Repatriation

Life after reentry; repatriation.

It's interesting how quickly you forget something that was so second nature to you at one point in your life when you are thrust into a new culture. It's like everything you've learned is pushed back into the abyss of your memory, because your brain is going through massive information overload for survival. Constant questions pepper your thoughts: "Am I on the right bus, tram, metro?" "Will anyone help me if I am on the wrong bus?" "What will be my level of humbleness today when I need to seek help in English at the Post, grocery store, mall, or pharmacy?" Or maybe your brain is still massively trying to comprehend the lifestyle you live - seeking Rembrandt, van Gogh, 16th and 17th architecture and history on a whim because you can. Or maybe your brain has seemed to grow exponentially because every day is a new challenge and learning experience; it hurts your brain and its wonderful. Whatever it is that forces your daily routines of your home country to recede into nothingness; when you return, it can make you feel confused, incompetent and childish.

My first few minutes back in the US saw me at the MacDonald's at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago. I placed my order and the women told me how much to pay. I had just gotten cash from an ATM and Brett had given me some change. I looked at my wallet like I was looking at money for the first time. The change felt flimsy, light and unfamiliar. The dollars were just green. For a littler longer than a split second, I couldn't remember the worth the coins symbolized. I was used to Euro dollars and cents. The coins are heavier, sturdier, the bills colorful and different sizes. I saw myself suspended between 2 cultures. And I saw myself through the eyes of someone else. "What is taking her longer to pull her money out?" In a fluster I handed her some money, received my change and order and quickly walked away from this social encounter feeling utterly ridiculous and ashamed.

My children couldn't remember how to turn a shower on...it's different from our shower in Amstelveen. I was re-living the exact moment of my children's panic of not knowing how to turn a shower on again - I was thrust back two years ago to the exact same moment in my bathroom in Europe. Speaking of toilets, the toilets in Holland are higher, so for the first few weeks of being back in the US, my muscle memory incorrectly remembered the height of a toilet, and I often found myself slamming into a seat.

The first time I walked into our local grocery store here in Avon, almost the size of an American football field, I emerged two hours later frazzled, exhausted, in need of a glass of wine and knowing that if my emotions on the inside were visible to the average person, I would look like a caricature of a mad person: hair teased out to all angles, eyes wide and maniacal and maybe even limping, like I'd been through the ringer. I couldn't remember where anything was, I stupidly ran the length of the store several times because I forgot that I had to write my grocery list according to how the store grouped items. I found myself talking out loud about how I didn't want 4 chicken breasts, I only wanted 2, I didn't want the large ketchup, I wanted the small, and why couldn't I get a small ketchup. I spent several minutes in the cereal isle contemplating the excessiveness of cereal. I have a full size American refrigerator, twice the size of my fridge in Holland, but I refuse to stuff it based on principal. If I run out of the small ketchup, I can just get more.

My grocery experience is so different than the one I had in Holland - perhaps a little more than 1/4 the size of my local grocery store here, I could be in and out in 20 minutes with 5 days worth of food. My brain can't even start to reconcile the largeness of my "local" grocery store compared to the closet sized market we went to when we were in Essaouira - a small fishing village in Morocco. The four of us could barely squeeze into the space available for customers. Here, we told the man behind the counter how many eggs we wanted, and from a large crate, he handed us our eggs, gently placed in a baggie.

Even geographically, I've found I've had a tough time re-adjusting to the vastness of my surroundings and where I fit in this space. In Europe, we were hugged and wrapped tightly by the high density of buildings, people and the life they breathed. Even in the areas of the Swiss, French and Italian Alps we visited, peaks seemed closer, valleys tighter and more narrow. Here, we live in wide open spaces. Absolutely breathtaking, but I've grappled with its vastness. But it is this same geography that helps connect the me I am today, to the me I was two years ago. I have long since believed that the mountains ground and offer me peace and clarity. That hasn't changed. I read a book this summer, The Steady Running of the Hour, written by Justin Go. In it he describes the mountains as follows: "One doesn't see beautiful things in the mountains...one becomes them." And that speaks of my soul. And I am happy to be back.


Life after re-entry is a juxtaposition. I simultaneously feel familiarity and ignorance; isolation and connectedness; happiness to be back and utter sadness to be so far away from my life and the people in it of the past two years. A few weeks ago, I stumbled across the following quote by the poet, Catullus. And though I am not sure the word "hate" is appropriate to my situation, to change the wording would lesson its impact and take away from how I feel about repatriation. "I hate and I love. And if you ask me how, I do not know: I only feel it, and I am torn in two."

I take comfort though, in the fact that though I've traded my Dutch bike with a road bike, I've taken a bit of Holland back with me...And I was right, I do like road biking.

Cheers,

Noel

Mountain pictures of our new, old home:

I bike in my jeans...

...I must confess. I also bike wearing flip flops, sandals, boots, heels, cowboy boots and flats. I bike wearing shorts, skirts, dresses, yoga pants, dress pants (though my British students would snicker at my use of the words pants - for them, that means underwear - they would say trousers. I don't just bike in my underwear, let's make that clear) and un-dressy pants. I bike in the sun, the rain, the sleet and snow, gale force winds, pleasurable breezes, humid days, biting cold days, lovely temperature days. Before moving here, I was unused to biking in anything other than proper biking wear - biking was a pleasure activity (OK, I'm not fooling anyone who knows me, I didn't even bike for pleasure, I wasn't much of a biker. Though I liked to fancy myself as an avid road biker, if I had had a road bike.)

