My brother was one of the first people I told I was pregnant. I asked him when I should break the news to Mom. He reminded me, “Just know that once you tell her, that’s all she’s going to want to talk about.”
It was good advice. Talking about doing something generally causes more anxiety than actually doing it, particularly in the case of big life changes like having a baby or, I don’t know, living abroad.
When we decided to move from San Francisco to Perth, we told our kids right away. The expat blogs convinced me that if our children heard it elsewhere, they would feel betrayed and develop permanent trust issues, dairy intolerance, and a fear of rainbows.
Our news spread quickly and, as a result, the kids engaged in a three-month long conversation called How Do You Feel About This Vague Scary Thing? My older daughter declared, “I’m ok with moving. I’m not ok with talking about it all the time.” I suggested she politely tell people she’d rather not discuss it, but she convinced me that was dumb advice. Our move affected people, and that is a good thing because it means we matter to them.
I don’t recall a lot of “How do you feel?” when I was growing up. At dinner, my father would ask inexplicably specific details of my day (“How many minutes did it take you to walk from Chemistry to English?”) and my mother would make statements like, “That school is falling apart” or “She sounds boy-crazy.” When my grandfather died and I saw my dad cry for the first time, my mother whispered, “He’s crying because his father died.” She did not say he’s crying because he’s sad.
Years later, in a psychology class, I learned about naming our own feelings, a topic that is now standard in American kindergarten curriculum. On the first day of school, I feel excited. I feel scared. Despite my best intentions, my patience level inhibits regular encouragement of my children to name their feelings. Eat your dinner. You love beans.
When we landed in Perth, the relocation chatter soon changed to Why Do You Sound Different? I contemplated distributing a fact sheet: We are Americans. We are here temporarily. We don’t like your vegemite but we love pavlova.
It has been almost nine months and we are now in something, instead of before or after something. There is a calm that has entered our home – the comfortable chaos of everyday living. We are back to life. There’s nothing to discuss. So let’s talk.
