15 Years in the Netherlands: England is Like A House I Once Lived In

I piled everything I owned into the back of a borrowed Dutch police trailer and moved across the North Sea to live in a country I knew little about. I left England, my birth country, and started life as an expat. Fifteen years later England is no longer home; it feels like a house I used to live in.  

In the streets outside this house I once lived in I see images from my childhood, of tennis matches played on the road and I hear the laughter that only children caught up in a fantasy world of play can make. I walk in the front door to be flooded with memories.

There's a hallway where we hung our coats and kicked off our shoes, but now I see only unfamiliar footwear and coats that I would never wear.

The kitchen is in the same place it always was but it has been revamped and smells of food I never ate.

The living room, albeit with a different shade on the walls and a new carpet, bears a resemblance to the room we occupied as a young family, gathered around the TV or chatting about our day.

And yes, the bathroom is almost the same, looking just a little grubbier and more worn than it once did, and there are toiletries littered on the shelves that I do not use.

The garden brings back fond memories of English summers, BBQ’s with friends and lazy afternoons on the lawn. However, my parents never planted that row of conifers, and roses blossom where we used to keep patio chairs. The shed we kept our bikes in has gone completely.

I know it is a house I have lived in, it breeds familiarity, but someone came in and redecorated. Somebody rearranged the furniture, planted new shrubs and flowers and erased the little touches that made it my place. I know my way around but it is clear I don’t live there anymore. It's not my home. It's been a long time since it has been my home. 

When we drive through the rolling English countryside I realise I miss hills and a landscape that provides variety. When I am pushing my trolley around the one-stop supermarket, it reinforces my yearning to shop every week surrounded by such choice and variety, surrounded by foodstuffs I grew up with.  When we pass a traditional English pub, tucked back on a country road tempting the passer-by with Sunday roast dinners, I cannot deny happy memories flood back, and the desire to have such a stop-off on my doorstep again is overwhelming.

Yet the overwhelming truth is this, when I am back in England I feel like a visitor. It is no longer my home. People I love live there but I no longer have a base there. When we get into our car and make our way back to Dover to catch the Eurotunnel back over to mainland Europe, or head to Harwich to get the ferry back to Hoek van Holland I know I am heading home.

Expat Life: Loving and Leaving Where You Live

I have just finished reading Global Mama by Melissa Dalton-Bradford (you can find a review here) and all the way through the book I was struck by the sense of 'home'; her family's ability to set down roots wherever they ended up living. They didn't just live physically in new countries, new places, new houses; they lived with their heart and soul and I had the feeling that every place they left meant leaving a little part of themselves there. Truly global living.

Reading Dalton-Bradford's account of living in Norway and the cultural differences they experienced when the family made a move to Paris made me think about my own sense of home.

I take for granted now that I live in the Netherlands, that I live in a Dutch house, in a Dutch street surrounded by locals. But what does that actually mean? It's the little things around us that make somewhere unique to live. It's the secret corners, the special items of furniture or memorabilia that travel with us, it's the normality of our days in a place. It's the waves from neighbours, the familiar faces scraping ice from the cars parked in the street in winter.

As each day passes in a house, in a town, in a country we take everything around us more and more for granted. Nothing seems particularly special anymore because we see, touch or pass it every day. Only by leaving a place do we see it's true place in our heart. Only by moving on do we appreciate all the little things that make a place special, make a place our home. And when you are not constantly on the move it is easy to forget all that.

Reading Global Mom reminded me that I was busy with a Love Where We Live journal at one point but never finished capturing the place I call home. A journal about where you live is never really finished of course - things change, you redecorate, you renew, you refresh rooms - and more importantly every day you live in a home you make new memories. But I was busy capturing the essence of the place I call home. I was busy with photos of the room we gather to eat, where we scrub our teeth, where the children play.

What makes a home a real home though is not the wallpaper, the curtains you've meticulously chosen to match the sofa, nor the well thought out shade of the woodwork's paint, but the people you share your home with.

Home is made special by the things you do together - the Friday night rituals, the lazy Sunday morning breakfasts, the ordinariness of the morning rush out of the front door. What do festive holidays look like in your home? How would all that change if you lived somewhere else? Expat life is certainly about change - from the minor to the major, from the little day to day things to life changing events. And in all that our home is the foundation, it holds things that are familiar and dear to us. It holds things that capture our memories, whether we realise it or not.

There are things scattered around my Dutch home that I brought with me from England and every time they catch my eye I am cast back to a previous life, even if for only a brief moment.

There are even special memories in the choosing of a house - the memories of picking the house that we currently live in have emotions intrinsically entwined around them. We bought a home for our future. We bought a place we could make our own, put our stamp on. Then, back in 2002, there were two of us. Now there are five of us. We have grown our family in this house. As my Love Where We Live journal reminds me the house I live in, the place I call home is special because:

"We are growing into beautiful people here."

