Our Story
All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
Bilbo Baggins, in The Lord of the Rings
We are a family of five living in a motor home and are
traveling the country for the foreseeable future.
As recently as last December, I never once imagined I’d be writing those
words and by no means had I ever dreamed we’d be living this lifestyle.
We sold our comfortable home in Orlando, Florida, discarded, sold or
stored our possessions and purchased our new home, a Fleetwood Bounder.
We left suburbia with all that way of life entails and set out on a
journey of exploration, both geographically and spiritually. Our story,
at least this part of it, is not unique. In fact, there are countless
American families living this roving, nomadic lifestyle in search of
adventure and answers to any number of questions. There are many who,
like us, have traded in one version of the American dream for a new,
better-fitting one. The exceptionality of our tale lies in our back
story.
I met my husband Mike in Cairo, Egypt. That sentence usually elicits one
of two responses. People either mumble a non-committal
“Hmmm…Interesting…” and abruptly move on to discussions of Great Aunt
Ethel’s colonoscopy results or, alternatively and far more rarely, show
interest in our story. I’ve never really figured out why our history
causes apparent unease in so many people. Perhaps it’s because we so
flagrantly don’t fit the mold of the “How We Met’ story that every
American couple must tell over and over again. There it is, though, the
beginning thread of OUR STORY. We didn’t follow the blueprint from the
get go.
We both moved to Egypt from our respective homes in the US as teenagers.
In a sense we were migrants, moving as a direct consequence of our
parents’ careers. Mike was born and raised in Ogden, Utah and I grew up
in a small town in rural Maine that no one has ever heard of. We met, of
all places in an ancient city of Pharaonic ruins, grand mosques and
colorful bazaars, at the American softball field. On a quasi-“blind
date” I ordered a cheeseburger from Mike who was manning the concession
stand and we’ve pretty much been a team since then. In the course of our
marriage we’ve lived in Egypt, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Florida, Virginia, and
traveled the world in the process. We’ve had the usual bumps, bruises,
highs and lows that a two- decade- long relationship would be expected
to have. We have produced three beautiful little boys, have made all the
requisite home/car purchases and have moved our family in a
directionally correct path toward “success”. We’ve done all of
this against the backdrop of an internationally- mobile lifestyle. We
are American by birth and by upbringing and, most definitely by
privilege and choice, but we are also citizens of the world, unrooted
and untethered.
The issue of rootedness has become, over the years, a key one for us.
Where are we from? Where do we belong? Where is our place in the world?
As a child in Egypt I saw myself for a time as a victim, pitilessly
ripped by my parents from my home in Maine. It was not until I returned
to US during college for a semester of study that I realized what “home”
had become. I had returned to my home in the US to encounter a
relatively unknown culture. It mystified me that I longed to return to
the familiarity of Egypt. Hey, I was an American for crying out loud??!!
I realized then that I would probably never feel entirely rooted in
either culture. Mike and I were a match made in heaven in this regard.
He, like me, had moved to Egypt under similar ‘duress” only realizing at
a later date the great gifts he had been given . We were and I suppose
always will be Third Culture Kids, a term coined to refer to those of us
who have spent a significant period of time in one or more cultures
other than our own, thus integrating elements of those cultures and our
own birth cultures, into a third culture. We were not rooted or
entrenched in a particular place, but instead felt at home most anywhere
in the world. This, like most of life, is a double edged sword having
both positive and negative attributes and consequences. Restlessness, it
seems, walks hand in hand with rootlessness. This makes “settling down”
a difficult prospect, but we knew that was what we were expected to do,
so we made every effort.
While living overseas and shortly after having our first child we
decided that it was time to go “home” and be American. Mike and I picked
out the perfect ready-made neighborhood in-a-box in northern Virginia
and purchased from a colorful brochure a not-yet-built house on a
not-yet-created cul de sac. When all was completed we had a third of an
acre, neighbors with multitudes of children, 2 brand new cars in the
pristine garage and a mortgage just about the size of Nebraska. We even
got a puppy. Now this was living La Vida American! But somehow our life
felt like you might feel if you were to borrow someone else’s pair of
shoes to wear to a fancy ball. They’re size 8. Technically they fit, but
they are stretched and worn in all the wrong places and dancing is just
an impossibility. Those shoes make you feel awkward and ungainly and as
though your feet were right in the middle of your forehead. That’s how
our life in the ‘burbs" of Washington D.C. felt. It looked like it fit.
