Bringing in the reigns

Okay. My negativity about the Dutch is getting out of control. It isn't good for my health, or life expectancy to carry on this way. I've been on the edge here for far too long, but there must be some way of not allowing it to further chip away at my psyche.

I suppose immigrant groups face similar challenges in the United States. I just finished reading an article about Asian American communities in California. It's funny, though. The key word there is "community." I know plenty of people in the United States who were quite capable of succeeding there no matter what their background or skin color. It seems a lot easier to establish a secure life in the United States, but perhaps I'm wrong.

I'm sure there are plenty of Americans very happy to be here. I've met Americans who almost stop speaking English once they get here, even with their kids, and they certainly wouldn't speak English "on the streets."

The author of the piece on Asian Americans made the same point. There are people who do all they can to shed their identity, and want to "blend in" as much as possible. And there are those who hold on to their language and traditions. I don't see why it should be such an either/or proposition. I think it's mainly the pressure from "outside," or the population of the "host" country that immigrants feel so much pressure from to change their ways. It must seem a natural expectation from most natives to expect people who come to "their" country to adapt and assimilate as much as possible, to change completely, in fact.

One of my favorite Dutch writers, who died last year, Henk van Woerden, who wrote the wonderful book A Mouth Full of Glass, and taught at the University of Michigan said, "You don't know what you're asking of a person" when you expect them to make such a radical change in who they are in "integrating."

I had no notion of what would be expected of me in coming here, the invisible pressures I would face to bend my identity in order to be accepted. Well, I didn't do it. I haven't given up my language. I am who I am, even if in being that I've often felt that I am "an island in a sea" of hostile, indifferent, oblivious Dutch people. A stranger in a strange land, though I am no stranger. Somehow, whatever I do, I just don't fit here.

In the past few weeks there seems to be a small change taking place. I think a few more of the parents at my children's school are actually starting to wonder what it is about me, and we'll see. The nice people might finally triumph over all of the nastiness I've experienced. It looks like I might be accepted, after all. Wow. I guess if you make yourself into a fixture for long enough, people will take notice.

Again, there are a few golden individuals who've stuck their necks out for me, and I must concede, and be thankful to them. There's one mother who's particularly helpful and friendly, and a few of my yoga teachers are also quite nice. There might be hope; there might just be some light on the horizon.

A French woman once approached me on the school playground, and to9ld me that I really ought to speak Dutch with my kids while we're at school. But I'm perfectly capable of going back and forth between languages. If someone wants to speak Dutch, I can, but when it comes to my kids, I speak English all the time. The speech therapist even backed me up in this decision, saying that it was "consequent," as they call it, bi-lingualism.

Once, waiting for my bags at Schipol, I spoke with a Dutch woman who had moved to Rhode Island with her husband, and had a family there. She told me that once her kids went to school, that she met people, and that everything was fine. I guess it's just taking longer with me. It's happening now, after four years of school. What a long wait. I think Americans are probably more open on the whole, but I was born there.

Old European societies might represent more of a bulwark for outsiders than the United States.

I also read an article that negative and positive experiences of the day are processed during various phases of sleep. If you short change yourself on sleep, you'll end up short changing yourself on processing the positive experiences, since that happens later in sleep. Depressed people also have too much "active," REM sleep, and are therefore more prone to fatigue. Negativity, depression, fatigue, more negativity. It's a snowball effect. I wonder how many years I'm taking off my life by staying here.

Maybe if I studied Buddhism I could learn not to allow all of these things to eat at me so much. Buddhist are good at that. I went to see a Tibetan Buddhist speak in Rotterdam. Even after being driven out of his homeland, he was still able to laugh, and experience positivity most of the time, it seemed. It can't be found in a pill. Let it role off you. If only I were a rubber band.

Someone came by and fixed our water heater. It's getting warmer in here already.

Some people simply belong in the comfort zone of their own cultures. Maybe I'm one of those people. It's been time to "go back" for a long time, but I don't know how to do that, either.