Living in Another Country

 

Not sure why, but I started thinking about - oh lots of things - today.

I was in my 40s when I learned about the 'curse' May You Live in Interesting Times.  It took me a while to figure out how negative it might be to have 'interesting' things going on around you all of the damn time.

And here we are in 2022.  Interesting...

As part of my musing I thought about why I might be sympathetic to immigrants.  It's true I read voraciously when I was a child.  As I read I didn't discriminate and look only for books about people like me but read everything I could get my hands on.  

My parents came from European roots and so did all of our neighbours.  My mother, of French Canadian stock.  Her ancestors arrived in Gaspe in the 1700s sometime.  My father was German by language, although their immigration papers said Belarus as their port of departure.  I have no way of knowing how they wound up in Belarus - or when.  But they spoke German as their first language, arrived in California to stay with my grandfather's brother, eventually making their way into Canada by way of North Dakota.  Two of dad's sisters were born on the prairies and dad was born here in mid-BC in 1919.  

Neighbours came from England, German background, Polish, Ukrainian.  There were a few Scots, too.

So I was familiar with a variety of different cultures - all European based.  I heard lots of different languages being spoken around me.

At the age of 12 I acquired a Swedish pen friend.  We exchanged blue flimsies every few weeks.  And we kept writing, even after grade 7 ended until eventually I suggested to my parents that I take a gap year and go to Sweden to meet her and see something of the world.  My year after grade 12 was spent working every hour I could and saving every penny.  As the year progressed my pen friend and I made arrangements for me to arrive.

In those days flying was dreadfully expensive, especially to go to a country like Sweden which wasn't really a tourist destination, so I looked around for other options, finally settling on a freighter company that took passengers.  They had a regular route from Montreal to Norway and given that all my meals were included in the 10-12 day journey, it wasn't horrible in terms of cost.  And I could take the passenger train from my town to Montreal and stay with my aunt until it was time to board the ship.

In the end departure was delayed several days due to a longshoreman's strike, but they let the 4 passengers board and fed them.  It made the actual stay on board longer but I had sent a telegram to my friend letting her know my updated arrival date.  In the end I actually arrived two days earlier than expected as we had a bit of 'weather' that pushed us across the Atlantic faster than expected.

All of which is leading up to the fact that I lived in Örebrö, Sweden for the better part of four  months.

I never did learn how to speak Swedish.  I could learn nouns, but the grammar defeated me.  And besides, I was living on the university campus and the students staying there over the summer were happy to practice their English.  And chuckle at my attempts to actually speak Swedish.  It became easier to just learn a few key phrases and employ a whole lot of facial expressions and body language.

It was somewhat surprising to me that I had a very European look about me.  As long as I kept my mouth shut, no one knew I wasn't Swedish.  Or French. I also looked older than my 19 years, which may have had something to do with it.  I don't know.

Anyway, having the experience of living in a different culture with different expectations, norms, standards AND language, I gained an enormous amount of respect for all those people I had known in my life who spoke with a heavy (or light) accent, moving to Canada (or from Quebec to an English first province) and managed to survive.  Even thrive.

So when people talk about 'those' people who are a different culture, different language, different skin tone, different whatever?  I simply cannot understand how or why people don't think they are worthy of the utmost respect.  Because I have had the experience of living somewhere other than Canada, in a different language, and I KNOW how difficult it is.  I had the protection of looking like I belonged, while so many have some kind of obvious 'difference' about them.  And I still struggled to get around, go shopping, feed myself, entertain myself.  I had an incredible opportunity to observe without being observed.  To take time to think about what I was seeing and how it was different - or  not - to what I was used to experiencing.  I felt very much like a round peg in a square hole.  *I* was the different one.  And it was hard.

In my town we still have a lot of immigrants, new ones, some of them fleeing very terrible conditions, trying to deal with the stress of the terrible conditions they managed to escape, the desperate flight, hopefully to safety, then winding up in a country that has cold winters, different religions, different language(s), different foods, just...different.

I respect them all.  I think they are brave beyond most Canadians understanding.

I wish I wasn't seeing the growth of the alt-right here, too.  My father, with his German affiliation, still served in the Canadian Army during WWII to fight fascism/Nazis.  He didn't talk much about the war.  He dealt with PTSD (as it is now called) and was sickened by what he saw in Europe.  I am pretty sure he wasn't part of the liberation of any concentration camps, but he was part of D-Day and the army that went on to help liberate Holland.  

In the core of my being, I know that all humans are part of the same family.  Right now I'm having a hard time dealing with the growth of fascism around the world.  I have no idea how to stop it or understanding of the people who think they are better than someone else for whatever reason they have come up with.

I guess I just got lost in my thoughts about all of these things and chose to write it out as I usually do when I'm trying to figure something out.

I'm sad to say I have come to no conclusions.   Except that I would really like some boring times.  No pain.  No stress.  No wondering what will happen.  Just...peace and love for all and some 'boring'.

Please and thank you.

Regular programing will resume...maybe tomorrow...