A Cracked Mirror

It had been a while since I had interacted with a TCK when suddenly I was surrounded by them. If you have never been surrounded by TCKs you need to try it. They spanned from middle school age to just older than myself. Planning for this special weekend was unique. I had to fight the urge to plan out every minute, knowing that my kind is expert at bonding, especially with a whole slew of people who would never ask you where you are from.

I love how close they are all sitting

We all piled into a semi circle of couches almost immediately, introducing ourselves and each other, laughing, and feeling a hint of what home might feel like to others. It was beautiful.

The younger ones knew only that they were different to a small extent. They were living still in limited worlds where everything still seemed normal. The older ones were soaking up every moment like a sponge, recognizing how unique this experience really was, and relishing a moment where everything really did seem normal.

I found myself incredibly emotional, pausing to take mental photos, actual photos, and to store up each precious moment in my heart as a stockpile for later, a reminder that I am not alone in the world. Each face was a stranger and also a reflection, and we had so much fun. The conversation sat at a defaulted depth of our cores. TCKs are notorious for hating small talk and it showed. We reached inside ourselves and held our beating hearts, not on our sleeves to be seen, but in our hands, ready to pass out to anyone with empty hands to hold it.

Even the non-TCKs felt it. Bonding. It happened without prompting and never stopped. No one was excluded. The thought of it, even now, years later, still fills my heart up to the brim.

I thought, these people are all like me.

And then something happened. One of them wasn't.

He was, but he wasn't.

I sat talking about never wanting to go back, about wanting to bounce from place to place, not even daring to utter what had become a banned phrase in my mind, "settle down". Then I looked up at him eager to see him nod and agree with the enthusiasm only a similar soul could comprehend. But he didn't. He said it. He wanted to settle down. It caught me off guard.

No. I had heard people say this in theory, my older brother had said it before. In my mind I would laugh knowing that he was bred to explore, that in his heart he is a traveler. Staying in one place too long would burn under his feet and his eyes would wander to the sea.

But this was different. This TCKs eyes did not wander to the sea, they wandered to the land he hoped to go back to, a ground where he would raise his flag, claim, and then settle. Inside me was screaming that this could not be. What kind of TCK does he think he is? It felt
wrong. In my perfect world of mirrors one cracked.

It still astounds me from time to time, but I can understand it better now. To find a place that stays familiar, to not move again, to root yourself in a people, a place, a home. I don't know if my eyes will cease to wander to the sea. I think it will be some time before that happens, but I know now that a TCK is not a mirror. We all have a texture, an echo that resonates within us at the same frequency and tone, but how that texture shows up under our individual colors, how that echo sounds in the midst of our unique symphonies is always different.

When I read about TCKs it is like reading a choose your own adventure book. Do those still exist? All of our stories start with the same first chapters, the base of our experiences and characteristics are the same, a life between worlds. But then as you move forward there are splits in the paths. Each person lets those first chapters shape them differently. Some never settle down, some never move. Some stop reading the news, some dig deeper into it. Some love their past, some forget it.

No matter where your adventure takes you, though, your first chapters are the same as mine, as other TCKs. And when you throw a bunch of us in a room, no matter how we have grown those traits, no matter how many of us do not see mirrors, we will all have the same textures and echos, and we will recognize them in each other. It is beautiful.

Different

I'm sitting in what is about to become our new church small group. Around the room I see all the young adult married couples who have come presumedly for the same reason we are here, to connect. I knew it was coming but somehow I blocked it out of my brain. We will have to introduce ourselves. It is an inevitable fate and when it really sinks in I feel the dread rising in me.

I know I look different. I have not only my natural red hair at this point, but a fade to black thrown in. I love it, but it makes me different. I have a lip ring. I love that too. But it instantly makes me different. Normally it doesn't bother me because I KNOW I am different. But at this point I don't know if I want to be.

The leader doesn't ask us to say where we are from, and I am so relieved that it feels like some of my strange is melting off of me, but only some. I love meeting new people, but it is hard to watch the eyes glaze over when I try to answer questions or explain who I am. It is hard every time. I should know. I have done it over a million times. It looks like my husband will have to explain who I am though and I am glad. He knows me so well and he always knows better than I do how much is too much to share. He is the master of small talk, my own mortal enemy.

We have to say an interesting fact about our spouse and, while I have one picked out for him, I am curious what he will say for me. I lean over and whisper, "what are you going to say?" He grins and says, "that you have red hair..." and I roll my eyes at him and then glare icily. I half hope he is joking and half hope he is not. I want to be the real me but a part of me wants to fit in a little, even if it is just for a minute.

