Many of my friends in Shanghai discuss how you can never go back. My friend Ann is a perfect example of feelings many of us share. She comes from a small town in Ohio - the type of small town where people grow up, marry, and live through their retirement. Simply by choosing to move abroad, they became vastly different from their Ohio neighbors.
Further, she had worked full-time in Ohio. But in Shanghai, she lives as a tai tai, running her household, caring for her kids, and joining the ladies for Bible Study and charity events.
Her family dynamics changed as well. Her son left his small Ohio school for a large international school. And her step-daughters came to live with them full-time, because a weekends-only arrangement doesn't work when an ocean separates the two parents.
Their family dynamics have changed dramatically over the past few years, and each of those changes have led to a happy family. But the thought of returning to Ohio brings to mind the classic phrase, you can never go back. How to return to small-town, weekends-only life after what their family has become?
I often wonder the same about our family. When we left St. Louis, we had two very young children. Dave and I were still social animals, often having our weekends planned to the hour and relying on the grandparent babysitters down the street. We made entirely adult choices, and we enjoyed our lives and our friends. And like Ann, we are certainly the only of our friends to make the choice to live abroad. When will our trips home begin to feel less like home?
After 2 weeks spent in St. Louis and immersed in our old life, I've concluded that we are luckier than Ann. Our family has changed dramatically - Dave's and my roles inside our family have changed, the types of friends we have become are radically different, and having older children affects all of our choices now. But the same type of changes have happened to many of our friends. I sat to dinner with a few ladies from our home church. I shared some of our changes, some of our challenges, and some of the craziness of our current life. But so did each of the other ladies at the table. New babies had been born, houses had been bought and sold, the economy had changed and jobs had been impacted.
Maybe I'm lucky - my friends are in that same stage of life, where family and career grow and change quickly. And maybe being from the city helps - change can't happen fast enough on the run-down streets of St. Louis. But after dinner with a few friends, I am quite confident. We could move back to St. Louis and fall back into our old life quite happily.
We won't; but we could. And how comforting to know that home still awaits, and will for a long time to come.
Further, she had worked full-time in Ohio. But in Shanghai, she lives as a tai tai, running her household, caring for her kids, and joining the ladies for Bible Study and charity events.
Her family dynamics changed as well. Her son left his small Ohio school for a large international school. And her step-daughters came to live with them full-time, because a weekends-only arrangement doesn't work when an ocean separates the two parents.
Their family dynamics have changed dramatically over the past few years, and each of those changes have led to a happy family. But the thought of returning to Ohio brings to mind the classic phrase, you can never go back. How to return to small-town, weekends-only life after what their family has become?
I often wonder the same about our family. When we left St. Louis, we had two very young children. Dave and I were still social animals, often having our weekends planned to the hour and relying on the grandparent babysitters down the street. We made entirely adult choices, and we enjoyed our lives and our friends. And like Ann, we are certainly the only of our friends to make the choice to live abroad. When will our trips home begin to feel less like home?
After 2 weeks spent in St. Louis and immersed in our old life, I've concluded that we are luckier than Ann. Our family has changed dramatically - Dave's and my roles inside our family have changed, the types of friends we have become are radically different, and having older children affects all of our choices now. But the same type of changes have happened to many of our friends. I sat to dinner with a few ladies from our home church. I shared some of our changes, some of our challenges, and some of the craziness of our current life. But so did each of the other ladies at the table. New babies had been born, houses had been bought and sold, the economy had changed and jobs had been impacted.
Maybe I'm lucky - my friends are in that same stage of life, where family and career grow and change quickly. And maybe being from the city helps - change can't happen fast enough on the run-down streets of St. Louis. But after dinner with a few friends, I am quite confident. We could move back to St. Louis and fall back into our old life quite happily.
We won't; but we could. And how comforting to know that home still awaits, and will for a long time to come.
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