Putting Down Roots

“There are two lasting bequests we can give our children:  one is roots.  The other is wings.”  William Hodding Carter, II. 

I am a rather haphazard gardener.  While I love to be out digging in the dirt, I am likely in my enthusiasm to plant things too close together, or in an inconvenient spot.  This means I often spend much of my gardening time digging things up, dividing, separating, re-planting. There is nothing quite so vulnerable looking as a formerly strong, steady and upright plant that has been dug up and is hanging, roots dangling, from my gloves, waiting to be safely and carefully planted in its new spot.

In Pennsylvania, where winters are cold and the spring is wet, plants need roots that go deep into the ground and hold them steady.  Think Oak trees.  Here in Singapore...well lets just say plants have a few more options.  On my first visit here, I was amazed at the sight of trees whose trunks appeared to start 10 or 15 feet off the ground, roots exposed to the air, sending new tendrils out to find a place to plant themselves away from the main tree.  These trees are also the happy hosts of many epiphytes, plants that live non-parasitically on trees and other plants.  

A couple of months after arriving, I was running through the Botanic Garden here, watching the wind blow some particularly long and dangling roots swinging from the limbs of a tree when it struck me.  These plants are just like us!  Me and my expat compatriots have been dropped into this place, roots forged somewhere else dangling freely, reaching out for something, anything, to hold onto.

I will admit, the months leading up to the move and the first few weeks here are still in many ways a bit of a blur.  The process of uprooting and moving left me literally feeling a sense of vertigo, of spinning wildly through space.  Our roots in Pennsylvania were deep, friends, family, community, we knew who we were.

Here, these things are much less certain, especially for the person in the family known as the “trailing spouse.”  Many people don’t like the implications of this term, arguing that they are equal and enthusiastic partners in this life choice.  However, once the person with the job is digging into work, and the kids are making friends at school, there is a sense of being at loose ends...roots trailing.  

Some jump into volunteer work, others join clubs, or sign up for classes, some (like me) do a little bit of everything.  And do you know what?  It works.  The first connections are the obvious ones, find a grocery store, find a doctor.  I was also lucky early on to find a good friend who is game to tromp all over town and explore.  It is much easier to figure out strange things if you have an equally confused buddy.  Our conversations for the first couple months were frequently punctuated by exclamations of “Oh, I am glad you said that!  I thought I was the only one!”  

I have also been overwhelmed by the generosity of people who seem to really want to help me feel settled:  a mom and nurse who has been here for more than 10 years who gave me thoughtful recommendations for doctors, an acupuncturist and a great Thai restaurant; a friend of a friend back in Pennsylvania who invited me to join her for lunch and introduced me to a group of interesting women; the checkout ladies at the grocery store who made sure I didn’t pay too much for the overpriced imported produce (and who goaded me into finding my local community center so I could get my “Passion” discount card); too many people to count who opened up their address books, iPhones and Blackberrys and asked “what do you need” before sharing phone numbers for hairdressers, tailors, shops, restaurants; and the one or two seasoned expat spouses who looked at me thoughtfully and said “you are doing well, you will be fine.”  

So, here it is, a new community.  Not the firm solid kind built on years of knowing each other and working side by side, but a different one, based on a shared experience and a desire to help each other along.  These roots aren’t deep, they aren’t even planted in the ground anymore, but they are strong.  Combined with the ties to the amazing friends and family back home who never left me feeling alone out here on the other side of the world, I find I feel sure footed and firmly planted, right where I am.