End of a chapter

Have you ever gotten to the end of a chapter in a book and wished you could go back to the time before you read it so that you could have the thrill of experiencing it for the first time all over again?

You are still in the middle of an excellent book. But this particular chapter may have grabbed you differently, made you question everything the narrator wrote in the previous chapters, and essentially changed the trajectory of the rest of this story.

If you are an avid reader like I am, this may have happened in a few different books. When you lend the book to a friend, you may smile as you think about that one chapter that transforms the shy heroine into an incredible force.  You’ll think about all of the challenges they had to overcome to get them from point A to point B.  You’ll recount the hurdles and the incredible highs of the experience, knowing all along that this had to happen to prepare your characters for what was next.

That’s how I feel about the end of our life in Asia over these four years.  I see them in technicolor from the very moment that we landed right through to today.  All is impossibly condensed into these four years of growth for the kids and for us, strangely stretched and pulled in different places, like looking down the hallway of a fun house.

How could we possibly have traveled, met, worked, experienced, and gone through so many emotions during this time?  On the one hand, we packed a lifetime of experiences into four years, while at the same time feeling like we just left.

Knowing this would feel like a flash in the pan, I spent much of the last year writing down as much as I could about this experience for our family, as well as to share with others who hope to join this carousel too.  I wanted to remember the complex parts, the times of doubt, as well as the joys of the experience, because growth often came in the difficult moments.

When we realized this would be our last year, we started naming experiences with the “last” moniker.  Last time feeling the energy & lights of F1 in Singapore, last lion-filled dances of Chinese New Year celebrations with red envelopes everywhere, last light-filled Diwali parties swirling with colorful bejeweled saris, last easy weekend trips around Asia.

We wanted to savor every last drop, and the taste was so much sweeter at the bottom of the expat cocktail.  We were no longer in shock but appreciating the entire experience with conviction.

And the kids were starting to do this too—last tennis class, last class party, last goodbye party, last playdate, last goodbyes.

The hardest part now is trying to envision the next chapter back at home. Can we expect anything to top this experience?  Will everything pale in comparison, or will we quickly find happiness back home once again?

As we prepare to move back, so many friends and family members are eagerly welcoming us back to our old life.

Yet. I can’t help but think that we are having this “sliding doors” experience.  What would our lives look like now if we had never boarded that 18.5-hour flight to Asia?  Would things be exactly as we had left it?  Would we be restless and anxiously looking for our next move or happier to have stayed with lots of new experiences under our belt that were just as satisfying?  Unless you’re Gweneth Paltrow, you don’t get to game this out, so we’ll never know.

We feel forever changed by the expat experience. There is a level of resilience that comes with living outside your home country.

Part of it is getting comfortable with being the outsider; part of it is learning to listen more effectively and identify commonalities; and learning to accept the unexpected.

I have discovered parts of my voice that I didn’t realize were there, grown more certain about who we are as a family, and found out what we need to make anywhere feel like home.

Before our final goodbye, we hope to take a long look at what we’ve built over the past four years and turn the page, but take all the best with us as we move forward.