Zurich, Switzerland. 1999-2009. Position: Hausfrau

I lost myself in the average day. In a world presenting no apparent threat, I was dysfunctional. Routine caused me to forget myself; leave body parts strewn throughout the house. Chores, then, eventually became an act of survival with my female form taking shape as the day progressed. Once I found my legs, I managed to walk throughout the house, collecting things. Toys introduced an ear; girl’s pants, a nose; newspapers unveiled a breast. Just in time for my husband, as he walked through the door at the end of the day, I’d find fingernails; locate my eyelashes. I’d come to him, slightly rising to my toes and brush my lips with his – careful not to let them loosen and fall to the floor. I had clumsily made order of things but the puzzle was never right. Pieces were always, always missing.

SUV’s pulled up to the school; kids piled out and hours later they piled in again. What happened in between? What happened in between the drop off and pick up, while my husband walked through a parallel universe, gone to work by the time I had awakened. I’d moved to Switzerland but inhabited yet another foreign territory, that of a Hausfrau and of motherhood and I was unsure of my footing.

I recall the early days, wondering if this would be the day someone asks me where I am from. If so, I’d explain that I’m from Canada and when the kind mother replied saying how beautiful it is there, I’d agree. From one beautiful country to another I’d travelled, or so it seemed… if you don’t count the journey in between. 

Perhaps she’d ask about my husband. Wonder if he’s Canadian or Swiss. But I’d be getting carried away, letting my imagination run wild, at that point. The Swiss don’t pry; aren’t prone to small talk, either. But, I’d forge ahead, imagination usurping culture.  I’d tell the woman that I met him in South Africa. Surely here, the conversation would fall silent and I’d ache for continuity. Is it so hard, I’d wonder, to say such simple words?  If the ever so kind mother would just find it in her heart to say, ‘Oh, isn’t that interesting,’ my feet would fill the shoes around them, trust the ground beneath the soles and I would, just like that, be standing right there in the world again.

What happened in between? In between the story I hold, inside, and me asking you what bank it is that your husband works for.  Inhaling deeply, I feel like my eight year – old, as she rushes in the door, at the end of the day — her head filled with a tangle of thoughts. I’d do my best to capture her words, as they flew; hang them on a line, like laundry needing to be dried and sorted —put in its proper place. But, I couldn’t expect that from a stranger – such hard work for my words. I’d choose the easy way out; blame language or culture for an awkward moment, before turning my attention back to our kids.

With cold toes and starting to shiver, I’d say good-bye to my daughter outside the school, and as I catch another mother’s eye, I’d smile. Maybe she’d be the one who surprises; opens a porthole for this incongruent being; pulling me ever so gently through. Yes, she’d be the one to ask: ‘What is it you did in such a place?’ allowing for that space where the language of my past can be interpreted. Encouraged, this breathless child would speak, relying ever so much on her to understand what the hell I was talking about.

I was a photographer for a year on a newspaper, during the country’s first democratic elections.

‘Did you see anything awful?’

Socks flew out of my mouth.

‘It’s a pretty dangerous place, isn’t it?’

Underwear and bras catapulted from my teeth

‘Were you at all frightened?’

 Shirts and blouses swirled in their glory above my head, a tornado of laundry threatening to lift me off the ground.

The school bell would ring with each article stopping mid-flight, hanging suspended in the crisp fall air. She’d walk away, a child tugging at her sleeve and all would come tumbling down.  I’d gather it up, the costume that covered my life, grateful, for a time, that it kept me safe and warm.

I pull from a box, loose magazine pages peppered with photos of my kids and a byline with which, post divorce, I no longer identify. The words though are familiar, and eerily consistent to how I feel some ten years later. I used to write for a parenting magazine and was allowed free run with a regular column in which I sorted through my experiences as a new mom living as an expat in Switzerland. I’d made small volumes of these columns for my daughters before we left hoping one day they’d be able to look back to recognize a consistent effort to discover the honesty and sometimes humour of situations as I navigated my way through a foreign culture. With these columns splayed out on my desk today, I realize I’ve forgotten much of what I wrote but as I read through them, the thread running through my life, from South Africa to the creation of Culture Dock pulls surprisingly taught and vibrates with what I hope was always an understanding tone.

