They say the things that captivate us when we are young often dictate (or ought to drive) our path in life.
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I know this much: when I was ten years old I wanted to go everywhere, do everything and meet everyone.
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I thought I wanted to be a travel agent, and then a foreign service officer or diplomat. I wanted to speak every language (my mother claims that was so that I wouldn’t possibly encounter someone I would be unable to talk to) and see all the things.
In 1987, we were living in Kingston, Jamaica. The basement of our house had a room that my Dad turned into his study. It had a giant desk on one side of the room and a smaller workstation on the other which was home to our prized Apple IIe, where I spent many hours playing In Search Of The Most Amazing Thing (which is a cultish 1980s computer video game well worth exploring in a dedicated, mega-geek post).
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Some years before, we lived in Paramaribo, Suriname (also known as Dutch Guiana). My Dad had learned a fair amount of Dutch, and somewhat arbitrarily made the decision to begin teaching it to me.
Mementos from Suriname (Dutch Guiana): one of my baby books in Dutch; animal picture blocks with Chinese characters (Suriname had a fairly significant Chinese population); a doll who flipped over to reveal a different version doll and skirts (this one is more worn out because I found her the more attractive of the two, and the skirts don’t flop properly on the other one because I never gave her a chance to be on display).
That yellow and blue spiral bound notebook that held my Dutch lessons is still in my possession. I was to listen to audio instruction on a cassette tape in a small tape recorder, and my notes on all the words and phrases I learned are impeccably neat. In stark contrast to any other samples of my writing from the era, those notes offer a testament to how seriously I took the study of language and how riveted I was by the way my world expanded in the process..
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I remember constantly pressing down the pause button and rewinding so I could hear the pronunciation of the words. As an avid reader, even then I recognized root words and the similarities between Germanic languages – the words felt familiar and made sense to me. Boek = book. Tafel = table. Got it. Even today, I can still share highly useful phrases in Dutch.
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At least, if I find myself in either of the two exact situations below, I can speak Dutch:
Dit is een boek. This is a book.Dit is een tafel. This is a table.Het boek legt op de tafel. The book lays on the table.De tafel staat in de eetkamer. The table stands in the dining room.Ik ben een Nederlander. I am a Dutchman.U bent geen Nederlander. You are not a Dutchman.In Nederland, spreekt men Nederlands. In the Netherlands, Dutch is spoken.
So, should you find yourself in a specific room attempting to identify objects for a Dutchman, I’m your gal.
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My normally fun Dad was an unforgiving instructor. Although we had lived overseas for much of my childhood by that time, those lessons in the basement study with him were my first true exposure to a foreign language. Not surprisingly, I adored it.
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By the time we moved to the U.S. at the end of 1988, I was ready for more. In the sixth grade at Orchard Middle School in Wenatchee, Washington (clearly a sharp contrast to the Caribbean we left behind), we had three options for voluntary foreign language study: French, German and Spanish. My basic grasp of Dutch made German feel far too familiar, and I was ready to try something new. I signed up for French with enthusiasm, and by high school I was also taking Spanish simultaneously.
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In college, my preferred state was in a Spanish, French or English class: exploring words, enjoying the way they rolled off my tongue, doing an internal jig when I got the accent just right.
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The University Core Requirements were a terrible inconvenience to me. There was little doubt in my mind that I was going to work in the trade of words, people and places. Surely there was someone who could handle all that pesky math and science for me? (For the record, there was: I married him.)
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And it turned out that when I was twenty, I still wanted to go everywhere, do everything and meet everyone.
A mere decade after those basement Dutch lessons, I went traipsing through Europe with an overstuffed backpack, buying time before ultimately having to choose a major (French, obviously) so I would eventually be permitted to graduate.
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I encountered so many people, so many languages. I still wanted to learn them all.
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All of this was exacerbated because I chose to live in the foyer international des étudiants rather than as an exchange student in a local family’s home. At the time, I was concerned a family might try to practice English on me, and I wanted to be totally immersed. Indeed I was, as there were only a handful of American and British students in the foyer. Life in the foyer was an experience in and of itself (and due its own post).
Swiss, Japanese, Greek, Italian… I was elated to be surrounded by so many languages while living in France.
Today, not much has changed. When I meet someone new, I listen to the lilt of their voice and turn cartwheels in my mind as I decide which country or region they hail from. In a crowded airport, the disparate languages jump out and hover over each individual’s head like the conversational balloons in a comic strip, and I have to restrain myself from accosting and peppering people with questions about their homeland. Foreign words in print taunt me, and I do mental calisthenics as I try to decipher their meaning and lineage.
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As I near forty, I still want to go everywhere, do everything and meet everyone.
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And it all started with a boek and a tafel.
