Third Culture Kid: that’s someone who is raised in a country other than his or her passport country. Their unique experience creates for them a third culture. I’m a Third Culture Kid, or TCK.
Lauren Wells, in her book The Grief Tower, says that many TCKs hesitate to admit challenges in their childhood because, “the difficult experiences are often surrounded by so much good.” (Page 15) I agree. I wouldn’t trade my TCK childhood for anything, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t some bumps along the way. For me, and many other TCKs that I know, returning to our passport country involved bumps.
It’s hard to go to a country where you LOOK like you should fit in but, well, you just don’t. I captured one of those moments in the piece below.
Pair of Shoes (a TCK perspective)
“We should get matching sandals!” you say.
I get it. You are speaking before thinking.
All teenagers do it.
You are trying to be nice to this girl out of place.
But this talk of shoes confirms our friendship spurious.
I don’t blame you.
And I’m not even surprised by it.
Just disappointed.
A simple pair of shoes: could be any style really.
Just like a friend: could be anyone really.
Just something to protect a foot.
Just someone to walk beside me so I don’t have to walk alone.
“Yes,” I agree, my heart racing.
A friend!
It’s a friend I want more than the shoes.
But if shoes are involved, that’s good too.
“But we’ll have to order them,” you realize.
“That’s OK, you can send them to me when I’m gone.”
Gone. And that’s the part you don’t get.
And I don’t think you want to try…which is the part I don’t get.
It’s the tiny pause. The negligible blip in time.
No one should notice.
But volumes of information slam into my head.
Or maybe it just feels that way.
You can be nice to me while I stand here.
But when I’m gone. I’m just gone.
My voice jumps into the fleck of silence.
“That’s ok. It probably wouldn’t make it in the mail anyway.”
“Are you sure?”
“Oh yea, it’s better this way.”
You smile. Relieved.
I nod. Crushed.
You turn to your friends.
They get you and you get them.
I stand alone, again.
And count down the days until I go home.
What about you?
If you are a TCK or parent of a TCK, can you relate?
If you know a TCK, ask them if they can relate.
I remember not speaking the language of hometown football games. And staying silent after sharing some normal experience of my childhood or teen years and seeing a glazed look in their eyes. A TCK friend told me that her mom encouraged her to look at it as a cross-cultural relationship and to seek to understand their culture. That’s been good advice for this adult TCK. By the way, I married an American football player 🙂