Third Culture Kid(s)

Our second anniversary was yesterday - a fact recognized by no one, least of all M. and me (we’ve both been under the assumption that it’s actually this Friday, since that’s the anniversary of the day we met. It took my sister looking up the date on our wedding announcement to settle the question). Some observations:

Oldest Sibling + Over 35 x 2 = Serious Control Issues

The oldest sibling thing is pretty self-explanatory; M. and I are both bossy to the nth degree. We both spent a substantial part of our childhoods making younger siblings fetch things for us. As a married couple, we both spend a substantial amount of our time together asking the other person to get stuff for us. When we’re at an impasse, M. likes to play the handicapped card (”You’re able-bodied - it’s easy for you!”), despite the fact that: 1) he somehow managed to survive for almost 20 years on his own without requiring hospitalization for either starvation or dehydration; 2) we moved into a one-level home for the express purpose of allowing him more mobility; 3) I spend all day playing fetchit for the other person in our little household and reach my limit at roughly the time M. gets home from work. It usually works, though, since I am, in fact, able-bodied, and it is easier for me to do these things. And, in his defense, he does do the dishes at night.

The over 35 is less obvious, but basically a variation on the above theme. Both of us had been out of our parents’ homes (more or less, in my case) for well over 15 years by the time we met. We’d had time to develop our own idiosyncratic ways of doing things (i.e., cleaning: M. likes to take a room, stack boxes and piles of things in it until the room is completely filled, and close the door/forge a path through the stuff and carve out enough space to sit, watch TV, and eat. I have a pathological need for everything to be put away; so much so that I usually put the toys away when MM’s just having a nap. By “put away,” I mean, of course, that all the little people get put where they’re supposed to be, and the fact that Luigi the zookeeper has gone missing is secretly driving me insane).

As a result, the meshing of our households and our respective ways of doing things has been a learning experience like no other.

Time is relative

I did not know this going into marriage. I always assumed that “1:00 pm” was 1:00 pm, that “yesterday” was yesterday, and that “15 minutes” equalled 15 minutes.

But no. Around here, 1:00 pm is anytime in the 1:05 pm to 3:30 pm range. “The other day” means any point in the past - ranging from “last night” to “yesterday” to “three years ago.” “15 minutes,” particularly when in answer to the question “how much longer until you leave the office?” means “sometime in the next hour or so.”

Of course, to be fair, when I say we’re leaving at 9:05 am, I mean we’re leaving at 9:05:00 am, come hell or high water. Every fraction of a second past 9:05:00 am sees an incremental increase in my overall testiness.

WASP background + Tri-national Asian-American background = Communication Mishaps Galore

This actually ties in to the above time issues, but in a broader linguistic sense. I grew up in a household of WASPs. My dad, in particular, is nothing if not precise - he’s an engineer, for heaven’s sake - and is even more anal about time than me. My mom is very sensitive to how language is used - word chosen, tone of voice - and many an argument between my parents has started through the careless abuse of language by my dad. I inherited both of these tendencies, and in the case of language I’m much worse than my mom - I mean, I study communication for a ‘living’. I’m all about how language is used, how one word brings baggage that another one wouldn’t - that kind of thing.

M., in contrast, comes from a family in which three languages are spoken - sometimes all at once. His dad is a native speaker of English, but because he spent a long time in Japan as a kid, it’s somewhat accented and generally uses a lot of Japanese - old-fashioned Hiroshima Japanese. His mom speaks both Japanese and Korean (Japanese in the home, with a little English thrown in; Korean with her Korean relatives and friends). The kids all speak English with the random Japanese or Korean word thrown in (M. often doesn’t know which words are Korean and which are Japanese). Language is a very fluid thing around there (which probably explains why it takes at least two hours and rounds of negotiations to come to a decision about things like where to eat).

The clash of linguistic precision and fluidity around here has been interesting, to say the least. I feel like I’m the more aggregious party in this particular case, and I’m really working on allowing a little bit of leeway into my interpretations, but M’s had to resort to raising his little pinky when he’s making a “joke” about me, so I don’t take it personally and rip him a new one. I’ve offered to break the finger off a few times, but for the most part it actually works.

Not sure how this is going to impact MM.

It’s been a long, stressful two years. We keep moving, M. keeps having to get new jobs so I can continue to not finish my dissertation, we’re making less money than we ever have before, and we’re both making up the whole parenting thing as we go along. But I would not have anyone else by my side while we stumble through our lives. I can’t imagine being with anyone but M. - we may drive each other insane sometimes, but we suit each other. And we’re getting better at all of this (even though we keep upping the ante by throwing in new challenges like grad school and the possibility of having another kid…because, you know, we wouldn’t want to grow complacent, would we?)