Now my biking days are numbered. Soon, I will return to relying on a car to get me to where I need to go. There is no good or bad to that - living in a mountain community makes it difficult to rely solely on biking or public transportation. And there are things I have missed about my car - warmth in the winter, protection from the cold and wind, singing loudly in the car when I am alone. It will be the end of looking at the weather report and wondering if I need to bring my rain gear with me, hemming and hawing and then deciding to bring them because it would probably rain anyway at some point in the day. Yeah, I look forward to that.

But I do dislike the word end. There is such finality to the word. Even when you say it, the pronounced "d" is so forceful. I can fool myself and say, my time here is not the end, just a pause, I'll be back. But for this experience, it is the end. If I do come back, I will be older and I won't be able to relive what I had these past two years. Soon, these years will settle themselves into the crevices of my memory and when I recall them, the difficulties and struggles will erode with the victories and successes forming a landscape in my mind that can't be replicated. So, this is the end. For now.

And though the mountains draw us back home, I know our lives in the Netherlands will travel with us. I am not sure how yet...what I do know is, the next time you drive down Highway 6 and see a biker wearing heals, it very well be me.

Cheers,

Noel

The pictures that follow are of our last jaunt in Europe: Saint-Cast-Le-Guildo, Brittany, France and World War II memorial sites in Normandy, France.

Our family has come a long way from the early days of our move and traveling and site-seeing. Our children no longer make farting noises and play guns in churches. They now play hopscotch on grave stones in the floors of churches, save their farting noises for outside and play guns on battlefield sites. This, I see as an improvement.

Road trip to France

Saint-Cast-Le-Guidlo

Medieval City of Dinan

Our cottage for a week

At Pointe du Hoc - German stronghold in Normandy, in which American forces beat odds to capture. This is a crater left by bomb.  

Pointe du Hoc 

Omaha Beach, Normandy 

French celebrations of the 70th anniversary of D-day.

Mission Accomplished?

When Brett and I were in the thinking stages of teaching abroad our thoughts kept going back to how enriching this experience would be for our children; they'd be exposed to different languages, cultures, traditions, countries, people. They'd see the larger world, and hopefully, become more internationally aware. A few days ago, I asked the boys what they've learned/taken away from all the places we've been to. Here is what they had to say:

Of the Netherlands:

• You have to change into PE clothes at our school here. Dutch is one of the hardest languages to learn.

Of Belgium:

• They are famous for their chocolate.

Of Frankfurt:

• We got some hot chocolate there and stayed in a nice hotel.

Of London:

• We went to the Harry Potter Experience and the London Eye and mom was too scared to go on it.

Of Lisbon:

• We stayed in a nice house and finally found a cereal that we found in America.

Of Morocco:

• We went on a camel trek and it was really fun because the kids made their own fire. They serve fish with heads on them.

Of Disney Paris:

• Thunder Mountain was really cool because you go through caves and it's like an old wild west town. I got really sick and threw up 16 times.

Of Rome:

• They had marinara pizza. We went to the Coliseum and we didn't have to wait in the big line because we had a tour from this really nice man named Bruno.

Of Paris:

• We took the Thalys train and we had a lot of fun.

Of Switzerland (in the summer):

• We kept on having to do the same ski run over and over again. We went summer skiing and Henry fell off the Poma lift.

Of Luca:

• We went with Anna, Genny, Oliver, Brennan, Poggy and Grandma, Sarah and Jason, Chris and Karen and Elle and Jim and we all had dinner together and we never, ever, thought it was a horrible place.We had a big family gathering and it was a lot of fun because we had our own swimming pool and we went in there everyday.

Of Ireland:

• We travelled through different places in Southern Ireland. We went to Dublin and three other places I think.

Of Majorca:

• We went with Papa and Grandma Bonnie and we went to the beach everyday. The beach was only a 2 minute walk from us. On our last day, me and Peter found a real actual live starfish. It felt like a bean bag. We had a ping pong table and I played it almost everyday.

Of Cologne

• We went into this humongous cathedral. We went to some Christmas Markets, there was a big fluffy yellow chair in our hotel room. We also went to an awesome Lego store.

Of Paris (the Christmas):

• We saw a bunch of really good ice-skaters. We went to the tip top of the Eiffel Tower. And Nelson Mandela's name was on the Eiffel Tower.

Of Istanbul:

• We went to this famous mosque called the Blue Mosque. We went to a bunch of different mosques

Of Chamonix:

• We went skiing with Chris and Karen. We skied down a bunch of chutes and epic runs which was awesome.

Perhaps not as culturally rich as I wanted, or perhaps they just don't have the cognitive language yet. Or maybe this is just what they will always remember. Which is OK, because every now and then, we get a diamond in the rough:

On Henry talking to my cousin Sarah about Babe Ruth: "Was Babe Ruth like van Gogh, when everyone hated him when he was alive and loved him when he was dead?" (The gh pronounced the Dutch way.)

On Peter trying to put to words his emotions of leaving and what he likes about his school in the Netherlands (not in his exact words, but when expressed in the following way, he agreed): My school here has so many people from different places. I like this.

Cheers,

Noel


Pictures from Chamonix:

Near our home in Amstelveen 

On the Amstel River

The town of Nes on the Amstel

Amsterdam

Library visit at the Rijksmuseum with my cousin Sarah

Amsterdam at night