Third-culture

It finally happened last night, but I wasn't expecting it.

I told Emerson I would make biscuits with our soup for dinner, and there was a pause and a blank look, and he finally said "what's that?"  I tried to describe the food that I used to make at least weekly, back in the land of ovens,  one of his favorites.  He couldn't figure out what I meant, and shook his head and went back to campaigning for me to make chapatis.

Then at dinner (and bread with our soup, since I didn't have time for biscuits or chapatis), Hibiscus said they sang a different blessing song at school.  I replied that there were lots of different blessings songs, and they sang a different one yet at Emerson's school in America.  "They did?" he asked me, and he couldn't remember it, and it didn't really matter.

It's not just memories that are fading.  It's a slightly different way of phrasing, saying "this one is color red," it's calling out "wawa" as a playground insult.  

He's not an American boy in an apartment in Ggaba any more.  He's becoming -- what is the new phrase? -- a third-culture kid, something not quite African but not quite American any more.  

In a way, that's what I hoped for him when we came here, that he would gain something beyond his American-ness.  But now I realize that it's here, and I'm a little bit sad.  Maybe it's because I now realize he loses something as well as gains.  Maybe because he's gone somewhere I can't follow; I can change what I do, but I'm too old to change what I expect as normal.  My little boy is moving on.