My apologies for the long silence. So far 2009 has turned out to be the Year of Change!
First, as a family, it was time to farewell a significant part of it. We have been celebrating the life of, and saying goodbye to one of our closest loved ones.
Then Black Saturday 2009 came. Australia suffered devastating bush-fires. We have felt the pain and been powerless to assist as tens of thousands of hectares were burnt, killing hundreds and making thousands homeless. Please, if you are able to but have not yet donated to recovery efforts, may I direct you to Red Cross Australia’s site? Thank you.
Finally, as a family unit, we are facing a life-change as an indirect result of the global economic crisis. This has left us pondering next steps and new directions.
Enough writing material here for the next few months!
Thank you for reading. Stay tuned as life continues…
Tags: Black Saturday 2009, global economic crisis, grief, natural disaster
I thought I had all the puzzle pieces, and then I went ‘home‘.
That place is one of many I call, to some extent, by that name.
When I went to that home, I discovered that perhaps not all of who I am, what I think, and how I feel, are because I am a TCK.
I am part of a wonderful family. But my quirks, and even my family’s quirks – endearing and otherwise – might always have made me a little different, even in my birth country.
I am who I am because I am a TCK. I am also who I am because I am the daughter of my parents, and the granddaughter of my grandparents. I am also who I am because of where I fit into my immediate family. I am who I am because…
The list seems endless. We are very complex beings! Just when we think we have ourselves worked out, another piece appears.
Wikipedia says: A puzzle is a problem or enigma that challenges ingenuity.
Tags: self-identity
Gaza is on my mind, as I am sure it is for many people. This was going to be a silent post (though how, I don’t know), because I can’t write anything cohesive about it. The situation is complicated. It can be looked at on so many levels, and I fear that no one solution will appease at all those levels. There are the many groups who can lay claim to that area. There are the people, on both sides, who are being killed, maimed, and traumatized by the violence. There are political agreements that have shaped Gaza’s destiny over the years. There are promises that have been made. The responsibility for the creation of the present Gazan situation lies with many groups, even groups that appear disconnected from the situation as it is. Then there is, of course, the religious aspect.
Perhaps ultimately it is not about religion, politics, or even heritage. It is perhaps mostly about people, and how people relate to other kinds of people. It is perhaps about people afraid of trusting others, because they perceive that others, rightly or wrongly, have been untrustworthy. Perhaps it is about perspectives that people have been fed, by ancestors, by neighbours, and anyone else who has fingers in this pie, in order to ensure the survival of something, or some things. Perhaps it is about us all.
I guess this wasn’t a silent post after all.
Minette Marrin has written an article on creative writers and political commentary:
Pinter and the odd literary law of geniuses with crazy politics
While not directly related to TCK matters, it is about perspectives, something TCKs grapple with early – and even, perhaps, grapple with all their lives.
Worth thinking about if, like me, you love creative writing.
Tags: Creative writing, perspectives, politics
Last Friday my post-office box was not empty, as is usually the case, but stuffed full of my very first copy of Among Worlds Magazine – and I was so excited! That evening, as my kind husband put the kids to bed, I soaked up its contents. Today I have decided to write a review (of sorts).
Among Worlds is a magazine for adult Third Culture Kids, written by adult Third Culture Kids. The copy I received is for December 2008. This issue has eleven feature articles. Stories of real-life TCKs abound. In ‘TCKs of Note‘, Apple Gidley writes about eight talented TCK musicians. Dorothy Alston Calley, M.A. writes about the man behind TIME magazine, Henry R. Luce – also a TCK. Deb Kartheiser interviewed Astronaut Shannon Lucid, who, in 1996, set the U.S. single mission space flight endurance record on Russia’s Space Station Mir. Yes, Shannon is also a TCK. And then there is a tribute to the late Norma McCaig, founder of Global Nomads International, by her friend and fellow ATCK, Ruth Van E. Reken.