One column snags my attention. In it, I had written about visiting an online chat forum for expat moms in Switzerland where more than a few members weren’t exactly seeing the best of their adoptive country. The group moderator felt the need to step in, remind everyone to think twice before hitting the ‘send’ button as tempers flared. I chirped in with a little input, something to the effect that if expats can’t work at understanding what’s beneath the surface in a country like Switzerland, what hope do other places have that have genuine racial problems. They were obviously just overwhelmed Mamas, probably missing home like crazy but there was a reason I felt my opinion here, mattered. It was because of my columns in the parenting magazine that I was recommended to author a book about Swiss culture for a global guidebook series, and I’d just put the final draft to bed when I took it upon myself to ‘educate’ the poor expat moms.

I remember when the email came in from the publishers of Culture Smart and how scattered I felt as I was pulled in too many directions; unconvinced I could research anything outside of my own experience. I recognized the opportunity for what it was and knew I was in no position to turn it down but I had no idea how I was going to pull it off. I had written a book a few years prior and understood the commitment it takes of both time and focus. The project was daunting – not just for these reasons but because I was to be a resource of information for an entire culture of a country that despite its small size, wasn’t culturally homogenous. I lived in the ‘German part’. There was also the French, Italian, and Romansh areas and the urban/rural factor to consider. I feared perpetuating damaging stereotypes and imagined responses from Swiss friends who may take offence or point out exceptions to the rule as I attempted to navigate the customs, etiquette and history of their home and of a land and people I had grown to love. In my columns, I’d been cracking jokes about the phonetics of a gas station attendants wishing me a ‘gute fahrt’ and spewing concerns about my daughters’ mastery of their first language of English, as they played in Swiss German and did homework in High German. I wasn’t sure if I was ready to depart from my personal voice and speak authoritatively for a collective of ‘outsiders’.

Of course, I accepted the gig with Culture Smart. Drawing from my own experience while also utilizing the help of Swiss friends, books and articles, I addressed such things as making friends and doing business in Switzerland; I discussed values and attitudes, holidays, languages and in less than 15 pages I summed up no less than two thousand years of the country’s history. These are concise volumes that deliver the essence of countries and their populations in handbooks fit for travel. Because I wrote Culture Smart: Switzerland, my experiences in the country became richer and my perspective more tolerant. As a visitor to a foreign country, the moment one decides to not be offended or assume there’s only one way of doing things; to be curious about traditions and behaviours, everything changes – doors open. Not only do we learn something but we’re changed forever, and for the better, in the process. We never look at our own lives again the same way and cease to hold ourselves to be so precious.

A headline from Britain’s Independent newspaper after the Manchester bombing said, There’s only one way Britain should respond to attacks such as Manchester. That is by carrying on exactly as before. I’m dismayed by those taking this as an opportunity to criticize such a tact; attempting to make the courageous embarrassed for being too politically correct or too passive. It’s time again, for me to chirp in. This is just another example of social media being used to polarize people into disparate views. Beyond the headline, the article in The Independent goes on to say, That is not to say police should not track down who was responsible for such vile murder. That is not to say the security services should not step up their efforts and do all they can to stop a repeat of such slaughter. What the article implies, is that we average human beings do not have to let terror attacks spread terror or let cowards and control freaks turn us into something we’re not. Most importantly, we don’t have to lose our sense of tolerance for one another.

It reminds me of something a councillor once said to me when I was going through my divorce.  When someone acts so disturbingly don’t let them move the goal posts, don’t let them change the rules of the game to suit just them. Pressing on is not putting our heads in the sand, it’s courageously standing by principles despite people who are insisting you should be afraid. It appears more and more obvious to me that apart from those who wreak havoc in the world, the rest of us fall into two camps — there are those who understand bullies and those who fear them; I figure it’s the former that’s going to move the world forward.

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Yeah, kinda like the platform in Harry Potter that will take you to distant, unexpected places. As much as I’ve become a tech entrepreneur, pitching an app that facilitates cross-cultural understanding, I am, at my core, a writer. Reason # 1 for starting Culture Dock got personal. Where it left off, is also where I began writing my next book, over eight years ago when my husband left me.

