 |
Adapting Back Home
Essay in Suzanne Kamata's Call Me Okaasan:
Adventures in Multicultural Mothering
Andrea Martins
"Off you go, run around, enjoy yourselves," I said, reveling in a gorgeous, sunny day at the park with the ocean sparkling in the background.
My two-and-a-half-year-old daughter ran full steam ahead - anxious to explore. My four-year-old son, however, ran only a few steps, stopped, looked around puzzled as to why I was not following him, as I had always done in the security-conscious Mexico City, and asked, "You mean we can run anywhere?"
It was at that very moment, in our first week back in Australia, that it hit me: while repatriation for me was probably going to be more like switching hats – back to what I had known before - life in Australia was going to be a whole new learning experience for our Australian-born children who had never known what it was like to really live in Australia.
This was reiterated when my son started introducing himself that day to everyone in the playground.
"Hello, I'm Bailey. I'm from Australia. Where are you from?"
Needess to say, in a park full of Australians, my son innocently became the subject of great bemusement.
"Don't worry," chimed in a well-meaning member of our extended family. "Children learn quickly. They will adapt faster than you think and they will soon forget what they did and where they lived before."
"But I don't want them to forget," I thought to myself. "Why would I want them to forget the formative years of their lives, their international friends, their Spanish language skills, the food, our travel and our experiences?"
Little did I know just how quickly my children would learn and adapt. Two weeks into our arrival home, my son spoke the words I dreaded most: "Stop reading it in Spanish, Mum. Just read it normal." Newsflash Mum, no one here speaks anything other than English, so only read it in English.
My heart sank. Was this going to be the beginning of the end? I wondered, knowing how difficult learning a new language was as an adult and praying that our children would somehow retain their bilingual skills. How could they be ready to ditch speaking Spanish, after only two weeks back in Australia?
"Come on darling," I replied calmly, quelling the mix of emotions beneath my skin. "I love hearing it in Spanish and it would be great if you and Jasmine practiced your Spanish." I soldiered on with my plan to read the book in both languages, as we had always done.
"No, Mum. No," he replied, cheered on by his sister, who hated the thought of being left out.
It did not matter how many times I tried after that, my children were apparently adapting, Australian-style. I didn't like it, but I couldn't stop it. I did manage, however, to sneak a dozen or so Spanish words into our family's daily vocabulary. The words themselves were not important; what mattered was the satisfaction I derived from hearing them spoken each day. To me, this was at least some kind of recognition of the past – of where we were and who we used to be.
At the same time, the daily pleads of: "Mum, when can we go back and visit Alesi, Gaby, Quique, Amani and all of our friends in Mexico?" were gradually beginning to fade. It was not long before the question was asked only once a week, then once a month, and now, eighteen months on, it is rarely asked at all.
Instead, every night in our bedtime song, we sing the names of all of the children's old friends from abroad. If I am honest, I am sure that the children do not really remember their old friends and they just sing with me because I'm the one who made up the song. We sing it anyway. It makes me happy.
In the absence of bilingual skills and international friends, I have struggled with how else I can keep our international experience in our children's consciousness. I borrow books from the library and read to my children about people living in different cultures. I engage the kids in discussions around our large world map. I encourage them to taste foods from different countries and take the opportunity to explain to them snippets of information about that country and its people. I keep an eye out for people wearing different clothing and take each opportunity to explain to my children about the country of the unsuspecting passers-by. All the while, I find myself trying to weave our children's international experience into our discussions in the hope that they will retain at least some sense of their previous identity.
To my great delight, Australian shops now sell piñatas, paper mache shapes, typically themed with famous children's characters, which you put candies in for the children at birthday parties. I buy these piñatas in an attempt to hold on to some legacy of Mexico in our birthday celebrations. However, the piñatas here are very small and are all pull-string, rather than the have-a-great-time-by-hitting-with-a-bat-with-all-of-your-strength-while-singing-the-traditional-Mexican-piñata-song type. My kids love both. But to me, the piñatas in Australia are just not the same.
My new friends here are very nice. They all seem to be either Australians or soon-to-be-Australians, immigrating typically from England, South Africa or the United States. But none of them seem to live in that highly-mobile state of mind that characterizes most expatriates that I know, and which I confess, is a little addictive.
My immigrant friends here know exactly what it is like to take their children from one culture and re-plant them in another. However, unlike me, they appear okay with their children giving up what they left behind. They encourage their children to embrace everything Australian, as soon as possible.
I want my kids to adapt and fit in... but not completely. I want them to remember their past identity and experiences; blend those with the here and now; and leave room for the possibility that our family might move abroad again in the future. I want my kids to be internationals: multi-lingual, multi-talented, and multi-dimensional. I want my kids to be different.
Maybe that is the problem.
As a repatriate who struggles with the notion of being stuck in one location, who regularly yearns to be overseas again and who, despite a large network of wonderful new friends, feels like she does not completely fit in, I look at my happy, healthy, well-adjusted children who have bloomed in their new lives back home and I think of the irony: it is me, the Australian-born, Australian-raised one, who has not adapted. I am the one that does not seem to have learned very well.
Maybe I need to file my past memories away in a sacred box of treasures that is closed more than it is opened, live life more in the present, take more time here to enjoy those around me, and let the future work itself out – free from my expectations of what it should be.
As my son would say, "We're in Australia now, Mum."
Perhaps it was my children who have had it right all along.
is the Director and Co-Founder of ExpatWomen.com.
Suzanne Kamata's book was released by Wyatt-MacKenzie Publishing in May 2009. Suzanne's anthology features essays from 20 women writers from around the world. |
