Where Are You From?

So, you're at college for the first time, just chilling on campus, getting to know people when someone asks THE QUESTION.  THE DREADED QUESTION.  The question that you can't thoroughly answer in the same two or three words everyone else in hearing distance can.  You want to change the subject, but you have a feeling that won't fly.  Oh, why did they have to ask it?

"Where are you from?"

"Where am I from"

Oh, four simple words that any normal American can answer succinctly.   Oh, maybe they'll have to take a few extra sentences to explain where it is in relation to other major cities, but you...there is no escape.  There is no good way to answer this one in short form.  To answer in short form is to tell a partial truth, so you make your decision.

"Union Grove, Wisconsin."

Your mouth for some reason gives this person the half-truth.  Yet it is completely true.  You are from Union Grove, Wisconsin, and right now, you don't have time to explain all about Japan.  You're not in the mood, so you just claim to be from America and explain you live about an hour from Milwaukee.  Case closed.

A few hours later, you're hanging out with other people, just getting to know them, when someone else turns to you.

"Where are you from?"

This time, though, you feel a bit more relaxed.  Maybe you don't care about this person oodling over you in awe as they discover the full truth.

"Japan."

It's still not the full truth, though, you think as you start answering the inevitable questions (including possibly the one about if you speak Chinese).  You are a proud Wisconsinite, supporter of the Green Bay Packers and the Milwaukee Brewers.  You don't mind being called a Cheesehead and believe dairy farms are normal, everyday sights.  You hate the Illinois and Minnesota teams with an instinctive passion, and Michigan stinks pretty bad too.

Finally, the whole story spills out.  "Well, really in America, I'm from Union Grove, Wisconsin.  It's about an hour away from Milwaukee...No, I live about six hundred miles north of Tokyo...Okinawa is not really Japan...Okay, cool, your uncle was in the navy...Well, actually I was born in Iron Mountain, Michigan.  Hey, who wants to play Foosball?"

Ugh...THE EXPLANATION.  I haven't met a single missionary kid who likes giving THE EXPLANATION over and over.  It is a truth universally acknowledged that a missionary kid meeting someone must be in want of a place to call "home."

"Home" is such a strange term.  The country our parents hail from is deemed our "home country," even if we have spent less than half our childhoods there.  We talk about "going home" for furlough, but when the time is over and we head back to the passport country, we also call this "going home."  Do not be surprised to hear an MK call a hotel room or the house where he is spending the night "home."  We are a group who has lost what that term means, other than a place we spend the night not strapped in by seat belts.  In short, everything but planes, cars, boats, buses, and trains is "home."

Examples of "not home"

A missionary kid is someone destined to feel like a foreigner no matter which country he is in.  Even if he lives in another English speaking country (the United Kingdom, for example), his family constantly speaks of family back in America.  Even if he exterminates all traces of his American accent and assimilates to the British culture, he will still find himself with some obligations to America.

WE ARE SORRY WE MADE THAT DOCTOR WHO REFERENCE!

American relatives will question why he has that accent, and if he can just turn it off while he's in America.  Would you ask your cousin from Texas to lose the accent while visiting you in Minnesota?  The MK will be told he is a 'MERICAN!  Yet he feels British, but because of American relatives, he can never fully be one.

MKs in countries where their native languages and/or skin colors don't match face even greater difficulties.  It is more than adapting an accent.  An MK in Germany will go to public school and speak German all day, but at home that night, she must lay aside her German language to speak English among her family.  She may look perfectly German on the outside, allowing her to physically blend in, but culturally she does not fit in here.  After returning to America for college, she discovers that this "homeland" is foreign to her.  She marries a missionary guy and they go and serve in Germany together, but they are still Americans, speaking English at home to their children.
Or perhaps, jump over to Peru, where an MK of Hispanic descent is home schooled and, for whatever reason speaks little Spanish (Okay, highly unlikely situation, but I'm trying to cover a lot of geographical regions here.).  Perhaps she can once again blend in physically, but as soon as she struggles to communicate, she is discovered to be an American.  Yet returning to America, she sometimes finds little in common with her "countrymen" and doesn't know where to go.  Yet she remains in America after graduation because this place just seems more "home" than Peru ever did, even though neither is ideal.

Now, let's take it to the Philippines.  Yes, let's do this about a red haired, green eyed MK in the Philippines.  He will never look like them, no matter how perfect his accent is, no matter how Filipino he acts--he will always stick out like a sore thumb.  Whether he chooses to settle in America or the Philippines or even a third country as an adult, he will always be a foreigner.

My passport says I am an American, and I am glad to be one.  But I am not an American.  But neither am I Japanese.  Where am I from?  What is the right answer?  Why can't this be simple?  I just want to say where I'm from without feeling like I'm lying or giving the longest answer in the history of mankind.

Perhaps this is the reason why the book "You Know You're an MK When..." starts out with, "You can't answer the question, 'Where are you from?'" and ends at number five hundred with, "Heaven is the only place you can call home."

MKs are a homeless, but not house-less, lot.  And maybe, just maybe, that's why we deem every place and no place as "home."