Each day we are growing as a family, and this home is the place where my three sons have grown from babies into toddlers and are growing into school-going boys. It's their base, the place they feel safe and secure. And whilst I was reading Global Mom, it became clear to me that this house we live in is a shell for our family, for our lives, but what goes on inside will be the same wherever we should lay down roots, whichever house, street, town or country we should live in. We will take something of this place with us when we eventually move, not the physical stuff, but the emotional and cultural parts of life here in the Netherlands.

Moving away from this Dutch street, this town, or even this country wouldn't take away the memories, the love that has encased us in our home over the last twelve years, the people we have become living our Dutch life.

Imagine tomorrow having to leave the place you currently call home -  what little part of you would you leave behind? What would you take with you from the life you have lead there to your new home?

It strikes me that the furniture would all be replaceable, there'd be no tears shed about leaving the carpets we spent time deliberating over behind, but the moments we have spent getting on with life in our home would be irreplaceable, unique. These moments are currently the daily occurrences that seem so average, so ordinary and uninteresting -  the day to day that hardly seems worth noting in a beautiful journal. But I am off to do just that - because I know one day I will realise the value of all these family moments that make up day to day life in our average Dutch home in a Dutch street, in the middle of the Netherlands. I will come to realise that we have lived in this house with our hearts and our souls. And I will also realise that we will leave a little of ourselves in this home when we leave it.

Pre and Post Expat Life: My Life Part I & II

The words of Nelson Mandela's sum up perfectly a feeling that I grappled with for the first time a few years ago whilst visiting England in the summertime.

I was taking a trip down memory lane with my sons, touring round the places I used to live, and the schools I once attended. It struck me that there was a distinctive gap between my past and my present. I struggle to get both parts to correlate.

Reconciling my 'British past' with my 'expat in the Netherlands' present is a task far beyond me. 

With the gift of hindsight I know now that moving to the Netherlands meant the start of 'My Life Part II'. I have contact with family and friends that played a large role in 'My Life Part I' but few of those actually know what it is like to be living out 'My Life Part II', what my daily life in the Netherlands is like. And the other way round; my Dutch family and friends have no connection to my British past. 

There are no links to the life that lies behind me. There is no red thread holding it all together. 

At certain times, like the occasional trips down memory lane when I am back in England, 'My Life Part I' and 'My Life Part II' collide. My Dutch children and Dutch husband are sat in the car driving around the roads and landmarks of my past. They see my childhood memories for themselves (if they manage to stay awake that is). But the two parts of my life are so different it is hard to comprehend how they make up the same life. They are world's apart. Or countries apart in any case. The colliding of the two parts happens so infrequently it is hard to grasp how it fits together. It's like a flawed jigsaw puzzle.

For a number of years now, whenever I am back in England, I entertain doubts about whether I could live permanently in my birth country again. I have changed. It's no longer feels like home. I feel more foreign in England than I do in the Netherlands. 

When I first moved to the Netherlands every trip I took back to England was heart wrenching. At the end of every visit back then I resented having to get on the return flight back to Schiphol. I had to force myself to go back to the Netherlands and leave what felt like my home.

These days when we are making the return trip from England to the Netherlands I feel safe in the knowledge that I am returning home. A Dutch border agent, sitting in his cramped booth at Schiphol airport in his smart blue uniform, put a huge smile on my face when he checked my passport as I re-entered Dutch territory. He looked up at me, matched my face to my passport photo, smiled and said "Welkom thuis." Welcome home indeed.

My home had moved.

My anchor had moved.

I was aware of the transition as it took place - my sense of home shifting from England to the Netherlands right before my eyes. We were driving on the M25 motorway around London making our way back to Harwich's ferry terminal after a visit to my father and instead of feeling laden with sadness at leaving my family I had the consolation that at least we were heading home.

Back to my safe haven.

Back to 'My Life Part II'.

Over to You: Do you feel like there is a pre and a post expat you? Can you reconcile the two parts?

Relocation Advice from a 3 Year Old

Photo Credit: Chris Schauflinger

My three year old declared today that we need a new house. I asked him why he thought that and his response was simply,

"Sometimes our house is a mess."

Obviously that's not true. Not all the time.

Okay, admittedly sometimes our house is a mess. It's clean (thanks to weekly help) but it can be a big mess. Usually between the hours of seven in the morning and seven in the evening when there are three messy munchkins up and about.

So, anyway, to escape the mess (which I add he is at least a third responsible for if not more) his solution was to get a new house.

Then he added,

"We can take our house apart and then take it to France and put it back together again."

So, from what I gather, if we lived in France our house wouldn't be a mess, and it's not our house per se he takes offence to.

So there you have it, my three year old relocation specialist. We expats have been making things much harder for ourselves than we need to. Remember these wise words next time you have to relocate.

Help, My House is Shrinking!

I have lived in my current home for ten years. It's a milestone and a time to reflect. A decade ago there were two of us living in this house. Now there are five of us. And a whole bunch of toys, and a double pram, and a play house in the garden..... in short, our house seems to have shrunk before our eyes.

For the full story pop over to Amsterdam Mamas and read my article "Our Shrinking Home".