We have since moved on to a new continent, with a much easier process of acculturation...a more familiar language is spoken here & a more amicable climate are a few of the things that have made this move easier than the last. Not to mention, I've done it before. I have Thailand under my belt, I've lived half way around the world and experienced the homesickness and culture shock...and the reverse culture shock, now I know what to expect.
The process of living abroad is still a process though...with new friends to be made and so much work to be done learning the language and although much, much closer, we are still a continent away from our home in the States. Sometimes it's a craving, a yearning, a deep need to go to that home almost as if to see if it still feels like home.
I want my son to know that place, I want him to grow up feeling comfortable calling the U.S. home...today, on his 2nd birthday I find myself nostalgic, reflective, wondering...where did the time go? How can it be so long that we've lived far away? I find myself asking the question if we're doing the right thing...his story is already complicated. Born in Thailand, growing up in Colombia, parents from 2 different cultures themselves, although both born in the States. How will these experiences shape him?
I find comfort in knowing that I'm not alone in my pondering of these questions. We've now joined the ranks of parents who desire the best for their children and hope that they are doing just that.
I want my son to be an open-minded citizen of the world, to be comfortable calling any place home, capable of forming and maintaining meaningful relationships. I want him to stand in awe and know his place in the world...to be grateful for his many blessings, as I am grateful for him.
I'd like to share an essay my husband recently wrote to his mother about his experience growing up moving around the world.
Depth vs Span
Fuad Ahmad
October 2014
“We should have let you have a girlfriend,” my mother says with a shrug, putting down her desert fork as she casually concedes one of the most disputed points of my contentious adolescent years. My brow furrows. Even years later, beneath my thin veneer of adulthood, deep simmering pools of unresolved teen angst still seethe. Hearing my mother unexpectedly admit the failures of the arbitrary laws she once willfully enforced triggers a wave of hormonal resentment. Are you serious?
We are deep into a post-meal conversation and my mother has begun parsing through her life’s regrets, giving free reign to hindsight’s perfect vision and offering up unsolicited prescriptions to remedy a past that my family has yet to come to terms with. As she eyes her three unsettled children gathered before her, all unmarried and in various states of personal and professional disarray, drifting through our twenties amidst confused career choices and a host of messy identity issues, she starts throwing out increasingly bizarre mea culpas in an attempt to diagnose and fix our current issues.
“We shouldn’t have moved you so much,” she says next, leaning back from the dining table and shaking her head with pursed lips and a remorseful expression on her face. While I’m perfectly content to reimagine my teen years consorting with a bevy of foxy girlfriends, willfully overlooking how gameless, broke, and riddled with insecurities I was throughout that awkward chapter of my life, this last statement goes too far. Of all the debatable decisions my parents made regarding how to raise me, moving me repeatedly across the planet is something I’m profoundly grateful to them for.
I cannot imagine my life if my parents had never uprooted me. From campus to campus and country to country, I’ve crossed the world countless times, acquiring essential pieces of myself all along the way. After spending time in almost 40 countries, I’ve become a tapestry of widely disparate experiences, a motley quilt of overlapping cultures straining at uneasy seams. I can see how my mother, looking at the unconventional trajectory of my life, felt inclined to second guess the decisions she made that produced this gypsy man-child sitting before her. But her worries were misplaced. Some of us are not meant to fit neatly into the tidy and predictable niches carved out by nationalism, faiths, and the allegiances we inherit. We are not square pegs in round holes so much as we are shape-shifting nomads whose identities are fluid constructs constantly morphing to meet the demands of new environments. This is a questionable path to those who lack the imagination to grasp the freedom in upheaval, and the liberation that comes from leaving safe and familiar loyalties behind. Some of us are born to wander. We are lucky enough to finally live in a curated age, where our identities can be assembled from eclectic bits; we can choose to be so much more than just our origins.
But this wasn’t always clear to me. When I was younger, the need to belong ruled supreme, and when I looked around and then at myself I always found my life wanting. I was surrounded by people who were seamlessly integrated into their communities in a way I wasn’t, and they had strong foundations and support systems in place to nurture their growth and protect their interests. They seemed primed for success. I, on the other hand, was on the outside looking in.
In high school I came across an essay written by Sister Nivedita, a 19th-century European transplant who become one of the most revered and influential devotees of Swami Vivekenanda. A line from her pamphlet leapt out at me: “Only the tree that is firmly rooted in its native soil can bear the richest fruit.” Would my makeshift roots suffice? For many years I sought out the kind of anchored permanence I thought Sister Nivedita was talking about. It took a decade for me to realize that while some lives thrive when tethered to a single place or state of mind, some of us are also wired differently.
In my mid-twenties I discovered the prolific work of Ken Wilbur, whose writings provided a coherent framework for how I see the world. In his work, he explores the dichotomy of depth versus span as it relates to your character. Depth describes the level and quality of your understanding of any given community, place, or subject. Span, on the other hand, is about the horizontal breadth of your life and consciousness; it conveys the scope of your experience. This dichotomy resonated with me, as it elegantly captures the struggle of trying to traverse the world while still cultivating deep relationships with people and communities. Although I’ve traveled widely, many of my experiences in the places I’ve visited have been superficial. I struggle to commit and I uproot with ease. I am less a stately tree, destined to loom large over any single place, as I am a dandelion, scattering my spores over vast distances and carried by the wind to points unknown. Coming to terms with this has helped me dispense with the desire to be something I’m not. I still strive to develop a life of depth that bears rich fruit, but I’ve made peace with the limitations inherent in my own choices.
In my son’s nursery in our home in Thailand, our friend Liz Wendler painted a glorious banyon tree against a sky-blue background that loomed large on the wall over Dylan’s crib. As his eyes grew more focused over the first few months of his life, we noted how absorbed he would get while lying in his crib and gazing upwards at the tree’s magnificent gnarled posture, with leaves and vines reaching upwards to greet the sun. Later when he began to walk, he’d meander over to the wall and trace his little fingers over the tree’s lower half, his hands following the broad and expansive root system that dug downwards and branched out in myriad crooked directions.
These are the kinds of roots I want my son to have. I want him to grow up with countless connections to the earth, embedded in many different realities, and drawing strength from every place the tentacles of his consciousness have touched down. In his first two years he’s already been to 7 countries on 4 continents, and he speaks fragments of 3 different languages. As I watch my mother coo at him from a world away through a computer screen, I hope that she understands how Dylan’s life validates the choices she made with her own kids. I’m trying to give my son the opportunities and advantages that only travel can provide. I want him to have a life of scope and consequence, unhindered by borders and broadened by life experiences that challenge common convictions. I want him to build on the kind of life I’ve had. For many years I struggled coming to terms with my role in a lineage that seems destined to drift. I look forward to the day when I can explain to my son both the joy of putting down roots and the transformative, liberating power of being able to pull them up again in search for more nourishing earth.
