The excitement that is summer.
It is hard for anyone to contain their excitement for summer, but even more so when you are an expat. For families who live overseas, summer is synonymous with returning home, visiting family and friends, and going back to a place of comfort and familiarity. For our family, it means spending time with family boating and cooking out in the wilderness of Virginia. It’s blueberry picking, playing in Lake Michigan with cousins, and delighting in red, white, and blue popsicles. It’s having a lemonade stand and going out for “American-style” pancakes at IHOP at any hour. It’s s’more-making, slip-n’-slides, and good old shopping trips to Target and Trader Joe’s. It’s seeing a children’s film at the movie theater in English. Going home is the ultimate.
With that being said, we always seem to encounter the same disappointment (one which we often choose to ignore) during these visits home. As much as we look forward to getting back and seeing everyone, our friends and families’ lives and routines continue and sometimes it is hard for them to find time for us. This is hurtful. This is painful. This is frustrating.
Hear me out on this. I’m conflicted.
In one respect, I understand that people have their routines, their commitments, their summer camps and vacation plans and that the world does not stop for us when we land State-side. I get that. I respect that.
On the other hand, I have just traversed oceans and continents with my three young children to see you. We have made multiple connections and crossed over several time zones to visit you.
Yet sometimes the ones we come to visit are simply too busy to make the 20-minute drive to where we are staying. Or in the span of one week, they only have a two-hour time window when kids will be home from summer camp and we can come say hello and have dinner (if we make the 2-hour round-trip drive to them, of course). Or they have kids they need to take to tutoring, swimming, you name it – so they don’t have time to sit and enjoy us. They are just – as they always are – busy.
I know that I’m complaining. And in all honesty, writing this is cathartic. But I feel that all too often these days people are not placing enough importance on maintaining relationships with family and friends. People (myself included) could do a better job at prioritizing and realizing what really matters in life. Is it that one day of theater camp or is it the chance to see friends you haven’t seen in a year or two? Is it that rushed schedule that you feel compelled to maintain or the chance to clear your schedule for a couple of days and enjoy the company of your loved ones? Priorities, priorities. What matters to you?
Maybe I feel this way because I’m getting older. Maybe it is harder for me than others because we do travel a long way to see our loved ones. Maybe it is because we want so much to savor this summer homecoming because we only have a short time to make and strengthen family bonds. Maybe it is our fault for choosing this transient lifestyle and moving away in the first place.
I’m sure it’s not coming from a place of malice on behalf of our family and friends. To be honest, I’m not sure they even realize that we feel hurt and disappointed by it. And I feel it’s patronizing and selfish to point out the fact that we wish they were around more when we come home to visit. After all, they have lives and things going on, too.
So where does this leave us? Do some conversations need to take place? Maybe. Do we need to readjust our summer plans and actually take a true summer vacation every other summer instead of coming home to carve time out for family and friends who aren’t around? Maybe. Do I just need to chill and realize that this is the way it is? I just don’t know. But one thing is certain, s’more-making and Trader Joe’s never do disappoint.
If you’re an expat how do you juggle going on “real holidays” vs visiting relatives back home? If you’re the one at home, how does it feel to have travelling families visit?
This is an original post for World Moms Network written by Loren Braunohler in Poland.
I know *exactly* how you feel … but I think it’s even worse in my case. My family emigrated from Italy to South Africa when i was 8 years old, and we left behind a very large extended family. As you probably know, the rand is an extremely weak currency compared to the Euro (or US Dollar for that matter) so “going home” (for me) last happened over 10 years ago. That time I went on my own because my grandfather had been diagnosed with cancer and he wanted to see me before he got too ill. My children were both born in South Africa. Two years ago my (then) 21 year old son emigrated to Germany (he went to live with his girlfriend and her family). This year they got married in Frankfurt. Since we had to make the trip to be there for the wedding, we took the opportunity to spend 2 weeks in Italy as well. My husband was last in Italy when he was a child and my daughter has never been there before. Three months prior to our trip I tried to get in touch with as many of my relatives as possible to arrange getting together. Out of my entire (huge) family only two aunts, 3 cousins, my step-mom, my half-brother, half-sister and last living grandmother made the effort to spend time with us. On my husband’s side, only 2 of his cousins made time for us. Considering the fact that some of them we haven’t seen since we were children, and we don’t know when we’ll have the chance to go back to Italy, it did hurt that so few of them made an effort. That said, the ones who DID were absolutely wonderful and we had the best time with them.
I understand the conflict; we’ve been away on two postings so far and usually return home maybe once a year for two weeks. It’s such a short time and we sometimes struggle between having time to relax vs meeting family and friends. Perhaps it’s a little different for me – Singapore is so tiny that it doesn’t take very long to travel around so I’d be really offended if someone said they didn’t have time. I think that over the years, I’ve narrowed down my priority list of people whom I’ve kept relationships with. I honestly don’t have the time or emotional patience to keep up with those who don’t make an effort.
This happens to me too!! Not an ex pat but Canada is so big that I might as well be living in another country, since I’m on the opposite coast from the rest of my family. I flew out before Christmas and most of my family never saw me. I posted where I would be and on what days, but all those people saying “let me know your itinerary! I want to see you!”… Didn’t.
When I used to live in Virginia and would travel back home to see my family in NJ, little by little, I saw less friends at each visit. When we moved to NJ, it was a really good feeling to reconnect. But, I understand that it’s tough to catch up during a finite time.
It is the same for us when we visit the UK, where my husband is from. We have to cross our fingers and hope everyone’s around when we visit, or it’s a really long time before we see them again.
I hope you enjoy the rest of your time home, L
Well, I get what you are saying as I’m an expat too. But on the other hand, it’s you who has chosen to be an expat, so indeed, why do they need to circulate their lives around your shorts visits back home? That’s a bit rude to ask imho.
I get your disappointment. But at the same time I hate it when my husband’s overseas family come visit ‘their’ country and expect me and my family to drop everything. I have my job to go to and at night I’m tired and don’t want to coax everyone in the car to drive to a hotel 30 minutes away to have dinner with people who expect us to be grateful they made time for us and then make us pay for dinner (because it’s all so expensive for them with the plane tickets and hotel and all).
My children have much less holiday than their overseas cousins and often need to go to school when our family visits. During holidays they are in overnight camp or with their grandparents hours away, so we can work. The kids understand why we keep them home some days to play with their cousins, and they’ll certainly enjoy that day, but everyone knows it’s mostly because the adults so badly want them to be friends. On the other hand: it happened often that visiting relatives went off to do fun things (theme parks, city trips, beach) and they never bother to ask our kids to join them.
Plus: whenever +we+ visit relatives or friends who are expats (or emigrants), we can’t stay with them ‘because they’re not a hotel’. Their kids aren’t home because school/ballet/friends. We take them out for dinner because they make the effort to cut out time for us in their busy schedules.
So yeah. I love having my emigrated family over to catch up and I make the effort to visit expat friends whenever we happen to be in a 1,000 mile radius for work/holiday. But it’s complicated 🙂
For me this is the line that resonates the most “Maybe it is our fault for choosing this transient lifestyle and moving away in the first place.” Ive been made to feel like its my choice/fault for moving so far away. Thus I need to be the one who makes plans to accomodate family/friends. Thanks for your post!