A Third Year Review

It’s almost three years now since I started this blog and started plinking away at the keyboard to share my thoughts and our adventures.  In that time I’ve written about what we are doing, where we’ve been, what’s to come, excitements, challenges, and everything else in between.  It’s been a pleasure and a lot of fun.  Besides that, it’s a good journal, a timeline if you will, of this chapter of our lives.  It gives us a chance to look back and see thoughts and reactions in real time; or as real as I could get at the time I was writing about a certain day, event, or what have you.

It is our third Christmas away.  It will be our third New Year and Chinese New Year as well.  That’s a blink, in the grand scheme of things, but it’s half of Kiddo’s life.  That’s the thought that caught me today.  Even if we weren’t doing Shanghai, Kiddo would go to a school in the States next year and she would be able to say that she’s NEVER gone to an American school, that she’s only even been to school in Thailand.  That half of her life has been spent in a foreign place.  That she’s spent as much of her life away from America than she has in it. 

Even if we pulled up stakes and returned after Shanghai, she would never be usual.  She would never be normal.  She will always be the unique one.  She will always have a different perspective and she will (trust me on this) notice everything that is different.  

Take a moment, though.  Just a brief one.  Use your imagination and advance life to 2035.  Kiddo will be 18 and either in or on the cusp of Uni.  Where in the world will that be?  How many languages will she know by then?  Where will she have been and where will she have yet to see?  How will these last years and those to come change, color, and influence what she wants, where she goes, and what she chooses to study.  Maybe she will like Greta Thunberg and be a young activist.  Maybe she will deepen her love for food and cooking and she’ll skip Uni for a job in a kitchen with a career making chef.  Maybe she will have written a novel.  Maybe she’ll want to be like her Auntie Jesters and do hair styling and coloring.  Maybe she’ll join the Pro Bowlers Association.  We can’t say.  We try to stay out of her way so she can make those choices herself, so she can guide her own life.

At worst, she will have 3 years in Bangkok and 2 years in Shanghai that will color and change her as she grows up and gets older.  By the time she is 9, she will have been an expat for 2/3rds of her life at that point.  Aside from that, she left The States when she wasn’t forming much more than core memories.  She doesn’t remember the day to day.  She doesn’t remember the small and mundane.  She remembers Mabel.  She remembers the scoot bike and cruising the neighborhood and Mission during COVID.  She doesn’t remember In n Out, mixed up milkshakes, roley poley (pill bug) catching, pot and pan play with water, and a bunch of other stuff.  

She is a little Thai girl, for the most part.  How she plays, what she eats for lunch, how she interacts with friends, and just in a general sense of her; It’s American because she gets remnants of that from J and myself, but she is Thai in all of her close friends are Thai.  Her nanny is Thai.  Her experiences are Thai.  Next year- Chinese, Mandarin, and living in Shanghai get mixed into that.  With new friends (Chinese or otherwise), new nanny (we hope) and a new culture.  Into that mix, you have to put Vietnam, because she does remember that and she has certain things in Vietnam that she wants to explore more of and she’s asked to go back.  Where else will she see?  Or live?  

She will never be usual.  She is forever changed, but that’s only going to get deeper.  She will see the world… or at least a larger chunk of it that 99% of her peers in the States and probably about 75% of her peers that she’s in school with (some of these kids are well traveled, but when you can get on your own jet and go… You get the idea) now and she will always be the strange one, the unique one, the odd one, but that doesn’t stop her.  She likes being the unique one.  She has said a few times that she likes being one of the few “American kids” in her class.  It doesn’t stop her or phase her.  She told me the other day when we were walking to school that she likes that no one else in her whole school, even the parents, look like me.  When I asked what she meant, she told me that she likes that I dress in fun colors, that I have yellow shoes, that I were fun colored bandanas, and that her and I have uniquenesses and know about pigeon coos for love and that no one else has their mumma or dada kiss them and say Love you every morning before she goes thru the gates.  

She is smart, capable, brave, bold, unique, adventurous, curious, and always up for a new thing.  Exploring with her is always fun, because Kiddo is just down for the adventure.  We can go out and know that she’s up for an adventure and if it ends in a grab, cab, tuk, bike, or even just walking and that’s ok with her.  She will even raise a hand to flag a Tuk or Cab and the last cab ride I took with her, getting in, she was already telling the driver, Centron Bhrama Song (Central Rama 2- trust me, that’s how they say it) because why wouldn’t the six year old give directions.  All I said, was “Chai Krup, Centron Bhrama Song” and we were off.

A decade from now, she will be capable of navigating any place in the world.  Because she has already.  She’s been doing it since she was four.  There will be no mystery left in navigating, only the curiosity that she has to see and explore what and where she wants.  That’s not even a skill, it’s a gift we’ve given her.  Cultures, languages, experiences, opportunities, and the comfort to travel and navigate the world.  I wish I could have had that at four.  It certainly would have made this adventure a little smoother.  Instead, J and I got to refine the skill together and watch Kiddo accept it and slip that valuable tool into her life kit.

She will grow.  She will, we are sure, grow to be frustrated by some of this.  J and I certainly are from time to time.  Kiddo will also have opinions, but that will be colored by where we are living at the time, where we have been living, the culture and quirks she absorbs, and a million other little factors and teenage Kiddo will voice and push that.  It’s not perfect and never will be perfect.  Life isn’t perfect.  There will be ups and downs.  At the end of it, though, we have all learned and are better for this, even if it’s just larger empathy for the world.

Let’s go, Kiddo… We have been living and experiencing the world with you for half your life and we are only going to explore more.  We are so glad that you are here to lead us and there is nothing better that your little hand finding mine to hold while we walk and explore the city, the country, or the world.  I will always love mumma.  I will always love Kiddo.  I will always love both.  We are family.  You are part of that.  I am part of that.  Mumma is part of that.  And we need all three to be our best and strongest.  

PS.  All pics are just a smattering of the past two Christmas mornings/days and Kiddo just being Kiddo.  :D