We are listening to each couple as they say who they are, how they met, and interesting facts. The ones who are newly weds are tentative, making sure not to embarrass their spouses by crossing some line they didn't know existed. My husband and I have been married five years now. We have stepped over lines, on toes, across boundaries, and found our way back to each other. Living in a new culture will do that to you. We know where we stand and how to do this. We have done this before. We will do it again.
Suddenly I hear something different. Another couple, another husband, his voice is changing to a tender and careful tone, but behind it is pride. I know it. It is what my husband uses when he talks about me. "She grew up in Santiago, Chile. Her first language was Spanish." I find myself uncontrollably nodding, hoping to reach out from my spot on the couch and say that somehow I know. I know Santiago. I have been there. I know Spanish. I speak that. I know that timid grin she has as she looks around. I do that. I want to yell it out so she knows that I know. She is different like me.

My husband does it perfectly. Rather than announcing that I am strange he offers advice to not ask where I'm from and lists off a few of my countries, the start of my list. It is perfect and I'm grateful. But it doesn't matter as much anymore because I am not the only different one. She is grinning at his admonishing not to ask the dreaded question. She knows. She is reaching out saying that she knows.

We've always been different, but different is okay.

I don't know why I always feel this way. We are everywhere. TCKs are all over and we always find each other. I know this. I have seen it everywhere I go. We are so different we recognize that different in others. There is always someone who traveled to one of my countries, someone who knows my heart languages, someone who goes home to a different world, or whose home is the whole world.

And now that I know I am not the only different I can listen. I can be still. We can grin at each other when the coffee is ready to drink at 8pm. I am not the only different. I don't feel alone when someone says they don't like to travel even though travel is all I know. I don't feel anxious to explain who I am even though they don't know. I listen to the stories around me because I don't need to be known right now. Someone already knows.

They are different like me.

My Map

I'm standing there at work. It is a slow day and I have found myself drawing a map on the back of narrow receipt paper. It seems like it will be easier this way. I have on it North America, divided into countries and states, South America, also divided and labeled just in case. I have added Europe and Africa. I look up and ask, "Okay, are you ready?" She nods expectantly, looking focused.

Familiar Journeying aka My life

I begin where I was born, in the wrong city. A line goes from that city, the capital, to where we were actually living, then up to the US, then back down to Peru. Each line comes with an explanation of my age and the next destination. She is watching and I can tell she is trying to envision it all. The lines between Ecuador and Uruguay overlap each time, and in my mind I know that even these straight lines don't show the whole story. They don't show the nights in airports, the boat rides, the bus rides. But this is about understanding, not accuracy.

Next the lines hop around the United States. They jump from coast to coast, top to bottom. Then they are skidding across the seas to Africa. And finally they jump back and land on where I am, where she is.

She glances over at her map, with three lines on it. It shows one bay with three dots. One dot is "home", one dot is "college", and the last dot is "now". As she looks she draws another line and dot showing "boyfriend" but it is easy to follow. My map looks like a child stole my pen and scribbled across it. I realize that I may have made it harder. Maybe a timeline? Or color coding for age? I'm concerned as I look between the maps. I look up at her and she is grinning.

"That's complicated," and if she isn't saying it with her words she is saying it with the way her eyes are trying to retrace all the lines in order. I laugh nervously wondering if I have lost her, my new friend.

People don't ask anymore. They take the answer I give and stop trying to understand the whole story. They don't blink when I add another country, they just shake it off. So this moment, this rare opportunity to try and explain it all, it means something to me. I don't realize until now I am breathing lightly as if not to disturb the precarious moment. She could easily write it off as confusing, and she probably will. Only she doesn't. She looks up and nods as if it suddenly makes sense. As if I make sense.

This is one of my favorite photos in the world. It feels like me. Thank Iain Anderson.

Do I dare? I have questions for her too. They baffle people as much as "where are you from?" baffles me. "What was it like living in one house your whole life?", "In the same city your whole life?", "Do you want to travel?", "Do you miss your home?"

She answers as best she can, struggling to put words to concepts and feelings. I recognize it, only she is struggling to identify something I may never understand. I'm listening like she is speaking an alien language, watching her gestures like she is foreign, and in many ways she is. I stop her each moment she skims over something, assuming I will know. But I don't.

Suddenly, we are at a standstill, each holding our maps which represent pieces of us, and mysteries to the other. But I am happy we did it. We know now we are different, but we also know now why and how it has shaped each of us. We understand a little more. It gives me hope that I am not unreachable. That for every ten, or hundred, or thousand times I dodge the dreaded question with a vague response, someone will want to know my list, will try to understand how my heart is somehow tied to each place. And for those rare moments, all the others are worth it.

I have hope that I can make real friends who will never relate, but will maybe understand. And if that is true then those who can sort of relate are sure to be real friends, and those who can mostly relate are more than sure to be real friends, and those who are like me will know my heart immediately. Suddenly there is potential in everyone where I only saw frustration. Someplace in this she has given me hope.

