Adult TCK waving hello
Hi everyone,
I’m Maartje, which is a Dutch name. Non-Dutch people best pronounce it as March with ah at the end. I’m 37 (38 next week) and I live in Canada now. My parents are Dutch and started traveling for my dad’s work (hotels) when I was 4. We lived in Puerto Rico, Florida, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and occasionally stayed in Holland for a few months in between countries until I was 12. I never could settle in Holland, though I ended up staying there until I was 27 when I met my British husband while traveling in Ireland. A year later we moved to Canada where we are raising our two sons who have Dutch, British and Canadian passports.
I’ve been reading along here for a good while now, thanks to Brice’s invaluable efforts in getting this community happening and grooving! Brice, I’ve told you this in email and I’ll tell it to the world: you rock!!
I first heard the term TCK and ATCK about two years ago, and I cried for a good two weeks while reading everything I could put my hands on. It made sense of my world and gave me peace. I’d come to terms with my travel-related quirks already, but to see them in a larger context was so liberating!
I’m married to a very non-TCK partner, for whom it was the first time to move out of his country of origin. It sure has been an interesting journey for us, and what connects us is his openness to the world and to Life, and his eagerness to learn and grow. Our parenting style is unique and from the Canadian cultural perspective somewhat ‘unconventional’, since my parenting and partnering beliefs are not “Dutch” or static. Who I am, who I am as a mother, as a spouse, as a woman… all have been shaped by my childhood and the role models I encountered along the way. Combine that with the British culture my husband is used to, and that makes for an interesting mix. We chose to hold the kids back for a year before starting school so that they had a better sense of self before being immersed into a cultural setting that was not only foreign to them, but also to us. After all, we (my partner and I) are foreigners in a country that our environment considers ‘home’ to our children.
Okay - that’s me in a nutshell, and I am happy to be here, to be inspired and enriched by the vastness of experience and cultural richness you all bring to the table.
April 26th, 2008 at 11:43 pm
Welcome Maartje
When your kids grow older I’m sure they will be relieved that one of their parents is a TCK. How cool is it to be able to talk to your own mom about TCK problems?
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April 27th, 2008 at 10:43 pm
Thanks Ayako!
We consider our kids to be CCKs, cross-cultural kids, since they don’t have one culture that they can claim is theirs. They can’t even say their mother is “Dutch” since I’m such a mixed bag. So we hope that the world will be their home. That they will see that there’s beauty to all aspects of life and love, and that ignorance is just a state of confusion about the true value of life.
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April 28th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
welkommen maartje
where in canada are you? i am in mtl, i think we need to do a lil tck (re)union in cananda, vat se jy?
warona
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April 28th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
Hi Warona, dank je! It sounds as though you’ve lived in or spent a good amount of time in Southern Africa - vat se jy sounds Afrikaans, is that correct? I’m in BC, on Van Isle - about as far west as you can get in Canada
And as for a reunion, I’m pretty bound by finances, but I’d love to meet up with TCKs in Canada.
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April 30th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
maartje,
your father must be multilingual and i am assuming you are, too? hehe 
it was cool to read that you were raised to a father who’s worked at hotels.
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April 30th, 2008 at 11:01 pm
Hi Miyon, yes, my father speaks Dutch, English, French and German. I speak Dutch and English fluently (I honestly don’t know which is my first language) , get around well in German and French (though don’t ask me to write either of them!!) and I understand Spanish (mostly because I also had French and Latin in high school so that common roots of nouns and verbs remain recognizable). I find that when I am exposed to Arabic, I recall and recognize more than I thought possible. It’s too bad I didn’t have a chance to continue speaking Arabic after we moved back to Holland.
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May 1st, 2008 at 4:25 am
aww..that is so awesome Maartje~
plus Arabic? wow!! ^-^b (<- thumbs-up)
it’s impressive you and your father know all these Romantic and Germanic languages
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June 22nd, 2008 at 12:55 pm
Hello Maartje!
As a fellow Dutch person, I thought I’d post a reaction. Similar background, though my dad was in oil rather than hotels. I also never could quite settle in Holland, not because I dislike the country, just because it never quite fit. Still, do you ever get the Dutch food cravings? Mine aren’t too bad, but every now and then I just need to eat some drop, or Dutch cheese, or genuine poffertjes… I make my friends and family send it over or tell them that I’m not allowing them into the country (I live in Ireland now) if they don’t bring along some goodies.
Anyways, nice to meet you.
rgds Areke
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