Expats

Just read a post about the life as an expat, and some of it rang a bell for me. I came to the US for my husband’s education, so we were expats then. By the time the kids came along, we were immigrants, so would that make me a lifer expat? It is certain, that if I went back to my birth country, I would not fit there anymore.

But I was also thinking about my grandmother, who never left The Netherlands, but surely must have experienced the same emotions. As newlyweds, in 1918, she and her husband moved from Nieuwe Pekela in Groningen to Nijswiller in Limburg, and a bigger distance does not exist in the Netherlands. Language (dialects) and customs are totally different, the prevalent religion is different. The community of civil servants (which in that town was probably small) would have been as isolated as any expat community. Their son was born there.

In 1920 they moved to Schiedam, where their daughter was born. In 1922 they moved to Sneek, en in 1924 to Drachten. Those places were at least again in the north, but they are in Friesland, where the local language again is different.  They stayed there for 10 years, and then they went to Purmerend, and nine years later to Zaandijk. These are both in the province of North Holland. Both their children were married by now. Then they moved in 1947 to Groningen. On the one hand she was no doubt thrilled to go back there, but on the other hand, her daughter and grandchild were now living in North Holland. In 1950 they moved to  Rotterdam. Finally they moved to an assisted living complex in Ommen in 1961.

Surely the most heart wrenching move was the one from Drachten to Purmerend. They were there 10 years, she was settled, she had found a job as a knitting teacher, and then she had to start all over again. She never looked for a job again.

She was not an easy going woman, a bit stern and stiff. But I wonder whether that is only due to  her personality, or also to the fact that getting too close meant being too vulnerable when it became time to leave again.