Choices & Time

"You and Sean have lots of decisions to make, deciding what offer to accept, looking at what the offers might mean for your future locations, etc. etc. It's nice to have choices and time to make your decision!"

a friend recently wrote, in an e-mail.

"It's nice to have choices and time to make your decision."

I re-read that line, and decided she was right. Of course she's right. She's been through an international move twice, is married to an engineer, and is in the process of beginning life anew in the US after her own second repatriation. She's not offering empty advice. They've been where we're at. And the perspective was nice.

I've been frustrated with the "time" factor, the general ideas of where we head next without the specifics of where that will be. North America, yes. Illinois, yes. Which plant? What job? Do we move back into our sweet little home in our comfortable flag waving community, or do we look for something more diverse? Is it better to be closer the weekend Chinese schools we'll probably enroll the girls in? Can we find a place where we can, if we want, find a variety of ethnic foods, and grocery stores that carry the things we've become accustomed to buying?

In part, I think we're mourning our existence here. Mourning it before we leave. Considering how it has defined us, and how it will color our future experience.

I've been away from the blog, because we've been busy, because the girls have had sniffles and fevers, because we're packing and shopping for our weeks in the States at Christmas, but largely because I don't know what's coming next exactly, and it makes me feel frustrated. This blog, afterall, in the Johnson's in China... a retelling of our days spent in a country and culture different from our own. But in a way its also the tales of our newfound country, and a culture we are finding increasingly comfortable.

Bei Bei recently informed me we live in English China. There are two China's she said. Chinese China and English China. She was in essence defining the concept of a "third culture" in her own four-year-old terms. Our four-year-old (who has no memory of living in the US... only visiting there) is a Third Culture Kid. She lives in "English China," where her friends come from all corners of the world, she answers questions in two languages, and she has a palate adjusted to prefer international foods over Midwestern comfort ones. No PBJ sandwich in her lunch, no boring turkey on Thanksgiving. Blue cheese or Bree with her mini spreader and crackers, don't forget the olives, Mom, she reminds me and complains that she doesn't want to share the pomegranate she picked at the grocery with her sisters.

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My friend is right. We have choices, and time. Which for now means a certain level of uncertainty. It means when we land in Chicago for our Christmas holiday on the 13th we'll find ourselves reading from a script that goes something like this... "Yes next summer. No, not sure yet where. Probably, maybe, a little uncertainty. Yes we have time, and yes, we'll miss English China and Chinese China, more than anyone, besides maybe others who have had a similar experience, will ever understand."