I left home (Italy) when I was 18, traveled, settled, re-traveled, re-settled (Portland, OR). I always thought that that was all fun and games but once I was going to become a mother I would have really longed for being home. And thankfully, now that I have a little family of my own.... I AM home. But not the way I had imagine it to be.
This is an uncomfortable and mildly offensive topic. How do you reconcile with telling your very loving family, culture and country of birth that you are better off away from them? I have often opened up about this issue to people in my country and I almost always get an ouch! effect. Then I go on explaining the whys and hows... still ouch! But to me and to MY family it makes perfect sense and it doesn't even hurt. Maybe sometimes, but not as much as it gives us pleasure.
The pleasure I derive from growing my kids away from my home of origin can be simplify in one word: creativity! My husband and I can be creative about parenting, to the extend to which it becomes an item of contention every time we step foot off the international airport bound to take us back to my hometown. Here we can parent away from the reaction our creativity undoubtedly elicits when then and there.
Italy is no US, there family is in-your-face about how they feel about your choices and how you ought to do things differently... and catholic guilt runs the show. At least in my family. To be clear, my in-laws i the US never once dared telling us what to do. Well maybe a handful of times but always with a aura of respect for us and mostly we had asked them for suggestions.
When your folks tell you what is best for your child, how do you feel? compliant? defiant? However good I feel about my motherly skills and my parenting style, in the back of my mind I start to feel insecure, am I doing it right? are our intuitions as new parents stronger and healthier then the advice my own mother and grandmother are giving me? In the end they had done this before!
No, they hadn't done THIS!
Because THIS is home. No "no-because-I-said-so" and no raising my hands on my son's face and no discipline made of punishments and rewards. THIS can best bloom on a new terrain, the soil certainly made and contaminated by previous inhabitants but transplanted on a new territory. Informed and not bound by its original state and turned over every season for air and nutrients.
I am sure my parents felt this to. And they structured their family to be better and stronger then the one they came from. They added creativity and novelty and trusted their own intuition before that of their ancestors. But I am also aware that with your family "checking on you" and sitting your kids and sending you to their doctor, etc. there is a lot less room for creativity, and I am glad I don't have to compromise that.
The sit back is HUGE.. my son is not growing up around his maternal grandparents uncles auntie and cousin. But again, neither am I and I am hoping that so far will be so good for as long as we stay home. Making the BEST out of it. In the end there is no other place I'd rather be.
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