But that’s not all. John Paul Kilmer’s ‘Being‘ strikes a chord with me – like him, I want my ‘doing’ to flow out of my ‘being’, but often find it’s the other way around. Lyn Anderson’s ‘Gifts from the Heart‘ looks at what goes on behind gift giving and receiving – for me, a struggle with every new culture and context. Kent Hori writes about TCK friends in ‘Friends are Friends Forever‘ (the title is from Michael W. Smith’s song of the same name). Lisa McKay’s article ‘The Chicken or the Egg‘, is a light-hearted look at the art of living together. And ‘At Home in the World‘ by Cynthia Shigo contains great advice for parents of TCKs.
I’ve left my two favourites to last. ‘Living Authentically‘ by Kathleen F. Rubin, M.A, is about the common TCK struggle, to find out how all the authentic pieces of one fits into whatever context one is currently in. ‘Finding Healing within Your Being‘ is by Miyon Kim, who is a regular contributor on tckid.com. With her characteristic gentle wisdom, she talks of her own journey towards healing.
The verdict? Worth subscribing to if you are a TCK/ATCK, or are a parent of one. To do so, visit Interaction International, who publish Among Worlds.
Warning: I am mounting my little soap-box. If you have strong views on Christmas, you may find this post objectionable!
My childhood Christmases below the Sahara were low-key. Four people singing carols around a tiny Casio keyboard. A small prayer-time. Eating my mother’s ‘paal-choru’ (milk rice). Exchanging visits with expatriate neighbours, mostly non-Christian. Hardly any Christmas decorations. Inexpensive gifts exchanged between families – perhaps a box of chocolates for some Christmas cake. It is possible my memory is playing tricks on me, but I am fairly certain that if I was given a gift, it was for my birthday – not Christmas. I remember reading books about Christmases overseas, longing for that opulent glow.
I now live in a city where that opulence is easy to create. How incongruous that here many find Christmas difficult. Budgets, already strained, crack under the weight of Christmas trappings. We try to capture something we once had, or longed to have. For those who have lost loved ones, grief is keener at Christmas. The pain of a broken family is more intense, as children miss out on Christmas with one, or both, parents. We feel disconnected from society in some way – lonely.
As I chat with people, loneliness is named most often as the reason why people find Christmas difficult.
It’s easy to say lonely people have the wrong perspective. Let’s look deeper. Our letter-boxes contain sales catalogues with jewellery that lovers can exchange for Christmas, spa packages for couples, and menus for the family roast. We walk into shopping centres filled with people rushing, pushing, bumping, focused on making their Christmas perfect. Around the corner are pictures of starry-eyed children singing Christmas carols. The television airs movies about love, and families. Everything seems geared up to tell those feeling they have not, how much they are missing out on.
If we are using this time to celebrate Christ’s birth: let’s get with it! Christmas is not about the ‘haves’, it’s a celebration for the ‘have-nots’. If we could transport ourselves to Jesus’ birth, what would we find? A poor family. A conservative society. The shame of an unwanted pregnancy. The prospect of being stoned to death. Whispers of illegitimacy that would haunt the child for life. A heavily pregnant girl enduring a long, bumpy journey on a donkey. Ending in that incredibly painful exercise called ‘giving birth’ – not at home, not even in hired lodgings, but in an uncomfortable cattle-shelter, in a strange town. So poor, so lonely, there was no bed to lay the tiny newborn – just a cattle-trough. Then suddenly turning into refugees fleeing a ruthless leader. Culminating, some thirty years later, in a torturous, humiliating death.
All for what?
In my humble opinion, so God could come for the have-nots.
Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy the presents, food, and starry-eyed children – but they are so fleeting, and don’t make people immune to pain. We all nod wisely and agree that it’s not about the gifts. At the risk of sounding blasphemous, Christmas is not even about family! Neither is it about getting together with like-minded folks. If God had decided to hang out only with agreeable heavenly beings, where would we all be?