The next day I will try again, and another friend will listen and ask and nod. And I will be able to breathe just a little more freely than I have before. And I will keep trying until I must leave. And when I do it will hurt in all the most beautiful ways because I know that I will leave my heart there with them, just as I have in all those other places, with all those other people.

Another Place, Another Time

I was fine. I was fine until I watched that show "An Idiot Abroad" and found the Egypt episode. The call to prayer, even though my ears were immune to it by the time I left, felt nostalgic as it blared through the TV. I was fine until I recognized streets and buildings, concepts and cultures. I was fine until I found myself correcting the televised merchant as he said "welcome to Egypt". "No, it's welcome FROM Egypt... silly TV..." My heart began to ache.

With that, everything shifted. I made hot chocolate and longed for my special iced hot chocolate, a drink developed solely for me by my local Cafe Grecco. I heard traffic outside my window and for a second it sounded like the overpass by my flat in Cairo, missing only the obsessive horn honking. I heard a man outside our window yelling and for a moment didn't understand him because my ears expected to hear Arabic.

I have experienced this phenomenon before. When it is really hot out and the right flowers are blooming I am back in Ecuador. When I smell eucalyptus trees and concrete I am in Peru. Incense is Egypt. Crisp ocean air is Uruguay.

Studies have shown that smell is one of the most potent tools for memory. It triggers places and people and worlds better than any other one of our senses. As a TCK my world is made up of many worlds. Each one has its own smell, feeling, sounds, ideas. It's why in college when ash was falling from the sky I felt a surge of comfort. It's why the sounds of riots and tear gas feel like an old friend. It's why trash baking in the sun, or the presence of a "pee wall" don't make me grimace but grin. My many worlds contain many things, and even the gross or dangerous parts seep into my soul and become a part of me. They edge in on my soul in the strangest moments and they remind me that I am a person between worlds, adding more worlds to my own the longer I live and the more I love.

So I was fine. I still am.

Where do your worlds pop up?

TCK dictionary from Communicating Across Boundaries (link)

Hello all. I haven't forgotten or abandoned this. My mind has just been elsewhere (like the many, many educational theories I have been writing papers on). I just discovered a great post from Communicating Across Boundaries, another very well done TCK blog. This post offers 20 words that fit beautifully into the TCK experience, calling them the TCK dictionary. Here is a small exerpt:

There are some words that describe better than others the TCK journey. Some of them don’t exist in the English language, so for the English speaker we rely on words from other places, languages. In this post I’ve compiled twenty words that I believe best describe the TCK experience. Some are funny, some are sad, but all work well when we struggle to articulate our particular journey.

Find the rest of it here. How have you seen these words resonate in your life?

We're the same, but not

One of the biggest things I have struggled with as a TCK is outside perception. I had run into it many times before but it hit me hardest in university. Not only was I different, but my circumstances were different too, only from the outside I seemed the same. I was living with two dorm siblings I had essentially grown up with who were now adults. One was attending the university I was headed to, and so it made sense that when he got there, that I would go too. He was going early for a men's choral group, and because I wanted to see what college was like without being glued into a group, I was there a week before orientation and with no good reason aside from that I needed a ride.

Sitting alone outside of the dorms in college

I ventured out of my lonely dorm room and found people one day. I remember it vividly, I was standing in a circle of girls, all who were, for all intents and purposes, the same as me. We were all young females starting a new chapter known as college. It began with names. My name is still a struggle for some so the quizzical looks were not a shock. What happened next was.

Where are you from?

We all hate this question and I had anticipated it by deciding on an answer I felt would give the most information about me without having to give the full list. When each girl said where she was from others would chime in acknowledging any contact they had with the place. Most cities were California based, since that was where the University was located, but unrecognizable to me, others were from other states. When it got to me I proudly announced: "Ecuador." Silence. Then like a collective waking from a trance they all moved on without comment.

Why are you here early? Soccer, Choir... etc. Each answer brought squeals from others who were doing the same. I felt the doom approaching.

"My friend goes to school here, he gave me a ride."

It didn't explain everything fully but it was the best I could do without explaining boarding school, and my parent's work, why I chose a school so far from family, etc. I don't know if what happened next was on purpose or if it was instinctive to the female human being in a group of like others, but seamlessly they moved around me, in front of me, and closed me out of the circle. I was shunned.

My theory on the phenomenon of the closed circle is part unrelatableness and part surprise. Unrelatableness isn't technically a word, but the concept is real.

What did those girls see? They saw what I saw: that we were all a bunch of american girls going to college who had arrived early. We were all the same! Only, we weren't. I had experiences to draw off of to relate to them, I had been to places some where from, I knew how to say their names. But none of them had been to Ecuador, and none of them could comprehend why I would be there early, the only reason being that I needed a ride. Where were my parents that they couldn't bring me? Why wasn't I joining the choral group or soccer when I was avidly involved in both of those all four years of high school? And if I was from Ecuador why did I look like a white girl? Where is Ecuador exactly (people would ask me that later)?

