DutchInLaw

I often see comments and questions in the expat facebook group from people who have just moved to Rotterdam from another country. I had a chance to adjust gradually - 5 years in a village in the north of Holland, then a year and a half in a town nearby Rotterdam. By the time I actually moved into this metropolis I was fluent in Dutch and knew my way around the city. But to come here directly... that could be quite a shock.

I left the helmet in the hall, put my toddler to bed with extra careful kisses. Then I opened a message to my husband. I wanted to text, "I'm done here. Let's move back home." But I couldn't. Because we are home. And whatever the USA or Poland or other countries used to be to us, they're not home now.

“Hello!” the painter calls cheerfully. Pippin hides his head in my shoulder, peeping out as I walk closer and say hello back. The painter dusts the blue doorway lightly with a clean brush. Then he offers the brush to Pippin. “For you?” “Do you want to help paint?” I tease my little boy.

This month some of my family are coming to visit (so exciting!), which means that I get to show them around my DutchInLaw life. It would be fascinating to introduce them to more DutchInLaws – foreigners married to Dutch spouses – because everyone has a different way of interacting with Dutch culture. This is mine. There's the inside world: I drink tea, read and write, and take care of my little family. There's the outside world: I bike around town, have coffee with friends, and take Pippin to the shops and the library.

Poster for sale. Inspiration for free. "Be yourself, don't try to be normal." Good thought for those of us who never totally fit in.

Instagram. The virtual home of hipsters who drink organic green smoothies, display nail art and Crossfit abs, and spend hours writing songs in Starbucks. Since I do none of the above, I obviously do not belong on Instagram. Or so I thought.

I was reading "Insurgent" today, after having seen "Divergent" last summer. Both are treasures. I love it when books and films leave me wondering about a new angle on my own life. Taking the aptitude test online, I wasn't surprised to see that I'd fall under the Divergents as well, instead of fitting into one of the normal factions. My answers were a mix of Amity ('I am Peaceful'), Erudite ('I am Intelligent') - and then either Dauntless ('I am Brave') or Abnegation ('I am Selfless') as a third. Taking a few more quizzes, for fun, led to the same result, or when 'Divergent' wasn't a permutation, I would get the other answers; Candor ('I am Honest') was the only faction that wouldn't welcome me, apparently. Amity and Erudite were the highest, but what really made me stop to think was that things have changed in the last few years.

The elderly lady in the elevator with me trailed off, then finished, "Nou, ja, zo gaat het." So it goes. I nodded and added a sympathetic "Helaas," back. She said she'd lived in our apartment building about 14 years. I'd guess she was in her sixties or seventies, and could picture her moving in with her husband, making a home here. We talked about how beautiful the view is from up high... maybe she and he sat on their balcony and drank coffee together, the way D and I do. Maybe they had hanging plants to substitute for the beautiful gardens in their previous house. It's rare to see a bare garden here, much less a messy one; block after block of houses overflow with flowers or are neatly tiled and decorated. I found six beautiful pink geranium plants in the dumpster room downstairs the other day, and brought them upstairs to be repotted and talked to. D laughed and asked if we "achter de geraniums wonen" - if we "live behind the geranium...

I looked around me as I walked, thinking about what to write. How do you put images, smells, and feelings into words? Especially random, disconnected moments in days like that one. Above me in an apartment building, two women in Muslim headscarves sat on a balcony and watched the world - the calm, sunny for the moment, world in the Netherlands. How many thousands of kilometers from home are they? Or have their families lived here for generations. Next to them sat a solid 'quad'- a four wheeled road-ready vehicle. What a picture that would have made, but I didn't have my camera with me. I kept walking. Bikers in tight-fitting spandex - 'snelfietsers' - passed me by. One, paused to check his bike, smiled at me; a girl in rolled up jeans and a tank top, who decided on a whim that the day was too pretty to waste and was walking the 9 kilometers home from her parents-in-law. Her Dutch parents-in-law. Her own parents were hundreds of kilometers and an ocean away, no...