We almost blended in, got by, fooled everyone that we belonged, that we
were one of them. We jumped right into the rat race with careers at full
swing, a nanny living in our basement, soccer practice on Saturdays, but
the shoe just didn’t fit right. When our neighbors hung out in the cul
de sac barbecuing and talking about their lighting fixtures and flooring
upgrades, floor plans, lot sizes and their plans for the kids to stay
together from preschool right through high school we hung with them.
Inside, though, we were both thinking something close to “Boy, these
natives sure live interesting lives”. We were anthropologists merely
passing through. We felt not only like fish out of water, but like fish
so far inland we might just as well wait a million years until evolution
granted us legs to carry us away. Several years later we would look back
on this time, thankful for the lessons learned and glad to have
been able to study the natives only to find that we were indeed a part
of the tribe, but not now. Now we were nearly lifeless and flailing on
the banks. So, we did the only sane, rational thing we could do. We
moved to Disney World.
Okay, so technically we moved to Orlando, but Disney World was the real
draw. Magic Kingdom, Fantasy Land, heat, sunny days, palm trees… We told
ourselves we were looking for a slower pace of life, a “better” place to
raise our kids away from the hustle and bustle. What we were really
doing was moving ourselves just about as far from reality as you can
technically get without needing massive quantities of mind-altering
substances to take you there. So, here we looked for a house on a
straight street (no more cul de sacs for us!) with the obligatory pool
in the backyard and for a while this “being American” thing was working
out just fine. Then we jumped in with both feet instead of just paddling
in the kiddy pool. Jobs, friends, cub scouts, baseball, after school
play dates, volunteering, dieting, exercising…these are the things that
make up a real, true blue American. I built a beautiful, strong nest
because that’s what mama birds do. Our house looked like we’d lived in
it for generations. We acquired, accumulated and purged and completed
the cycle again and again. We did it all. After some time, Mike and I
both went into a frenzy of landscaping, rearranging furniture, painting
and then it hit us like a two ton asteroid. Much like your first clue
that you have a cold coming on is the annoying throat tickle, this
current flurry of activity was merely a symptom of the onset of a
simple, though life-altering case of wanderlust. It was time to move on,
so Mike began the job search and before you could say lost luggage we
were off to Dubai for yet another escapade.
During our time in Dubai, ironically, Florida became home for us. The
concept of home has always been a tricky one for us. How extraordinarily
effortless was it for the two of us who had grown up overseas and moved
around so often to finally be able to give a simple answer to the
question, “Where are you from?”? While in Dubai we felt so smug when
someone asked the question and we could say, “Orlando, Florida”. The
end. Period. No explanation needed. The last time we had lived abroad we
had had no physical address in the US. The answer to the question for me
invariably went something like, “Well, I was born in New York, but grew
up in Maine and then moved to Egypt when I was 13”. Then I’d pull out my
globe and my laser pointer and begin a geography lecture. Okay, not
really, but that’s what it felt like at times. I remember when as a
junior in college I went to the US to do my junior year ‘abroad”
(confused? I was a student at and graduated from the American University
in Cairo, Egypt) at American University’s Washington Semester program.
Students from all over the US came to Washington DC for this program.
The big question everyone asked each other? You guessed it-“Hey, dude,
where are you from?”. It got so tedious and downright annoying giving
the answer and then watching the eyes glaze over when I got to the Cairo
part that eventually I resorted to fiction. In other words, I lied and
said I was from UMASS at Amherst, a story easy to stick to because my
roommate attended and had filled me in on all the tricky details.
Anyhow, I digress…
So, there we were in Dubai as Floridians. When Mike’s assignment came to
an early end two and half years into our adventure we returned to our
home in Orlando. Having kept our house we had a soft landing, but the
bloom was definitely off the Orlando rose for us. During our sojourn
abroad our area of the city had taken a sharp and unrecoverable left
turn into disrepair. Green pastures were being replaced by untidy
sprawl, English replaced by a foreign language and “temporary
classrooms” (read trailers) now littered the lawn of our children’s
elementary school. We had been toying with the idea of selling our home
and “moving up”, but now we considered moving out. Mike’s corporate
headquarters, nicely placed in the rolling hills of North Carolina, was
starting to look attractive. There was a problem, however, a crisis now
causing whole hosts of Americans sleepless nights and heartache: The
real estate market was plummeting like a one-winged Tupelov over
Siberia. We were fortunate and sold after only a year. Only a year…who
would’ve thought? We got out and took our proceeds and ran, never
looking back. We ran far, far away from the housing market and directly
to the front door of our friendly neighborhood RV dealership.
