Eating salad with a spoon – and why our third culture children never bat an eye
So, the summer tan has faded and that precious nine-week holiday flew by like a New York minute. We have plunged into back-to-school-mode and are enjoying the sites and sounds of the city and of Asia once more.
I, personally, am back to occasionally indulging in one of my guilty-food-pleasures – a chopped salad from a local chain. The salad is served, in all its yumminess, with a spoon. And this is something that never ceases to surprise me.
But my children don’t think it’s at all weird to eat salad with a spoon…
This made me think about how our kids’ lives are constantly being moulded by the (sometimes crazy) decisions Johan and I make.
For Johan and I, the biggest reason to spend our summer at home in Switzerland was the benefit it had for our three children. We wanted them to stay connected – to the country, the language and to the people. We wanted them to feel roots.
Johan and I spent our childhoods very differently from one another. Johan, an expat child, was travelled and experienced. Even in his youth, he was far worldlier than I am now. I grew up in the idyllic farming countryside of Pennsylvania.
Although I always dreamt of the big wide world around me, it was one that I could only suspect existed.
Our differences only begin with the fact that my hometown didn’t have a fast food joint or that the nearest international airport was a four-hour drive by car while Johan was taking the train to parties in London and spending holidays in other countries. Factors such as culture, religion and economics separated us in our beliefs and values.
When we married, a good friend told us that we were like chalk and cheese. She was shaking her head and smiling when she said it. And she said it lovingly, without a trace of judgment or unkindness. She was just saying something aloud that most people were thinking silently.
It hasn’t made life clear-cut, but it sure has made it interesting. Our differences have been a source of both endless possibilities and consistent, confusing stumbling blocks.
Our children did not chose this weird and wacky path in life.
They didn’t choose to have parents who by nature are drawn to different logics and approaches. They do not always see the advantages of our diversity. Sometimes it must feel like a crazy-high level of complexity and convolution.
When your parents come from different cultures, varying economical foundations and a polar set of governing ethos, it can be confusing.
Defining yourself is difficult, at best, as a child.
In acknowledgment of our chaotic approach as adults, we built our lives together and our children’s childhood around the strong Swiss backdrop that we called home.
And that worked for many years, nine in fact. Until we moved to Tokyo.
Cleo, Lulu & Friso waiting for the train, early in the morning on our way back “home” from Klosters to Tokyo
Standing in front of our Zürich home….the last time we closed it, eighteen months ago
Our expatriation to Japan created so much good in our children’s lives.
When you ask the children what they love the most about their new home, they will tell you immediately that they love school. And they do. They are in a wonderful school with a strong leadership and teaching staff. All three children have flourished and learned in leaps in bounds.
But, funny enough, if they speak longer about Japan and if you listen carefully, you will hear something unexpected in their words. They speak unmistakably about culture and the transformations they are experiencing. Living aboard has made them quite reflective about their own culture and who they really are.
Earlier this year, I was traveling with the three children to Hokkaido, the island in the north of Japan. We traveled with their American passports as identification. When asked at the hotel what our nationality was, I said American. Later that evening, Lulu asked me why I insist that she is an American? She seemed uneasy and annoyed with me. I was confused by her reaction. Did that mean she doesn’t identify with being American? She prefers to be Dutch? Did I miss something?
While, at the time I couldn’t figure out the source of Lulu’s discomfort, I begin to realise that being thrown into an utterly alien culture such as Japan and attending a school which boasts students from 50 + countries has made our children consider their own set of beliefs and backgrounds.
They are learning to identify themselves on their own, out from the parental umbrella.
It is fascinating, watching them learn and taking it all in. The conversations we have are open and unexpected. They have opinions, they like to discuss. They know stuff!
They are very open about culture, religion and language. To them, different languages, for example, are merely a gateway to more knowledge, friends and fun. How beautiful.
Is there a downside? Of course there is.
If they were different from their Swiss mates before we left for Japan (with their cold-sandwich lunches, clothes from the Gap and a weird mother who doesn’t speak German) imagine how they felt going back for a visit this summer.
In their own words, their friends felt “different” to them.
They loved seeing everyone and going back to their old schools for a day. They felt happy to be where “they had been for a long time”. They refreshed their German and even showed off a little bit of their Japanese language skills.
Having fun and being kids with their “old” Zürich friends this summer in Klosters
But they also confessed that there was something about life in Japan that is just easier. It is easier to communicate to their friends and to be themselves, to be more at ease.
I wondered if this was simply a language “thing” or an effect of becoming (or being) a more “global citizen”. As you grow, learn about and begin to identify with more than one culture do you, over time, dislocate yourself from your roots?
As our Dutch/American, born in Switzerland, living in Japan, where-are-they-going-next-kind-of-children become more and more international, do they also feel isolated?
They were happy, if not reflective, this summer. They ate hundreds of wiener schnitzels, played outside all day long and cried when we had to leave. I believe that this was one more step in the incredible changes that they have been experiencing over the past eighteen months.
They say that they are happiest at school, here in Tokyo. And, I believe that there is a reason for that. At an international school, there is no focus on “where you are from” or your “home”. It is more about embracing all cultures, learning from them and deciding for yourself what fits for you.
At school, Friso, Lulu and Cleo are surrounded by classmates – all who are in the same boat. With so many countries and cultures represented at their school, our children have learned to identify with and relate to one another thru learning.
They build alliances and friendships based on their educational experiences at school, their common ground.
In the end, I don’t think that our three will have a problem finding their “roots”. They may decide that the Swiss mountainside, or the rolling hills of Pennsylvania or the canals of The Netherlands mean more or less to them. The might be city mice. They might be country mice.
Cleo selling a raffle ticket for the school’s spring fundraiser at a local market
Friso basking in the foot onsen, Hakone Open Air Museum
They are open to a little bit more of this world than I, as a new mother ten years ago, would have ever expected.
It is said that creativity and learning are heightened by interactions with people. You learn more about yourself and the world around you by sharing experiences and accepting that no problem ever has just one answer.
My three might not eat raw fish or enjoy their salad with a spoon, but they would not blink twice if you do it.
But, I have to be honest. I still had reservations. Eating salad with a spoon, while very practical for a chopped salad, felt a bit weird.
I have tried asking the chef not to chop it so much so that I can use a knife and fork. Only to realise that the only utensil the shop offers is a spoon. So, I was left trying to elegantly spoon large lettuce leaves into my mouth.
I have tried to bring the salad home and eat it with my own knife and fork. Then I am left with the weird feeling that something is not as it should be.
So, at the end, isn’t a chopped salad just better with a spoon?
My team enjoying some street food on the canals of Naka Meguro during the Sakura season this past spring