The Whole Wide World
And this is how it goes:
As a child of a Navy dad, we were stationed in Japan for most of my elementary school days - 3rd grade to the middle of 6th. It was a tough transition mostly on my Mother, because back then there really wasn't a program in place to help military families with cross-country moves. Two weeks after we arrived they shipped Dad off for a 6-9 month cruise. Mom had to find us a place to live (as there were no homes available on the base), find a car, get us registered in school, and attend to a million other details of setting up a home in a foreign country where she knew exactly no one.
We were put on a waiting list for base housing and in the meantime lived in delapidated WWII barracks that an enterprising Japanese woman rented out to families like us who were stuck in limbo. There was no heat in the apartment at all, so Mom nailed quilts over the windows and we huddled around kerosene heaters for warmth. The only phone for the entire apartment complex was in a little wooden box nailed to a tree in the middle of the gravel parking lot. The first night in our new home we experienced seven earthquakes.
As a kid, I thought it was a grand adventure. My main concern was when my bicycle from America was going to arrive. Three and a half years later, I was heartbroken to leave Japan. Being shot from that culture back to San Diego, California, was a shock. You adjust. You learn to put up with strange questions from other children, such as why my brother and I didn't have slanted eyes (the child apparently not understanding that living in a place does not endow you with the native culture's genetic characteristics). You get used to the fact that you are missing nearly four years worth of US pop culture and history. Even today, these gaps reveal themselves sometimes in the "Remember When?" conversations.
In 2001 I became a full time missionary in Scotland. It was an eye-opener for what my mother must have gone through. Now I was the one to procure the housing situation, the car, the utility companies, the taxes, the foreign currency, the heart-breaking homesickness. Six weeks after I arrived, I sat in my living room and watched the World Trade Center disappear. Over time, my best friend had her second child. My other best friend got married. People and things evolved and changed in big and small ways. I did too.
When I returned to the US in 2003, I felt like a woman trying on a sweater that was too small. I couldn't get it to fit, no matter which way I contorted myself. In the beginning, all I wanted to be was back in that little town in Scotland, where I knew the pace and rhythm of life. When I returned for a visit, though, Scotland had become another garment I didn't fit into. The people and things had evolved and changed there, too. For a while, I hung suspended between two cultures, fitting into niether.
Three years later, I have carved out my little life, taking what I have seen and where I have been and who I am and molding it day by day into my own place. I do not fully fit into this Southern life. I do not fully fit into a Scottish or Japanese or Californian or Oklahoman life either. I am made up of bits and pieces of all of them and I make them part of me.
"If you came back, you wanted to leave again. If you went away, you longed to come back. Wherever you were, you could hear the call of the homeland, like the note of a herdsman's horn far away in the hills. You had one home out there and one over here, and yet you were an alien in both places. Your true abiding place was the vision of something very far off, and your soul like the waves, always restless and forever in motion." -Johan Bojer, "The Immigrants"-
As a child of a Navy dad, we were stationed in Japan for most of my elementary school days - 3rd grade to the middle of 6th. It was a tough transition mostly on my Mother, because back then there really wasn't a program in place to help military families with cross-country moves. Two weeks after we arrived they shipped Dad off for a 6-9 month cruise. Mom had to find us a place to live (as there were no homes available on the base), find a car, get us registered in school, and attend to a million other details of setting up a home in a foreign country where she knew exactly no one.
We were put on a waiting list for base housing and in the meantime lived in delapidated WWII barracks that an enterprising Japanese woman rented out to families like us who were stuck in limbo. There was no heat in the apartment at all, so Mom nailed quilts over the windows and we huddled around kerosene heaters for warmth. The only phone for the entire apartment complex was in a little wooden box nailed to a tree in the middle of the gravel parking lot. The first night in our new home we experienced seven earthquakes.
As a kid, I thought it was a grand adventure. My main concern was when my bicycle from America was going to arrive. Three and a half years later, I was heartbroken to leave Japan. Being shot from that culture back to San Diego, California, was a shock. You adjust. You learn to put up with strange questions from other children, such as why my brother and I didn't have slanted eyes (the child apparently not understanding that living in a place does not endow you with the native culture's genetic characteristics). You get used to the fact that you are missing nearly four years worth of US pop culture and history. Even today, these gaps reveal themselves sometimes in the "Remember When?" conversations.