It took me awhile to steady myself to write, but I did. I had been a hausfrau, writing when I could. I wrote a regular column for a Swiss parenting magazine called The New Stork Times (yeah, you read that correctly). I authored a book about Swiss culture. I penned a feature for The World & I about Bosnian refugees in Switzerland and a couple of freelance pieces for The Globe and Mail, one about the return of the Cabaret Voltaire in Zürich’s old town — the birthplace of Dadaism, the other about an Igloo hotel in Zermatt. I told myself this work wasn’t much because I, deep down, hoped to be a prolific writer while raising small children in a foreign country with a husband who worked pretty much all the time. I poured my heart into everything I wrote. It all mattered to me. Even when I couldn’t sit down to a computer to write, when I had no idea who I was writing for, the words were always there backing up inside of me. I’d have scraps of paper and grocery receipts with notes scribbled on them of things I wanted to write about scattered in my car and around the house. Sometimes they came together, sometimes they didn’t but right now, after all these years, I’m stringing them together in a story that even I find hard to believe.

I’ve been through a series of small explosions that are not strong enough to kill me but powerful enough to take me down, for a beat. Below, you’ll find the beginning of my book. I’ll keep posting, hoping you’ll share if you want to read more. It’s the preface to a story that led me to meet some of the world’s top female photojournalists in destinations around the world, to travel with my daughters so they could understand the world beyond their own pristine doorstep, to conceptualize an app that helps people around the world better understand one another. Throw in there a battle with breast cancer (that could be a book itself) that ends up being the impetus for rediscovering my own core strength.

If you are more into entrepreneurship than a woman’s journey to reclaim what matters in life and want to help get a cool product out into the world here’s our crowdfunding site. It explains, in detail, the app and our intentions for its growth.

Today, when we can put ourselves out there so easily; say what we’re about and what we care about I thank you for taking notice of the ‘blue bits’ that have held me together and have kept me moving forward — perhaps they’ll do the same for you.

(Preface) 

THE BOX 

You may not realize it, but every time you bring your camera up to your eye you’re making decisions about composition. Simply put, composition is how you choose to frame the picture you’re about to make. 

Dragging the heavy cardboard box outside into the sunshine, I struggle to remember what’s inside. This was the box left behind, stored away in a friend’s basement after packing our belongings and sending them off to Canada. Kathrin gently reminded me of its presence when I arrived. ‘Perhaps while you’re here, pick a sunny day, take that last box outside and go through it to see what you need’. I’m staying at her home near Zurich while my two daughters visit their father who still lives here in his native Switzerland. The box had been taking up space in their basement for a year and a half now. She was right, it was time for me to deal with it.

With a knife, I slice open the packing tape and tentatively peel back the flaps. On top is a decorative hat made by one of my daughters in art class. This must be the box of things too fragile to ship, I’m thinking as I gently remove the hat, wondering what lies beneath. Peering in, I find, layer upon layer, the many paintings and drawings made from kindergarten through grade school. The ones I could never throw away.

Beneath the art, at the box’s core is something solid, heavy. It’s a black case that I immediately recognize, I remember. The strength mustered to drag the box into the fresh spring air dissolves as I anticipate the case’s contents. Sitting down on a cement wall, perching its bulk on my lap, I gently unzip its sides, causing photographs to fall to the pavement at my feet. Precious images of little girls in princess costumes, riding bicycles and holding pet rabbits; those of daddy and his daughters with the majestic, powerful Alps as backdrop splay around me. Mixed in are other images. One of my ex-husband in the mountains of Lesotho in Southern Africa from the time we’d met when I worked as a photojournalist in South Africa. Others, a right-wing Afrikaaner with arms in the air, moments before his execution, and one of me, in a flak jacket, flanked by South African soldiers, confront me.

