Choosing the Path of a Life Lived Abroad
When you Step Away From a Life You Had Planned
There is a path that you are supposed to follow. For a well-led life. A path that takes you from the boisterous enthusiasm of your sometimes pimply faced youth through high school and on. To the expectation and rah-rah of those determined and dedicated university years. A path that is supposed to launch you into the world, on newly emergent adult type wings still wet and unfurling, fluttering and trying to fly. On your own.
The path may take you through crappy first jobs and first apartments with hand me down furniture and naive first loves and second loves and third dates and devastating breakups to “the one” and then when the time is right, the path proposes marriage. Then maybe a first home. A small painted brick saltbox outside Cincinnati, Ohio. Perhaps. You didn’t know when you started on this path where the house might be, but you felt there would be a house. Then possibly another. In another place. And maybe another. With the next move.
This same path potentially brings a dog. Then a family. The 2.5 kids. The path feels stable and secure and laid out for you. For the most part. If you walk it. If you want it. Follow the path. Work hard, raise your kids, buy that house, work more, save for retirement, send the kids to college and launch them on their own paths. Work some more. Retire. Happy. Fulfilled. Knowing you followed the path. It is what you were supposed to do. It’s what you are supposed to do.
Aren’t you? As a middle-class white American, it’s the standard path package on offer. Didn’t you get the brochure? Don’t worry, there is room for upgrading and places to cut costs. Opt for the cat instead of the dog. Maybe you’re bird peeps. Move into a ranch in central California. Buy a brownstone in back bay Boston. Or pick from a plethora of value-priced McMansions in suburban Plano, Texas. The where of it truly less important than the ticking of boxes on the plan. House. Check. Dog. Check. Kids. Check. The basic path options all similar. But follow the path. This is what you are sold. And this is what you chose. Or so you thought.
But what happens when you walk off the path? Don’t follow the rules. Change the course. For a minute all hell breaks loose. Choices are questioned. You’re doing what? You’re going where? The proverbial path erased. Evaporates. Dissipates. Or perhaps, put on pause. Moving your family around the world is a little bit like this. What the hell happened to my path? You look for it. Scramble for it even. Clamber for it.
Or you don’t. You might veer off with all intentions of returning to said path just to experience this pause. This life abroad becomes a parenthesis in the path. You justify it. Point out the pros. Take advantage of the time. Post pretty photos from all the opportunities to travel. Start a travel blog. All the while, still trying to make the path accommodate the exception. This blip.
So, you set limits for the pause. We’ll get back to the path in 1, 2, 3, x # of years. Then we will return to the regularly scheduled programming. Yes. That’s all it is. A slight curve in the path. No big deal. Same path to be followed. Soon. Secure. Justified.
But then you might extend your self-imposed time limit, push out the parenthesis, and it widens the veer on your path. The blip starts to bulge. Then it might burst. And this becomes some new path. The old one too difficult to recover or reconnect. The zipper has broken. The teeth no longer fit together. The chasm too wide. Can’t get back on that path. It was a limited time offer. Your coupon has expired.
What now? This. Now. Is where the terror can set in. The self-doubt. This new path too vague. Too many unfamiliar options. Too many questions with no answers. Did we make the right choice? Did we stay too long? Have we impacted our children? These are the constant questions you ask. That wake you at night. Is this path the right path.
This new path is covered with vines. Not yet built. Careful where you walk. Difficult to see to the end. What’s at the end? Where is the end? I don’t know right now. I can tell you that we have chosen to stay. In our life in Denmark. For now. Like that saltbox in Cincinnati that I hadn’t foreseen, I couldn’t have told you that our eldest would complete high school in Copenhagen. All four years. Crazy. But true. And we all know there are things that we have missed. As well as missed out on. A Costco sized jar of Skippy Super Chunk peanut butter for one. Affordable and delicious Mexican food another. But more than that, we’ve missed out on family celebrations and gatherings of close friends. The barbecues, school dances, Thanksgiving and fireworks on the 4th of July.
Here, my Danish high school sons don’t drive. Convenient on the one hand, since we don’t have a car. But, we catch the photos of friends flashing their fresh brand new licenses on Facebook. See them sitting behind the wheel of the family vehicle. And we wonder about choices. We watch the same friends lauded on the field after Friday night’s lights. Picturing ourselves in those shoes. We witness families gather in great numbers to greet and snap and clap on their sons and daughters before heading off to homecoming or to prom and wish we were there too. It’s impossible not to. We’ll wish we were cheering in the crowd when those same kids don their caps and gowns come graduation.
