It was a photo of reasonable quality.
It had a sepia tone and the corners had curled. I imagine it might have a musty, papery smell that would make you want to inhale deeply and breathe in its age and memories. I say “imagine” because I could not touch or hold the photo, but only view it on my computer screen.
It was a school photo taken during the middle of winter in a different era. The trees in the background were gaunt and sickly-looking, deprived of their leaves. The students were lined up in the foreground and wore heavy, black blazers with warm, grey flannel trousers.
It seemed cold there.
He sat cross legged on the floor, arms firmly folded. The second person from the left, two rows from the front. Sporting a quiff of mousy-brown hair and with a pair of government-issued spectacles planted squarely on his face, he was surrounded by his grinning peers. He was the epitome of seriousness, staring ahead at the camera with a fixed intensity. He was a mere boy in his early childhood years. He was looking straight back at me.
My father, the schoolboy. My father, who turned 70 this week.
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| Photo credit: ToniVC (Flickr Creative Commons) |
Time moves on
Time marches swiftly on. It waits for nothing and no man.
The years have accumulated and my father celebrated a significant milestone this week. He will reflect on the photograph taken at that school in those early years and likely remember the anticipation he felt at all that his life would come to hold.
He will look back on the course that his life took and think back to the things he achieved that could never have been imagined before.
His marriage to a local woman with British-Canadian heritage.
The birth of two healthy children into a loving family.
The fulfillment of business interests and the nurturing of passions – to travel abroad, to create in the garden, to explore closer to home.
A life unexpected.
The next generation
To my own schoolboy photo and that familiar mop of hair. The same serious face, this time touched with a hint of a grin. Taller. Skinnier. A more inquisitive nature. Similar but different.
Time moves forward and this life took varied and unexpected turns.
My own journey.
Undergraduate study in the Midlands, returning south to the family home, Sarah, my dogs, an old English cottage, leaving England for Canada, crossing Canada, working for foreign governments, reconnecting with my grandfather’s own story, departing Canada and then…
To Sydney, Australia and a life far removed.
First marriage then loss, creating a nest, growing a family. Three countries, three continents, and soon three people.
New beginnings
Several weeks have passed since the announcement of my big news.
There is a noticeable spring in our steps and anticipation in the air. My wife’s belly grows bigger and my dog and I regard each other knowingly. Life is about to change.
It will never be as it was. New responsibilities lie ahead for this father-to-be. A traffic light of emotions moves hourly from nervousness to slightly overwhelmed to entirely overjoyed.
But time will continue to pass relentlessly.
The little ‘he’ or ‘she’ will grow quickly and their own life will begin to take shape. One day, they will have their own school photo. It will capture a precious moment in time as mine and my father’s did.
My first child will stand to attention, formed up in front of the photographer.
Will they wear that trademark seriousness upon their face? Will they stare intensely at the camera? Will they consider their unfolding life, full of promise and potential, opportunity and expectation – and, born into Sydney, poles apart from my own and my father’s?
As one generation celebrates a milestone, a new generation waits patiently. The next chapter in our lives has begun and my little one’s journey in life has started.
I wonder just how extraordinary it will be.
Did your child’s journey develop differently to your own? Did you raise your children internationally? How have things turned out?
Do provide any pearls of wisdom for this father-to-be below or simply share your own generational experiences.
I think you hit on a theme that we as parents don’t tend to consider until later down the road: that our children will grow up and choose a path that takes them away from us. We can know intellectually that we have made choices different from our parents, grandparents and the generations before. It’s our birthright, playing the hand that is dealt us.
We become parents, and suddenly we are thrust into the maelstrom of daily activity that marks the raising of children. Our lives will now always be considered in terms of ‘before children’ and ‘after’. Perhaps when they are 16 or so we start thinking about what life might be like when they strike out on their own, but we still have time to turn it over in our hearts and minds, digest it, make peace with it. Still, the thought that their life will take them away is difficult to fathom.
Thank you for such a heartwarming piece on your father, yourself and your child. There’s a reason why we call love and family the ties that bind.
