My mom is British and my dad is American but I spent my childhood surrounded by the dense jungles of the Federated States of Micronesia.  My dad was stationed there as a physician for the public health service.  My brothers and I had care free upbringings consisting of swimming in the turquoise waters of the pacific ocean, foraging for tropical fruit and running through the underbrush wielding machetes.  We also traveled a lot, visiting places like Papua New Guinea, Pakistan, China and Bali.  We rarely traveled like tourists, instead we saw the places we went the way the locals did, in large part due to the fact that we were often visiting people we knew.  When I was 12, my parents and I along with my uncle were smuggled past armed guards into an Afghanistan refugee camp in Peshawar to visit some friends.  The fact that they had three young children never daunted my parents and never stopped them from exposing us to the world that we live in.

My childhood was wonderful, idyllic really, but growing up in the way I did meant that I was always seen as, or felt like, an outsider no matter where I went. The color of my skin made me a minority in Micronesia and the way I saw the world made me one in the United States. I had a global perspective without really understanding that such a thing was a rarity.

My family lived in a small cinder block house with a tin roof, which was practically a mansion by comparison to some of the island dwellings.  Men wore loin cloths and the women were topless. There was one paved road and naked children ran around the streets.  I have lost count of the number of stitches I’ve had, due in no small part to the aforementioned machete wielding.  When jungle fires raged through the brown grasses during the dry season we played in the ashes and listened to the exploding banana trees.  When the monsoon rains hit in the wet season we body surfed the rapids of flooded streams and tried not to drown.  During the typhoons my dad would board up the windows, while my younger brother and I snuck out to jump into the ferocious winds amidst flying coconuts.  This was the world I lived in.  Pop culture and the trappings of the western world were lost on me.

When my family moved back to the United States when I was 15 there was a lot of culture shock.  Even my parents felt the effects, while my brothers and I struggled to cope and assimilate.  I was a fast study or maybe just a good actor.  I quickly adapted to my surroundings and learnt that it wasn’t socially acceptable to be barefoot and that climbing trees often freaked people out. The whole time I kept my knowledge of the wider world close to my heart.  Willing myself to remember the reality of things and not to get swept away by the enticing currents of a material society.

Seven years  after returning to America I moved to Israel for work after finishing college.  I remember feeling like I was at last getting back to my roots.  I guess there is a comfort in not fully belonging somewhere.  There is a certain freedom in being an outsider.

The night I arrived in Haifa I met the man I would end up marrying only 6 months later.  We recognized in each other a common story. He was born in Iran but due to religious persecution his family had to flee the country when he was only 5 months old.  For the next year or so they lived in Pakistan while they waited for their refugee status to go through so they could move to the United States.  Once in the US they moved around quite a bit before finally settling in Texas. We both knew what it was like to be suspended between cultures, between worlds, to never fully belong.

photo credit: Negeen Sobhani Photography

Getting married was another culture shock.  My husband realized that he was more Persian that he thought he was and I realized that I was less American than I had come to believe.  We adjusted and ultimately we grew closer together.  Now, after 5 years of marriage we have started our next great adventure: parenthood.

Our experiences both separate and shared have shaped the way we parent our son.  We are generally very relaxed as parents and especially so for being new parents.  We both realize that children are far more resilient than this society would have you believe.  When my son’s pacifier falls on the floor, I often just give it right back to him.  Being relaxed doesn’t mean that we’re push overs. It just means that we try not to sweat the small stuff.

I want my children to have a global vision, to see the world beyond the small bubble they inhabit and to understand that their actions can have far reaching consequences. I want to accustom them to hardship.  In fact I believe that to do otherwise would be to do them a disservice.  I hope to raise our sons to be fierce advocates for the equality of men and women.  I hope to raise our daughters to be fully aware of their value and self worth.  I want our children to be world citizens and to be honest, I’m not entirely sure how I’m going to go about doing that while living here, but I’m sure I’ll figure it out.  I do know that the key is service. When children are allowed to be of service to someone else it opens their eyes to the wider world around them.