A feast of comfort foods, a potluck extravaganza, a smorgasbord of sentimentality

The children sat cross-legged on the carpet, looking up eagerly as their young, enthusiastic teacher explained the lesson.  “Today we are going to dress up like pilgrims and Indians,” she said, smiling brightly.  This week we will re-create the first Thanksgiving, when the pilgrims and Indians celebrated their friendship by sharing their food and having a big dinner.”   I was a Kindergarten aide at an international school, one of several part time jobs I held after graduating from college and moving to Europe in the 90’s.  Watching the children as they listened to their teacher, I noticed Kimal, a 5 year old boy from India with a confused expression on his face. The Indians did what?  Given that this was the early 90’s, I guess the term “Native American” was not yet deemed politically correct.  It was the first time I really noticed that the American cultural view of our history was based on an incorrect term.  And I think to this day, many Americans do not know that when Christopher Columbus “discovered” America, he thought he had arrived in India. Hence, the brown skinned people who were already living there were mistakenly identified as “Indians.”  Even after he realized he was not, in fact, in India, the name stuck. (And so the first instance of white privilege in America was born).

Despite the fact that Thanksgiving is based on a largely fictional myth of amity and brotherhood  (with little mention of the mass slaughter of the native population soon to follow), it is still one of my all time favorite holidays—a time to gather with loved ones, eat great food, and count our blessings. It is a holiday without religious affiliation, and with emphasis on gratitude and brotherly love. 
 In almost 30 years of living overseas,  I have never missed hosting a big Thanksgiving dinner. My viking husband, having grown up attending American International Schools, has wholly adopted the the holiday as well. Depending on our locations, we’ve had to get creative over the years. Hard to get cranberries in Argentina or pumpkin in Ethiopia. Imported frozen turkey in China costs quite a bundle.  I always miss my American family back home terribly, feeling especially wistful as I imagine them gathering without me.  Most of my adult life has been overseas, so it’s my childhood memories of Thanksgiving that tug at my heartstrings.  But wherever we have lived, we have always invited in other fellow Americans, families and singles, a motley mix of strays brought together, bringing along favorite  side dishes.  A feast of comfort foods,  a potluck extravaganza, a smorgasbord of sentimentality.

The expat life can be glamorous, offering whirlwind travel with a plethora of cultural and linguistic experiences. But it can also be lonely and isolating, sparking feelings of being an outsider or consummate visitor, the knowledge of never truly belonging in a host culture.  Thanksgiving offers a a taste of home and a reason to gather.  Although both of my children spent most of their lives celebrating Thanksgiving outside of the US,  I believe our celebrations have helped them develop some of the best parts of their American identity—the focus on gratitude, appreciating what we have, finding family in new friends, and the spiritual connections of breaking bread together.

This year, 2020…..well one of the hardest years we have all had to face. It’s difficult for many of us to find gratitude in the midst of so much stress, fear, and pain.  For me, it will be the first Thanksgiving in my almost 28 years of marriage that I will be apart from my husband.  But we must count blessings. He will be celebrating a new job at the American School of Youande, Cameroon, and will have the opportunity to share the day with new friends.  Viking Child Number One will still be at college in the US, celebrating a very special Friendsgiving with her roommates.  My parents and brother’s  family will meet up safely for an outdoor, socially distanced day—my brother, a doctor, coming home from the hospital where he’s been caring for the sickest of children.  And I will be home in Norway with Viking Child Number Two, who has just completed his first term of college and arrived safely back home to be with me.  As he is under official home quarantine for ten days, we can’t invite in guests for dinner. So it will be a Thanksgiving for two.  My cup runneth over.

My nest is suddenly really really empty.   My fledglings have flown, and my viking has set off on new adventures, conquering foreign lands, if you will, and readying the new fort for my future arrival.  Prepare yourself for a bunch of mixed metaphors—it may not behoove me  as an English teacher to indulge in the metaphors so shamelessly, but it’s helping me deal with this next stage in life.

So, as  I mentioned, the nest is really empty. Though I knew it was coming, it still seems like a huge surprise-not the fun kind, but more of a splash of cold water when you least expect it. The nest has actually been a bit overcrowded in the last few months, since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Viking child number one had to return home from in March when the universities shut down.  Viking child number two, a high school senior at the time, was with us as we navigated e-learning from home.  Our family is used to togetherness, as the kids have always attended the international schools where we have worked. They have gallantly put up with a lot over the years, having a father as their high school principal and their mom as a high school teacher and guidance counselor.  But suddenly we found ourselves home together 24-7, finding our private study spaces in the house, making forays into the kitchen for sustenance, and trying not to kill each other.  In the midst of the chaos, I knew a big change was coming and really just tried to enjoy it all. We were blessed to be riding out the pandemic in Norway, a country which had good control over the corona virus and a relatively low infection rate. We could escape close quarters in the house, simply by going out our backdoor and hiking the ridge behind the house, or venturing a few kilometers down the road to explore the coastline paths and forests. Norway has an abundance of natural beauty, and we took full advantage of the opportunities to get out into nature as often as possible.

 So what is my new reality and where is my viking-husband, you ask? To answer, I need to backtrack a bit. Jørgen (aka Viking Husband) and I met in the US, spent the first few years of our marriage in Austria, and then set off on a two year teaching job in Argentina.   Nine years and two baby vikings later, we were ready to move on to the next international school adventure.  Over the past 25 years, we lived and worked on five continents, and raised our little vikings as TCK’s, or “Third Culture Kids” (more on that another time).

Viking husband comes from nomadic stock. The child of diplomats, he grew up in Kenya, the US, and Austria. Traveling is in his blood, but he is also strongly connected to his Norwegian culture  and family.  Every year we returned to the Viking Homeland to visit, but had never actually lived there. So in 2015, after teaching in China for four years, we made the decision to move to Norway and give our kids the opportunity to be immersed in the Norwegian culture and language. 

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Fast forward to August 2020, smack dab in the middle of the global Covid pandemic.  The offspring have officially left the nest, and are both in the US for college: one a senior and one a freshman. (They are at great small colleges that seem to have safety precautions in place, so let’s hope and pray that they get to stay in school). Viking husband and I had been looking forward to our new role as empty nesters—you would think this would mean a little peace and quiet.  But no, life with my viking is never boring.  Instead, he has taken a new job, an amazing opportunity as director of a small international school in Cameroon.  And that brings us back to me:  I am in the middle of applying for dual citizenship in Norway, a process that got stalled in March, due to Covid restrictions.  So while I wait for paperwork, I am empty nesting it on my own in Norway. Well, the cat and I are holding down the fort together.

As we have all learned during this global pandemic, you never know what life is going to bring you next.  I never expected the life of an accidental nomad, but I am willing to embrace the adventure.  Cameroon awaits. Stay tuned!