My son just turned 16. Although born in Brussels to a Dutch father and American mother (me), he has been raised in the United States. I was afraid he would not have the same thirst for travel and experiencing other cultures that defines me. But he has a love for mountain climbing, which last year took him to Africa to climb Kilimanjaro, and this summer he’ll be going to climb in the Peruvian Andes.
As much as I love his adventurous spirit, it’s difficult to imagine that he will leave home in two years. He wants to do a gap year before university to travel more, and we support this. It is hard to let go, though – very bittersweet.
They say when the kids are little that the days are long, and the years fly by. So true. Congratulations to you and your wife – enjoy every day!
A great theme. I have a photo of my father as a high school prefect (at the very posh Westminster School in London). Our son grew up very differently from ourselves. Born in London, we took him to Jamaica at age 18 months. He grew up here until age 14, when he got a scholarship to a U.S. “prep” school in Massachusetts for four years. After that, he went to college in Ohio, returned to Jamaica and now he is back in the city of his birth, London. So yes, he has definitely grown up “internationally.”
Great story and a perfect example of an ‘international’ upbringing. I can only hope that my own children have such a global experience.
Do you think your son will remain in London?
Hi Julie. Thanks for sharing your son’s story. I hiked the Annapurnas in Nepal a few years back (similar height to Kili but other a longer period of time) and it will go down as a major life experience!
Your situation does sound bittersweet – ensuring your child has the opportunity and means to travel far and wide, whilst weighing that up with your own preference to have him close by.
I believe my own parents have had the same struggles, particular given my sister and I are like chalk and cheese – she lives at their home and I left at 18 (briefly returning for a few years before heading off again). I will approach those same parenting years with some caution as a result.
Children born to parents of different nationalities are surely born to travel. How could they not be? And I still feel that they are luckier than folks would ever have you believe.
Thanks, Linda. I never considered that the choices I made in terms of leaving the UK and travelling the world would ultimately impact on my future children and determine their spirit and their own choices in life. Only now have I had time to reflect on this and how my own father’s path was different to mine – and likely mine to my own kids.
I will encourage my children to follow their hearts and pursue the opportunities that present themselves. I could never put my own interests first, much as it may prove difficult to let go. I’ll be keenly following your own childrens’ progress in life insofar as you mention on your blog. Do you see them taking a similar road to yourself or returning/remaining in the homeland?
Lovely post, Russell. I agree with Linda, we cannot know what lives our children will lead as they grow up and make choices of their own. I think about my own decisions that led me to life as an expat, and the expectations my family had of me (to live close to them), that I could not fulfill, or at least cannot at this time.
My children are still quite young, but since they were born overseas, I do think about what that means for them, in terms of knowing and understanding their cultural heritage. We will have to see where life as a family takes us…
I find myself living the expat life in France; after having suddenly and seemingly permanently left the predictable and comfortable life embedded in a South East London community full of friends of family. And now we have bought a house in rural France, work and educate in nearby Switzerland, and are committed to a life where my husband and I and our two boys are the newbies, the outsiders, multi-lingual and constantly exposed to new and vital experiences that cement our family together. And all these experiences take us further away from that South East London community that was our lifeblood and, at one point, our future.
It feels natural to live this life. It reinvigorates memories of my own childhood- much spent as an expat in Papua New Guinea and Botswana; reminds me of the adventurous parents I have who trucked their three kids around the world for adventures when there was no internet, no TV, more uncertainty than knowledge. It was life changing and life forming. It is why we are here.
And then I look back through the generations and a similar sepia photograph to you. A picture of my grandfather and his 7 siblings. Half of which have French names and Parisian birthrights. Is this ancestral Frenchness re-revealing itself in part of me? Is that why this is so comfortable? And why my own father can’t stay away from us living our Continental dream?
And what of my children. Two multi-cultural and multi-lingual young men will emerge….and where will they belong? And where will they want to be? Because we have travelled, does this mean they will? By severing them from their South East London roots have we helped them or hindered them? Ancestry, fortune, choices and values all influence what happens to us. All we can do is equip them well for whatever journey they take….and for that time when they leave you and make their own way.
Bon chance in this precious time.
