Four Worlds

As I considered what to write for this, the final column of Four Worlds, I thought at first of stressing how bicultural marriage plus life in a third country, in…

Do I need to simplify, get back to basics, stop being complicated? Just be a mom, or just work? Focus on one place and language, or the other, and stop…

Our first grader looks at a welcome sign near the school library. The sign features cartoon drawings of several children, each with different features. Our daughter asks which child I…

We wonder when U.S. children see stories composed in the dozens of major languages (and thousands of “minor”), or the 190-odd other countries. Books would help them do this pleasurably.…

Is a house that every occupant has left still a home?

Whatever the reasons for hiring, helpers are ubiquitous: we see them biking to shops, pushing strollers, walking dogs, sweeping sidewalks, supervising children on playgrounds, and watering plants. Many a home…

But the words themselves, and the media silence, show such robust disinterest in Thai deaths that they make me wonder: deep down, do we care only for the lives of…

Mom visited us last month for the first time since our second child was born in 2011. It was rare to have her; we migrate to see family once to…

A fact of expat life—one both liberating and maddening—is living next door to local conflict but feeling helpless to quell it. I have no vote in Thailand. I have lived…

The closest we came to eating with clan took place on November 17, at a potluck for international school faculty. Expat teachers from several countries feasted on a day chosen…

Our two-year-old speaks more Thai than Mommy or Daddy, and knows it. She turns it off when only we are around.