In this family, I am a foreign country

[nanila]

Yesterday, Humuhumu came to me with her gloves in her hand and said solemnly, "Mama, I can't do it." She likes to put all her clothes on herself, but gloves are difficult. She tries, but she can't do it.

The way she pronounced "can't" (KAH-nt) gave me a sudden, very sharp pang of alienation. It's a sensation to which I've become unaccustomed, embedded as I am into life in the UK. It brought home that my daughter doesn't sound like me. Not only that, she never will. She'll grow up with a British accent - what flavour is still to be determined, as she hears Brummie and Black Country at nursery, but academic British and American at home. Both my children won't sound like me. Maybe one day they'll be even embarrassed by their mum's American accent. It was unexpectedly painful to know that no matter how British I become in my habits and my tastes, as soon as I open my mouth I'm instantly identifiable as non-native, and I'll be the only one in our little family to be so.

There's a passage at the end of the last story in Zen Cho's Spirits Abroad that resonates particularly with me.

Past a certain point, you stop being able to go home. At this point, when you have got this far from where you were from, the thread snaps. The narrative breaks. And you are forced, pastless, motherless, selfless, to invent yourself anew.

Despite striving to reinvent myself over the past decade, I know that my expression of Britishness is always identifiably tinged with foreignness, and I don't just mean my accent. It's always a little jarring to be reminded that integration is not a process that is ever finished, or that can truly be perfected. I want my children to be as well integrated as possible into the culture they'll have to spend the majority of their time in. It will be effortless and natural for them. I don't want them to have American accents. But since they already seem to have so little of me in their outward appearances, apart from dark eyes and in Humuhumu's case, an outrageous fringe of pitch-black eyelashes, it hurts a little to watch them do with ease what I have to practise consciously. And to know that this difference between us is permanent.

Comments

[chickenfeet]

You don't know where your children will spend their lives or how that will affect them...

In terms of accent and vocabulary my family is all over the place from my South Walian and Lancastrian cousins, my parents' RP with residual Lancashire vowels, my brother's Estuary English, my public school RP x Northern vowels x middle class Ontario to my daughter's standard middle class Australian and my son's hybrid Ontario/Australian diplomatic accent.

The only thing I know for sure is you can never truly go back. Onwards and upwards!

[nanila]

True! It should certainly be no surprise to me if Humuhumu decided to swan off to Australia aged 16 and then settle there.

I wouldn't want to go back to the US at this point. But I wouldn't rule out going elsewhere once the kids are a bit older.

[cosmolinguist]

<3

That may be different, but so much else about your family is and will be similar to you.

Our situations are not that similar, but there is so much here I relate to. For all the things your family don't have in common with you, there are others who care about you who do share them.

[nanila]

♥ Thank you so much for this comment. I can't articulate much more about it cos I get a bit choked up when I try. But yes. It's much appreciated.

[nicki]

I think it's one of those things that happens in every kind of cultural change, it's just more pronounced for you because the accent difference is more pronounced. It happens with people from the US south who live in the not-South and vise-verse as well.

(I say things all the time that cause my co-workers to look at me like I'm an idiot because I've used a phrase/term that I picked up living someplace else. Last week it was "bug-nuts", nobody in my office had ever heard that term before. I don't even know.)

[nanila]

Good point. I have a few American friends from the South who've lived on the West Coast for a number of years. Most of them have lost their original accents. Most of them said they did so deliberately because they grew tired of the assumption that they were stupid, racist or both. :/

I used to use bug-nuts! I've no idea where I picked that up.

[soliano]

Maybe it will come full circle and your daughter with her delightful accent will come to live in the states. Do they call American accents delightful? Well, I imagine not. Not since that unpleasantness in 1776. A very dear friend of mine made the same choice as you and lives in the UK and has 3 children. I will have to ask her what her take on that was. I can certainly see how it makes you feel about your place in the world.

[nanila]

They don't call American accents delightful. At least, not to our faces. But I'm pretty sure the bloke is rather fond of mine or he wouldn't mock it quite so mercilessly. ;)

[pbristow]

We don't call anything "delightful" unless (a) we're trying to be subtly insulting or classist (or both), (b) there's a gun pointed at us, or (c) - far worse - there's an *elderly relative* pointed at us! =:o}

[soliano]

Well, Excuuuuuuuse Me!

[davidgillon]

Maybe one day they'll be even embarrassed by their mum's American accent.

But not right now, right now, you're Humuhumu's Mama, who knows how to put gloves on ;)

[lark_ascends]

Yes. This.

[nanila]

That is a great comfort. I'll dwell on this for a bit instead. :)

[lark_ascends]

*hugs you very very hard*

[nanila]

*hugs back* Thank you.

[pbristow]

Another thing I've never had to experience. Thought-provoking.

Also: [HUGS]