Your lovely post reminded me of the excitement and anxiety and wonder and fear that I felt when expecting my first baby. Congratulations to you and your wife, and all the very best.My elder daughter has, so far, lived a life very different from the one I had lived by the time I was 6. She was born in Tokyo, and we moved to Helsinki when she was 4, and she has lived life in Japanese, English, and Finnish. Although her life has been somewhat more “exotic” and also somewhat more complicated than my early years, it seems to me that, like most children, she just takes new information/language/experiences in her stride and digests them calmly, in her own time and her own way. Also, even though our early years have been different in some ways, I would like to think that she is being brought up with the same values that I was taught (and my husband, too, though we grew up literally on opposite sides of the globe) – the values of middle-class parents who put high value on education, hard work, good manners, and strong relationships with family and friends.
My only parenting advice to you is to trust your own judgment and follow your heart in all matters. It will be hard to do this sometimes. Everyone will have “helpful” advice and conflicting opinions. Ultimately, though, you will know what’s right for your child and your family.
Beautiful post, Russel.
I just want to share my own experience, even if it is not really mine. I was not a TCK since I was raised in France. But my father was one and I am pretty sure he doesn’t know he was one. He was born in Mexico from Spanish parents and lived in Vera Cruz until he was seven years old. He returned to France in 1949, and not Spain, where my grand-parents originally were.
Curiously, I am living the expat life as my grand-parents did and my two daughters are raised outside their home country as my father was. The life is just a circle, a strange and beautiful one. That is weird, when I think about it. My father always talks about his childhood in Mexico with happiness and nostalgia. Through my daughter’s experiences I understand him better now. My daughters have experienced exactly the same things as him : starting in elementary school without speaking a word of French for him , of English for them. I guess it makes strong personalities …
Thanks Heather. Interesting to see that you encountered the same family expectations that I also had. Have you been able to find some sort of resolution or compromise with that situation?
I think that as long as your children understand, appreciate and respect where you are from, then hopefully they will be the better for being abroad. My issue is when children are born overseas, have no connection to theur parents’ home country, and no desire to be a part of it – and I’ve seen this here many times. Not a good look.
Hi Katriina, thanks for sharing your story. Reading about your daughter makes me think that she has had the most wonderful upbringing so far. What a fantastic array of experiences and cultural exposure. I’m quite envious of the life she has lived so far. And you’ve found ways to ensure she stays grounded and educated in your values. Good job.
We will certainly try to trust our own judgement and follow our hearts. It has already been hard! But we’re both learning to do what is right for us and ours, rather than what other people want from us/want us to do.
The big question remaining on my lips is whether the Swedish Eurovision party spread to your neck of the woods? 😉
Thanking you kindly 🙂
Great story. And I really appreciate you sharing it. It makes us look at our lives and reflect on how things have turned out. I wonder if your father connects more with Mexico, France or Spain?
You know I hadn’t written about my grandfather who is no longer alive. He was Canadian and an expat in the UK after the war. And he had his three children in England, much as now I’m an expat living in Australia and about to have children here. I often wonder what it was like for him in those dark days immediately after the war and how it must have felt to be isolated from home, bringing up his kids into a world far removed from today’s. It puts everything into perspective when you reflect on these things.
Life is a bizarre circle for sure.
Thanks skiingmich for your ‘international’ family story. In short, you have no hope. Your boys will surely have this lust for travel and culture embedded firmly in their DNA. But that is NO bad thing. In fact, I think it’s wonderful. They have a rich, glorious ancestry and parents who fully understand the world around them and their possible future desires to explore.
I don’t believe you’ve severed them from London. You, yourself, returned at some point in your earlier years. But it’s interesting that you’ve made France your home much as your ancestors did. One side of my family is Canadian and, when I headed there in 2003, I felt like I was not moving away, rather moving to ‘another’ home. I’m sure you feel the same. There is an intrinsic, deep-rooted connection to a place where previous generations lived and I’m certain your boys, like you, will want to experience all of it – France, the UK, and beyond. Two very lucky young men indeed.
Thanks so much for stopping by and joining in the conversation 🙂