In 2001 I became a full time missionary in Scotland. It was an eye-opener for what my mother must have gone through. Now I was the one to procure the housing situation, the car, the utility companies, the taxes, the foreign currency, the heart-breaking homesickness. Six weeks after I arrived, I sat in my living room and watched the World Trade Center disappear. Over time, my best friend had her second child. My other best friend got married. People and things evolved and changed in big and small ways. I did too.
When I returned to the US in 2003, I felt like a woman trying on a sweater that was too small. I couldn't get it to fit, no matter which way I contorted myself. In the beginning, all I wanted to be was back in that little town in Scotland, where I knew the pace and rhythm of life. When I returned for a visit, though, Scotland had become another garment I didn't fit into. The people and things had evolved and changed there, too. For a while, I hung suspended between two cultures, fitting into niether.
Three years later, I have carved out my little life, taking what I have seen and where I have been and who I am and molding it day by day into my own place. I do not fully fit into this Southern life. I do not fully fit into a Scottish or Japanese or Californian or Oklahoman life either. I am made up of bits and pieces of all of them and I make them part of me.
"If you came back, you wanted to leave again. If you went away, you longed to come back. Wherever you were, you could hear the call of the homeland, like the note of a herdsman's horn far away in the hills. You had one home out there and one over here, and yet you were an alien in both places. Your true abiding place was the vision of something very far off, and your soul like the waves, always restless and forever in motion." -Johan Bojer, "The Immigrants"-
posted by Lisa | 6:43 AM
10 Comments:
I think your situation is not as unusual as you'd think. I wouldn't say that I belong ONLY here or there (except maybe in the Southern US). I feel somewhat out of place in almost all the circles I inhabit: art shows, art groups, even at work, at home or at church...
"I am made up of bits and pieces of all of them and I make them part of me."
But the more I think about it, I begin to think that we'd be pretty dull if we could be confined to just one area in life. We are indeed a sort of patchwork, our generation perhaps more so than others, given how mobile we are, how able to go there and back again.
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I envy that about you. To have more than one place to feel at home at. So comfortable it's hard to leave. I lived in the same house until my last year in college. Then my parents moved here to be with family. That left me moving here to be near family. Now I'd really like to find that place. That one place you know you'd like to spend the rest of your life in. I think for me it's more about who I am & where I am in my life-about why I may not feel comfortable somewhere. It's not so much as the place changing for me, as ME changed & different.
Sort of the reason I dont' want to go back to Searcy.
You & your mother are strong women.
Those are major adjustments & changes & obviously you are both really good at adaptation.:)
Ahhhh....
That is the sound of my soul sighing at this beautiful post!
What amazing memories you have, Lisa! Little pieces of home everywhere, but mostly inside you. It's good to know that God is shaping us for a home that will fit perfectly in every curve and line!
The quote at the end was perfect.
Thank you!
Brad-
I don't perceive my situation as unusual. It is more of a cultural dissonance that happens at times. I never grew up in the same town or even part of the country my entire life, so I sometimes have a cultural identity crises. :) I suppose each one of us brings to the table our own experiences. As always, thanks for your comments!
Jules-
We probably aren't as good at adaptation as it seems! It was kind of "adapt or die," so you do. A bit like motherhood, perhaps? :) (What's the deal with Searcy? Are you all looking to move there?)
Katrina-
Many thanks! Here's another quote for you:
"Like Abraham we are looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God." - Hebrews 11:20 *That's* the place I should be restless for. :)
Oh dear NO! :)LOL I meant Matt & I have no desire to return to the bubble. It's obviously not the same place as it was back then. Everything changes & I know HU sure has. Just a nice memory.:)
Whew! ;-)
Shell,
As an MK who grew up in Kenya, East Africa, I can relate. I was watching the movie, "Mean Girls," and laughed out loud when that dumb blonde asked Lindsay Lohan, "If you're from Africa, why aren't you black?" I have ACTUALLY been asked that same question. I once told a boss that asked me that question, "Well, my mom is, I'm just really light" (I was completly joking with her). I found out a year later from a co-worker that she had believed me!
*sigh*
Thanks for visiting my site, btw.
It's amazing the things people say! And I can't tell you how poor a lot of people's concept of geography is, either. People constantly got Scotland and Ireland mixed up and even got China and Japan mixed up!
I can see how you'd miss a few years and totally not know about a show or music group everyone else your age considered an integral part of growing up.
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