Expat Living: Another Bee In My Bonnet

While working at my first job, back in 1999 on a street called Free
School Lane* in Cambridge, I had a boss who took a great interest in my
background and where I had been growing up. A former history teacher,
she was and continues to be the best boss ever for lending me the
phrase, “So, ‘home’ is where you hang your hat.”

I’ve had many “homes” then, in over 35 different countries and
across 4 continents. Realistically though, when I feel the pangs of
homesickness, they are usually narrowed down to only 3 or 4 specific
places, where I have actually lived for more extended periods of time:
the small town where my family still lives in Italy; England (both
Cambridge and London); Singapore, where I spent my teenage years; and
occasionally, my mother’s house which, like me, moves in shape and
distance across the globe like ‘Howl’s Moving Castle’.

Growing up, I hated being an expat kid. I had no idea how good I
actually had it. By living as an expatriate, you inadvertently get to
enjoy the best of what any country offers, without getting bogged down
by the financial and political injustices of paying their taxes, voting
in their elections, or having to get involved in any “longer term”
associations. Most other people you tend to meet are also expatriates
with a similar understanding that the duration of your friendship may
be long or short, and will depend largely on your ability to keep on
moving, traveling, and hanging your hat in pastures new.

Now that I am an adult, married, and living in one flat for longer
than 2 years at a time (this is a first for me!), I find that wherever
I am, I still think about where I will be next. It’s as though the
foundations of my living situation will drop out from under me tomorrow
and I will have to drive to LAX and decide on the spot, looking up at
the flipping departure board, “Where to now?”.

I am unreasonably lucky to have two passports, which allow me to
travel and live in lots and lots of nice places. Including Cuba, which
might be a tad lonely since my husband is American. (Or a tad
expensive, since Americans can actually visit Cuba, just not spend any
money there. The point is, it may be more trouble than it’s worth.) And
it doesn’t help that my husband has a touch of wanderlust about him as
well, and is completely open to packing up and heading to France or
England or Hong Kong for a while.

So the bee in my bonnet is this: Can someone who has spent her whole
life moving around actually stay living in one place, and is this
nagging feeling about living somewhere else just a reflection of my
childhood? With the economy doing what it’s doing
these days, it seems the US dollar may not be the wisest currency to be
hanging on to. And yet, in the last three years I found myself in a
comfortable place surrounded by family (new: I am a proud newlywed to a
Californian native, and old: my parents live here now, as well as a
brother, sister-in-law, and nephew). So I inadvertently hung my hat in
Southern California and it’s grown some roots, but the bee inside it
keeps buzzing all the same.

Maybe one of these days I’ll give up thinking that I should be
moving somewhere else. One day I might understand that I’m already
somewhere else, too. I guess the important thing is that I’m happy
where I am, and that should the rug fly out from under me, there’s
always LAX, my passports, and that flippin’ destination board.

*Incidentally, the school I worked for back in the day is in the
very same building where Watson and Crick built their first model of
DNA. For me, it was just an excellent view of The Eagle (one of my
favorite pubs in Cambridge).