Editor’s Note: Have you read “Embassy Wife” yet? Katie Crouch’s novel was one of our 2021 summer reading recommendations, but it’s good all year round!
See below for our Q&A about how her life inspired this fun and thought-provoking read.
There are obvious, predictable downsides to living overseas.
You can brace for homesickness on a level that feel like a chronic stomachache. You’ll romanticize all the missing comforts of home — in my case, the smell of Downey fabric softener. You’ll count the days until your holiday visits or permanent repatriation.
But, nobody tells you about irreversible personality shifts you must balance with the utmost care when you do get “back home,” to avoid coming across like an arrogant ass.
I have behaved like a jerk — a big one, at times — when returning home after a cumulative six years spent abroad for my husband’s career with Nike. I’m going to share some of my unfortunate missteps with you, as a cautionary tale to help prevent others from behaving as poorly.
My family has moved around a lot for my husband’s job. We try to focus on what we stand to gain — usually, it’s financial.
But, inevitably, you always lose things in a move. Some of it is just stuff — books and kitchen gadgets — but some of it is more ephemeral. Things you can’t hold in your hand or pack in a box. Things like identity, community, career, and financial independence.
I’ve spent some time mired in this sense of loss; believe me, it’s not a place you want to dwell indefinitely. My new novel, Em’s Awful Good Fortune, based on my life as a trailing spouse, explores the struggles and compromises between personal goals and family needs.
Ultimately, it’s a story about redefining oneself.
All it took was Year 2 of a global pandemic, combined with a great deal on Amazon Prime Day, for me to finally break down and purchase a Kindle e-reader. (I may have been the last person in Seattle without one.) The ability to borrow library books digitally is hugely useful for my nomadic lifestyle, but I still prefer print media — even though my husband rolls his eyes alarming back into his head at my teetering piles of magazines, newspapers, hardcovers and paperbacks. Taking up precious luggage space, no less!
In my defense, however, I often meet interesting people on our travels through the ice-breaker of comparing what we’re physically reading — something you can’t very well do when you’re staring at glowing screens — and my load gets lighter as I bequeath my dead tree materials to my new friends or leave them behind the next crop of hotel guests to enjoy.
Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic hit, I’ve gravitated towards historical fiction and memoirs, especially with descriptive language about the food and scenery. When considering a selection of summer reading recs for or about trailing spouses, here’s a diverse list with something for everyone, with links to their Goodreads descriptions:
Disclaimer: I am a former trailing spouse. My husband and I separated a few years ago, shortly after our move from Lyon, France to Geneva, Switzerland.
We are still very much a family, however, and my Ex lives up the street. But, if COVID-19 ever gets under control and he decides to move? I would not be faced, once again, with the question of closing up one life and inventing a new one wherever we land.
It’s not that this process has ever scared me. As a chronic expat, in the course of my 52 years, I’ve lived in 15 different cities, in nine countries, on four continents. I became a trailing spouse mainly because I fell madly in love with my sexy, smart Ex — but probably also because it seemed so normal to move around the globe because of a man’s job. My dad was a U.S. Foreign Service officer and my ex is a humanitarian medical doctor and epidemiologist who has worked with Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF).
First, I followed my father. Then, my husband. Now, I find it really exciting to ask only myself: Where next?
My journey as a trailing spouse began 18 years ago, when my husband accepted a postdoc position in Ontario, Canada after earning his Ph.D. in computer science from Germany’s Karlsruhe University.
I had been working as a process management and business development manager for Observer AB, an international media monitoring company, for almost a decade. I was on an amazing career trajectory with great colleagues, a good salary, and no shortage of exciting and challenging projects. As much as I loved my job, however, I had always hoped to live abroad again after getting a taste for it during two semesters spent exploring London and Paris.
Also, since our Canadian adventure was supposed to be limited to two years (the usual postdoctoral period), I viewed our relocation more like a sabbatical for myself and informed my parents that we would be back “before you know it.”
(Oops.)
One of the best parts of being a trailing spouse is stitching together an amazing tapestry of friends and family across different corners of the world.
Perhaps the worst part is the cruel distance when you most want to be near them — including when it’s time to say goodbye.
Earlier this year, I lost my dear friend Anne Doll in Seattle to appendix cancer, at the age of 40. Earlier this week, I lost my grandmother in Nicosia, Cyprus, at the age of 104. In both cases, I was thousands of miles away in Delhi, trying to push through my grief and guilt to continue parenting through this pandemic. (Our inability to observe communal mourning rituals during COVID lockdowns, even when mere driving distance away, has surely been a core element of our collective trauma this past year.)
Although I spent years writing for newspapers, including dozens of obituaries, and there’s so much to share about how two heavily-pregnant trailing spouses became fast friends during the hottest Seattle summer on record? I couldn’t bring myself to eulogize Anne. Fortunately, her husband has done that for us all. And, while I can’t be there for her memorial service this summer, at least my family’s absence will provide a few extra bedrooms for her college friends who fly in for the occasion.
For my grandmother, however, given that I missed her funeral by a matter of hours, I thought I could share my thoughts here. After all, she was a trailing spouse, too. (Whenever she had to list the different Cypriot city where each of her three children had been born, the reaction was usually something like, “Lady, did you have to have a kid each time you moved?” I think some of our readers can relate!)
“Where are you from?” “Where do you live?” “Where is your home?”
For a trailing spouse like me, common small-talk questions like that can feel pretty complicated!
I don’t feel that “home” can be confined to just one place or person. Home is Bellevue (where I live now), Bengaluru (where I spent my childhood), and Delhi (my husband’s hometown). Home is wherever I’m currently living with my wonderful partner — and home is where my roots are, too, where I spent a beautiful childhood filled with joy, laughter, adventure and play.
Throughout my life, I’ve often thought about my favorite childhood book, Mister Dog by Margaret Wise Brown. Mister Dog’s mantra was: “Just walk and sooner or later you’ll get somewhere.” (Or, as I learned it as a little girl growing up in Lyon, France, “Marche au hasard, tu arriveras bien quelque part.”)
It’s a silly phrase, but I’ve always loved Monsieur Chien’s way of thinking. There is so much to learn from a place — and from the journey that takes us there — when we are open to discovery. I’ve tried my best to embrace every opportunity for personal growth, in good times and in challenging ones, and go with the flow even when moving thousands of miles away with only short-term plans in place.
Continued from Part 1 of Nada’s story.
After graduating from the University of Southern California, earning my master’s degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism in New York, and starting my career in Los Angeles, I made a winter trip back to Cairo for a cousin’s wedding. My future husband happened to be in Cairo at the same time, visiting his family.
We had been introduced through mutual family friends several years earlier in California, but life took us our separate ways. Now that we had each completed our studies and gotten started in our careers, the timing was right. (The commonalities between us as Egyptians who had lived, studied, and worked abroad, were a good starting point for a matchmaking opportunity.) The Egyptian grapevine worked its magic, and the next thing I knew, I was meeting him for lunch.
We hit it off and saw each other almost every day during my two-week stay. There was one catch, though: I lived in Los Angeles and he lived in London. In a year, he would be moving even farther away: the United Arab Emirates (UAE), based in Dubai as a management consultant.