Finally, scattered on the box’s floor are heaps of photos and negatives, all taken at any given time over the last eighteen years. After I remove each one individually, I sit motionless, staring at the chaotic stack in front of me — an abandoned game of cards after all hands have folded. If only it had been a game. This was the box of things too difficult to bring forward; it was all that was just too much. Moving ahead without them for a time created a buffer, one that allows me now, one image at a time, to endure. In a long game of Solitaire, I hold each photo for a time, allowing memories to wash through me. By recognizing pairs and sequences that no one else could have possibly seen, I am, bit by bit, being pieced back together. Not until I’m finished do I begin to understand, it was I who held the camera. There was someone who existed outside the frame of these photographs, who was strong enough to stand in the world bearing witness to all she loved and all she feared.

Putting most of the photos neatly back into the box ready to be shipped, I choose several of my kids with their father, some of the children alone, and a handful of my ex father-in-law who recently passed away.  I put them in a large envelope. Tomorrow, I’ll give them to my daughters, to give to their father. I don’t know why. It’s the only hand I feel I have left to play.

Please like, share and hashtag #bluebits. Thank-you.

It’s not easy to say this — I’ve got to come clean,

‘bout the problems I’ve caused, in the places I’ve been.

To be Poppy’s underpants has been my fate.

I could ruin her life if it’s not yet too late.

You can’t really blame me for not liking the dark;

making her throw off her tights right there in the park.

My underpants are funny!

Poppy’d scream from above

and she’d reach down and give me quite a rude shove.

What happened to summer? I’d solemnly reminisce.

The fresh air and sunshine, that’s what I miss!

What’s with all the tights that pinch and squeeze;

just let me out, I don’t care if you freeze!

So I made life miserable for that little kid;

I know that I shouldn’t but that’s what I did.

Sit still!

Her mom would constantly yell.

I just knew in Poppy’s eyes, tears were starting to well.

My underpants are funny!

Poppy’d repeat;

as I kept slipping then gripping, letting her take the heat.

Poor Poppy, she said I was driving her crazy,

I overheard her cry to her best friend Daisy.

Is it me? Is it my bum?

I must figure this out cause I’m feeling quite dumb.

I squirm and fiddle – I tug at my middle.

They never feel better, not even a little!

The day soon arrived when things came to a head.

It was a battle of wills like no other — it’s said.

Little Poppy, more than anything, loves to ski;

but under those layers, I don’t wish to be.

Just off the lift at the top of the run,

was where I decided I’d have a little fun.

I started with the left cheek and then with the right.

Yup, I was up for a grand old fight.

Oh no, not here! Poppy shouted, aghast.

She’d have to think of something

and think of it fast.

Her mother, she knew, would tolerate no more.

Funny underpants for her had become a real bore.

If Poppy let out the tiniest whine,

Victory I knew would solely be mine.

Then I heard something strange; it was in Poppy’s voice.

What lay ahead of her clearly wasn’t a choice.

My underpants are funny!

But she took off like a dart.

To look at her mom’s face, she hadn’t the heart.

She wriggled and jiggled and flew down the slope.

If she was going to make it down, she could only hope.

Finally, my goal I believed was in reach.

These snow pants would be off and we’d move to a beach.

I clutched and pinched as she maneuvered each bump.

Little Poppy skied wildly, even taking a jump.

Her parents stood, almost afraid to look.

Then finally, in wonder:

Wow! Our little girl COOKS!

At the bottom Poppy stopped, her face full of snow.

Unbeknownst to her, she’d skied like a pro.

From the chalet, applause suddenly rose from a crowd.

Poppy ignored me completely as she rose and she bowed.

She’s ungrateful to me for all that she’s learned.

My part goes unnoticed; I’m feeling quite burned.

My season will come and I’ll soon be free.

Till then, Poppy must learn…

                      I’ve just gotta be me.

“One day it will be Christmas! Not some day… one day.”

The photojournalist Victor Matom’s booming voice resonates across the New Nation news room. The year is 1993 and his country, South Africa, is lurching toward democracy; anticipating the first all-race elections only months away.

Victor worked freelance for the paper I was volunteering for. He took the time to show me the kids he was teaching photography to in the townships and introduced me to a woman named Ethel Mabala who was caring for over 100 children in a her small home in Soweto. We happened to be among the first on scene when right-wingers were gunned down in the homeland of Bophuthatswana, weeks before free and fair elections were declared. Continue reading →