by Alice Rush
UNTIL I was well into my 20s, I had very limited exposure to people from other countries and other languages. I never met a Dutchman or heard their language. As a child I had friends who lived just up the road in my very rural neighborhood who spoke French at home, and they occasionally had visitors from other countries. In hindsight, I am embarrassed to say that it was always strange and uncomfortable to me. The visitors spoke another language and didn’t look like me.
Instead of being interesting, different people were scary. Other countries and cultures were so insulated from my world. I used to chalk it up to my father and his experiences on foreign fronts during World War 2, memories that he understandably strongly disliked and later avoided, but that is only because I don’t know any other reason. Maybe it is just that my family, like many other American families, had limited exposure to lives different from their own. Maybe it comes down to ignorance.
FAST forward thirty years or so, and now I’m married to a Dutchman, whose parents lived through that same war but on occupied land. With him, I have traveled outside America several times. Friends and family get a good laugh when I try out my Dutch language skills because my mouth falls the wrong way, receding to the German that I took in high school. Still, I can usually follow a simple Dutch conversation, noting facial expressions to try to determine what I can’t translate.
A difference I see when socializing in Holland, is how people speak of their friends or family in other countries, or the politics of other countries. For the Dutch, all these other lands and experiences are only a drive or a train ride away. In contrast, America is an ocean removed from most other places.
We’re fast approaching 100 years since the end of WW2, but fighting in other parts of the world continues. In spite of the Internet and all forms of sharing, ignorant or closed-minded people remain. There is still division, and maybe there will always be. I’m blessed to have met people from many different countries now, all with interesting stories about their lives or backgrounds. That’s what meeting and marrying a Dutchman has done for me: it has finally internationalized me.
I KNOW a woman from Iran. She always keeps her hair covered, and it accentuates her beautiful dark eyes. Her extended family is still facing adversity in the Middle East. Watching her face as she told me her story about how and why she came to America, we both teared up.
The stories of those visitors that my friends had when I was just a child may have been similar. Now with some adult understanding, I know that even though we speak differently, we can still share our lives. An open mind breaks down barriers. Communication is more than just your ears and your voice. When you open your heart and mind you can feel a bit of someone else’s pain, and with your eyes you can see theirs speaking volumes.
* Alice is a Maine realtor and a licensed helicopter and fixed wing pilot. She first met her Dutch husband in Maryland in 2005, and married him four years later.
