That foreign feeling: ten years in Europe
Warning: this post is going to gaze squarely at my navel. Like, even more than your average post on a personal blog. I apologize in advance.
As of this summer, I have spent ten years of my life in Europe – ten out of the last fifteen, with five international (plus a few domestic) moves in that time period. I’ve changed cities on average about every two years.
I feel like I should reflect on this milestone, about how I’ve chosen to live my adult life. But what is there to say? I like living in Europe. I’m OK with being a foreigner. I could try to say something deeper than that, but I’ve never been one for sentimentality. So I’ve spent most of my adult life as an outsider looking in. That’s not so odd, given I spent most of my childhood feeling foreign, too.
I’ve been a little bit foreign almost as long as I can remember. When I was a child our little nuclear family moved from New Jersey to the Deep South. My first indication that this was a bigger deal than our move from one street in the neighborhood to the other was on the airplane. It was an early-morning Delta flight, back when airlines still served food and Delta was still Southern. Breakfast consisted of biscuits smothered in white, gooey, gelatinous ickiness with little specks in it. I looked at my mother questioningly.
She seemed a little at a loss herself. “This is what they eat where we’re going.”
I considered her answer, and started crying.
The transition went relatively smoothly from there on out, at least as far as I can remember, until one day when my third-grade teacher called me to her desk. She revealed her notebook, the one where she put little check marks next to our names when we misbehaved. There were an appalling number of marks next to my name. My cheeks burned in shame – I wasn’t used to being a bad kid.
“I understand that you’re not… from here, so I’m going to erase these checks by your name.” Her voice was kind, but I was still confused. A little more discussion revealed that I had received this mountain of bad-behavior notation due to the fact that I didn’t address her using the word “ma’am.” Many of my classmates, as I would soon figure out, were raised to call even their own mothers “ma’am,” while I wasn’t even aware of the word’s existence until that moment at Mrs. C.’s desk. I started to understand that it wasn’t The South that was strange and different; it was me.
As I grew up I got used to no one in the South ever being able to pronounce our last name. Relatives visiting from the North would bring suitcases full of contraband delights - fresh mozzarella, provolone, salami – that none of my Southern friends had ever heard of. My Northern cousins would poke fun, accusing me of having acquired a Southern accent, while in the South my speech was still considered that of an outsider. I got used to the idea that I didn’t really belong anywhere anymore. I still don’t.
Happy 10 years of being an expat in Europe to me.
