New Year realizations

Zoe was playing a pretend game where she was visiting with her doll. Her play is often now done in English, which she has finally realized that I speak and understand too. "I'm visiting you here in Copenhagen", Zoe said, and as the most natural thing in the world added: "we live in New York". I laughed and asked her if she knew how much longer we were going to stay here and she held up a full hand, "this many days". I corrected and told her we were going back to Stockholm in just three days, something she was excited to hear.

The conversation made me ponder (yet again) of the way Zoe is growing up with several homes, several cities and countries, several languages. She adapts easily and seem very much at home at my parent's place (which is the only continuous home she has known) but she also longs for being at home with me, which I like to see as her main home. I hope that I can provide for a secure childhood by being a stable person and make sure she has stable people in her life (in addition to her parents), like her uncles and my girlfriends, not to forget the obvious people like her grandparents and her family on her dad's side. But I have several friends who grew up in many different countries due to their parent's job relocations and their candid portrayals and sometimes psychological issues are not solely positive. The talk about issues of having no roots, of being the odd one out always, and not being able to have deep relationships. I sometimes wonder how I can do this to Zoe? I know that having a base, both culturally and geographically is core for a happy and secure childhood, at least the books say so. On the other hand, I don't socialize with anyone from my childhood apart from family; my best friend I met in high school. The only reason we are still friends today is that we (particularly her) were diligently writing letters to each other across the Atlantic for the three years I spent in college in Florida after graduation (yep, I'm that old, the internet was not readily available to us). But one thing is people, another thing is place. How much does place mean for growing up? How much does stable friends mean? Are friendships more valuable when they wane themselves as opposed to being interrupted through forced separation? Perhaps not in the overall picture but a disruption is never healthy for kids. I often recount Zoe's explanation of why things were okay when I was hating my job a couple of months ago: "But mom, I don't work, I go to daycare and I really like my daycare". It was that simple in her world. And it made me suck it up and realize that I might hate my job occasionally but Zoe's happiness is just as important to my happiness.

After playing visiting Zoe went back to her normal story telling and singing and dancing. I comforted myself with us going back on Tuesday after a very successful long long holiday at my parents house where we all got along brilliantly. Hopefully that will be a good memory for her too.