Where am I from?

Where am I from? What do you want you hear? Do you want to know where I was born? Or where I grew up? Or where I consider home to be? Or what I look like? Or what is says on my passport? Or what it said on my parents’ passports? Or where they were born?

I ask kids this question and there is a short delay while they look me up and down and try to work out what it is I want to hear. It’s no longer a simple question. In this community, living and growing up in the same house no longer happens. Nor does living and growing up in the same town, country or even continent. These kids are on the move.

One five-year old replied, parrot fashion with a bored ‘here-we-go-again’ look on his face, ‘I was born in Thailand but I live in Vietnam. My brother was born in England, but he lives here too. My mummy is American and my daddy is English. I’m English too, but I’ve never been there.’

So where am I from? Originally – the word I always use now – I’m from Britain. Born in the West Midlands but raised in Cornwall and educated in the North. I’ve lived ‘abroad’ (from the UK that is, which is probably already ‘abroad’ for you as you read this) for the last nine years and plan to continue doing so. My wife and daughter are both French, but my daughter hasn’t been there yet. Where am I from? From the middle-classes, from white-male culture, from a public (that means private) school, from a broken home.

You decide.