it when I have a job that challenges me and lets me use my skills and work with interesting people. I also love having the freedom to design my whole day, explore, make art, cook, and spend time with kids. I know I’m very lucky to have the time and resources to sit around thinking and writing about the subject.