All of these are valid questions but combined lead to something along the lines of: information overload, does not compute.

TCKs find this anomaly often, in both their passport country and their host country. The perception from the outside is at odds with what is on the inside. My little brother suggested I construct some infographics for this blog so here we go:

A collegiate Maia amongst other collegiate females was the enactment of the Hidden Immigrant. You could see how that would be a surprise for everyone. TCKs in their host country often bring a similar surprise when they display the Adopted pattern. They look different, they are expected to be a Foreigner, like a tourist, but instead they share the same thought process as the people they look nothing like. 

When we lived in Egypt we were constantly explaining that we actually LIVED there, that we weren't some tourist passing through. In Ecuador people were astounded when a herd of white dorm kids would flow through the mall food court speaking perfectly accented Spanish. We were like them in all but looks. As one friend of mine states bluntly to me often: "Your Ecuador is showing."

When I travel on vacation I find myself fighting to be anything but the Foreigner, or at least not so easily identified as such. But put me in a room full of TCKs and it becomes evident that we share a culture, and sometimes we even look alike. Justin Timberlake, you said it, it's like they're my mirror. 

Perceptions can cause a lot of anxiety and hurt, but if we take the time to ask those questions that would cause the "does not compute" rather than lead to "abort system" to end in some great discussion and, often, friendship. 

Just remember that everyone has a story, and it takes time to share it. 

When you feel different, it means that someone else feels different from you too.  Knowing why you feel that way can help you find ways to connect with those around you. These relational patterns can show up anywhere. Think about family dynamics, teacher/student dynamics, even marital dynamics. 

Where have you seen these relational patterns appear in your own life? 

The year I didn't want friends (a story of loss and denial)

It was a different time then. The digital world was waking up; MySpace and AOL messenger were the popular kids. Facebook hadn't started its global stalking, calling and counting any known person as a friend. SD cards were still inked, paper note cards and your contact list was your brain holding only as many digits as you could remember. You had to get off your chat if your brother wanted to call his girlfriend from the home phone, cause it was the only phone you had, and the computer and phone hadn't learned how to share.

My Journal

This was the time my parents had to spend an entire year in the United States. And a year was longer then than it is now. Much longer. Everything was slower; life was a six part BBC movie, not a TBS sitcom.

I offered to stay behind. After all, boarding school would be the same if they were in South America or North America. But it made my mom sad when I said it so I stopped saying it.

It wasn't that I didn't want to be in "the states". Who wouldn't want to have gushers in their lunch every day and root beer in a never ending flow called "free refills"? It wasn't that I didn't want a yard and my family, or a place where I didn't still stumble over the language, where I looked like everyone else and clothes fit every time, all the time. It was that I knew what it was like when you left people who were always being left. You vanished and it didn't matter. It was a liability to hold on. I knew cause I was one of them. A letter-goer.

The start of the year of "non-friendship"

My parents thought I was worried about making new friends, but I had perfected the process through years of practice. Making friends was like breathing, it just happened.

Only I didn't want new friends. I already had friends. I knew where they were, what they would be doing, and I knew I wouldn't be there and that no one would notice. The world would keep spinning only I would be at the wrong end of the table, trying to yell across the distance, hearing the laughter but not the joke.

So that's when I decided, I decided not to bother. I decided not to make friends.  I would count this year as a mulligan and just move past it. Why bother when it's just one year. That phrase, just one year, was the anti wrinkle cream that sucked the sand out of the hourglass in my mind. I resolved to be the wind, passing through with nothing more than a whistle, unseen by the world around me while inflicting a hurricane of connection to my friends back in Ecuador. Email would be my surrogate and somehow I would find a way to channel into that world leaving only a body to go through the motions in this one.

Friends

I failed miserably. Just a year lasted a whole calandar year as it usually does, all six BBC VHS cassets with both opening AND closing credits, including the time it takes to rewind them all. And like those that lived on without me, so I lived on without them. And at the end of that year I hugged my friends who sobbed into my shoulders and penned into my yearbook email addresses based on my well intentioned, yet empty, promises to keep in touch, knowing my promises had the strength of tissue, able to dry tears but lacking the fortitude to stand upon.

I said goodbye to friends who only spoke one language, English, which I now knew was my second language, shadowed by the language of the sojourner, primarily composed of hellos followed directly by goodbyes.

And when I returned to Ecuador I was welcomed as easily as I was dismissed. For that was and is our way. The way of the patterned nomad, the unlost wanderer, the TCK.

By the way, for a more technical look into how TCKs go about the friend making process check out this blog post by Michèle Phoenix, TCK, boarding student, and writer.

What coping techniques have you tried for the constant pattern of loss that comes with the life of a TCK? Which have failed? Which have worked?