What do we really need to celebrate Christmas?
Tags: Christmas
Here are two pre-Christmas posts that I found thought-provoking.
What is it about Christmas that makes loneliness deeper and harder to cope with? Sindhu has written about a big city Christmas, away from home:
http://sindhujamanohar.blogspot.com/
2008/12/turning-around-not-so-merry-christmas.html
At The Link Between, Jody has written an excellent post on consumerism, apt at this time of year. One of the quotes she uses is, ‘do rich Christians really know the poor?’
http://thelinkbetween.wordpress.com/
2008/11/23/consumerism-and-middle-ground/
Tags: Christmas
I have been re-reading the TCK book. Tonight, this bit of the TCK definition from Interaction International’s ‘The TCK Profile’ struck me afresh:
‘The TCK builds relationships to all of the cultures, while not having full ownership in any.’
‘Nuff said.
For those who didn’t know, the TCK book is ‘Third Culture Kids: The Experience of Growing Up Among Worlds‘ by David C. Pollock and Ruth E. Van Reken, published by Nicholas Brealey Publishing. Mine is the second revised edition, bought from Amazon.com.
Tags: TCK book
Check out this article on Barack Obama by Ruth Van Reken, at The Daily Beast:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/
blogs-and-stories/2008-11-26/obamas-third-culture-team/
(Note the line-wrap in the URL above)
Tags: Barack Obama, community, Ruth Van Reken
Edit 2010-jul-03: I have just stumbled upon the fact that there really is a documented Sleeping Beauty Syndrome (also called Kleine-Levin Syndrome). My article, of course, has nothing to do with this known medical phenomenon, and everything to do with the fairy-tale – of sorts.
Did you ever wonder how that young lady with the damaged finger dealt with waking from her hundred-year sleep? Did she wander out of her castle’s demesne and feel there was a lot of catching up to do?
If she did, apart from her being a beauty, I can relate to her. I felt like I was asleep in my years in Nigeria. I spun my own reality as a child. My awaking upon returning to my birth-country was both pleasant and unpleasant. I feel like I know many cultures, yet none intimately.
This was brought home recently when my creative writing lecturer noted that the premises of some of my submissions were flawed. He added, ‘…anyone who has lived in Australia for the last twenty years, would know that…’ etc. I have lived here for over fifteen, but that is not the point. I don’t know the culture intimately. Will I ever?
‘Write about what you know.’ Sometimes I think the only culture I know is the culture of being transitory.
Of course, my Sleeping Beauty analogy is not fool-proof. She didn’t move across cultures. She moved across time. Culture does change with time – but in whatever hazy long-ago time she lived, how much did it really change? Also she and her family were not alone. All beings in the castle had been asleep – from her parents, past the scullery maid, to the kitchen cat. There was a whole tribe of them feeling out of – er – time.
But… but… the balance of power and the landscape must have changed. A kingdom with a ruler asleep on the job (pardon the pun), would have been taken over by neighbours. New roads, farms, and houses would have appeared. Which raises interesting questions like: how did her parents deal with finding their roles usurped? Perhaps the usurper was the new son-in-law – a win-win situation, let us say. But that is a whole different kettle of fish that I don’t propose to fry.
At the very least, Sleeping Beauty must have struggled to relate to her beloved. Some perspectives must have changed, no matter how ancient the century.
Fairy-tales: clichéd, illogical, but still full of charm.
Back to my lecturer. Amazingly, while I was writing this, he called me. In the course of the conversation, it dawned on me that despite the unimpressive grades, he is genuinely impressed with my persistence this semester – and equally impressed with the language skills of this obviously non-native speaker of it! Perhaps there is something to be said, after all, for being an out-of-touch Sri-Lankan-Nigerian-Australian ATCK!
It’s just nice to feel validated. 
Tags: Creative writing, fairy tales, transition