Community and camaraderie become a little more complicated when your comrades come from around the world. And live spread out all over this capital city. For perspective, my son travels forty minutes door to door each day to school. Which is cool, but different. And while his world widens, it is considerably smaller at the same time. A concentrated community of foreigners and aliens living abroad. A potentially transitory tribe of friends that ebb and flow. Moving in. And away. These are the plusses and minuses of putting your peeps in International School programs.
So why do you stay? I can hear you say. The pros do outweigh the cons. We’ve made the list. Many times. I’ll never stop feeling very far far far away. Something our European friends living here try to empathize with, but don’t really understand. Nine time zones apart is far away. Makes it complicated to pick up the phone and chat. When I have time, the people I miss are sleeping. And tickets to visit expensive and tedious. This distance from loved ones left is by far the biggest con. But it is balanced by the pros of this place.
Living in Copenhagen is pretty darn positive for the most part and lends us the ability for a life well lived. Here, our children are afforded an independence unavailable in America. Here, it is ok to let them maneuver life without fear. I don’t worry about how they will handle armed shooter scenarios when they head off to school. Here, they can ride public transportation safely on their own. Here, they can meet a friend across town. By themselves. In general, our choices as parents aren’t judged. Less “you let your child do what?” And more, an assumption that you will raise your kids to do the right thing in your way. If and when they ever might fall, you as their parents are the ones who will help them adjust. We accommodate Danish cultural norms and expectations but are grateful for the privacy to handle them in our own home.
There is a freedom in this. For our family. I know that the safe haven of this house, this oft-messy, a bit disorganized, but full of love home is the place where they can share their mistakes. Every time I send them off somewhere where kids will be kids, I encourage them to have fun and to make good choices. And while I’m aware how mom-speak this may be, I am comforted that my Danish friends have a similar saying, “Ha’ det sjovt, men tænk dig om.” Have fun, but think about it.
Here children, especially teens, are afforded freedom with responsibility. “Frihed under ansvar.” You are free to make your own choices, but you are still responsible to your family. For us, this means our kids are responsible to let us know where they are going to be. That we are aware of the plans. And if those change, we will be notified. Being open and honest goes both ways. And this may not be so different to parenting in the States. But the difference here is tolerance. Kids are not condemned for stepping a bit out of line. And consequences for actions (that aren’t illegal or immoral) are commissioned between you and your child.
Here the pressure to succeed is second to a commitment to community. Joining in, being part of society, contributing to the whole — these are prioritized over personal achievement. Call it Jante Law. That oft-referred-to Scandinavian ethic that can be seen by outsiders as forced egalitarianism. You shall not think you are better than anyone else. And while chopping down the tall poppies, so to speak, does happen in Denmark; the flip side of the coin is that there are equal opportunities for all. Who contribute. To Denmark. Attending university available to everyone who is accepted. Not just those whose parents make enough money. And available to us. You heard me. My children can attend university for free in Denmark. This is big. For us.
And here, how you contribute does not have to follow one path. Quite the contrary, I have never lived somewhere where allowances for private ideation are so evolved. You want to try what? Sure. Go ahead. It doesn’t work? No worries. We’re here for you. Social support systems for education and employment allow that freedom. Want to spend a year of school exploring music or theater or athletics or film? Feel free. To see what it is as an individual you want to be. To figure out how you can contribute. This affords a creative and collaborative and communal society that can produce darn pretty and tasty and innovative things. I appreciate this.
And while I sometimes pine for parts of the old path, I have accommodated the potential of building this new one. What once seemed like something unrecoverable and split, I now see as branches. Of possibility. Like a world, wide open. As my son ponders his options after his Danish graduation, the path doesn’t feel narrow anymore. Not something to be recovered. There is no one right way to go. We hope the branch he grows will always have roots in our home. But know that his path is his own. And we are excited to watch it grow.
Is it the right path? I don’t know. It remains to be seen. But what I do know is that there is worth and value and love on this path. And it is mine. Ours. Theirs. I will leave you with the words of Oregon poet and pacifist, William Edgar Stafford, who I often turn to when I need to understand the way it is.
“The Way It Is”
There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.~ William Stafford
Still holding on to my thread. Cheers from Denmark. For now.