It all began, this RV adventure, one night in a restaurant. Mike and I
had had the rare occasion to go out alone for dinner without the
children in tow. Over dinner our conversation led, as it so often does
with us, to dreams of the future, that murky, incalculable time still
many years away. We had rented an RV the summer before and fell in love
with the concept of RV travel. The notion of a mobile, nomadic vacation
mirrored our life experiences perfectly. How would it be to live this
way?, we wondered. What if the future were now? Over the next few months
it became evident that it was an imprudent time to jump back into what
was quickly becoming the real estate cesspool. Home values were falling
and we were afraid we would get stuck with a house worth $1.98. The RV
adventure, a year on the road with our children, each other and not much
else, began to look very appealing. We were not interested in “dropping
out” of society, but felt that we needed a change. Unruly toddlers get
them, coaches demand them in tough spots, so why not us? A time out!
That’s what we needed. A break. A time to breath, regroup, live. So,
once committed to the idea we made it happen. We were given an
opportunity, no-we CREATED an opportunity to trade one dream in for
another and we welcomed that chance like a mother welcomes her soldier
son home from war. We traded in the house in the “burbs”, the play
dates, the sports practices, the backyard barbecues, the commute, the
upwardly mobile movement towards success and instead became physically
mobile on a journey of discovery. This is no accident that we are here
in our 380 square foot home on wheels. This is perhaps the most well
thought out, most purposeful, bravest move we have ever made.
What about the kids, you may be wondering? We have created, we like
to believe, three beguiling works in progress. It is a certainty that we
have passed on to them not only our wanderlust but also our love
of exploration. They have been born into an extensive family of global
nomads with all of the inherent challenges and rewards associated with
their membership in this “club”. They are at home, as are their parents,
both everywhere and nowhere at the same time and, also like us, they
possess a multi-dimensional world view. Their identities have
nothing to do with a physical, address-related place and while this is
freeing, it is also a burden they sometimes must bear. We all feel that
burden sometimes and have to enfold our children in the certainty that
we are home. We = home. That is the only equation that truly matters.
Yet, even now, we find ourselves saying “When we get home we’ll…” as
though home were a Brigadoon-like place we are destined to reach. One
day we may find a geographical home, a place we can call ours for ever
and ever, but for now home is with us. We are sure that we are not lost,
floundering souls trying to find or way home. We are home and we are
mindful of that each and every day.
The idea of looking beyond the prescribed, pre-determined American dream
may seem to some of you out there (and especially in the current
political climate) distinctly un-American. We beg to differ and instead
feel that we are circling back to the true ideals of our American
forefathers and foremothers. Our dream is one of pursuing our
“inalienable” happiness. That is our birth right and our mandate in life
handed down to us by those who have fought and died to define true
liberty and by those who have had the courage to dream dreams larger
than their individual lives. That’s the thing about dreams-they are
highly personal and have no frontier. There is no dream quota, no limit
like in fishing. It’s not like we’ve caught our allotted three trout for
the day and now have to let the rest slip from our fingers back into the
icy depths of the river. We get as many as we need and can dream as big
as our courage will allow.
We choose to think of ourselves as explorers. We are exploring the
geography and history of this land that we are so thankful to be able to
call our own. We are exploring what it means to be American in 2007.
Most importantly though we are discovering who we are both as
individuals and as a family unit. Ultimately, discovery is the product
of exploring and this is the journey we have chosen to take. And so like
Columbus and his ilk we will keep searching and discovering places that
have been discovered long before we ever got there. Also, like our 13th
century explorer friends we’ll just keep naming things we find even
though we’re not entirely sure what they are. Joy, faith, love,
marriage, citizen, home… these are the words that have meaning, but are
meaningless without a context. We’ll seek a life in a context that fits
us and have an extraordinary adventure in the process. In the end, it’s
the best any of us can hope for. Now we’re living our dream.
Live well and dream big,
Liz Thorsted
Somewhere in America, 2007