Third Culture

[First, props to Penny for enlightening me to the term third culture and for just being enlightening in general.]

7 months ago, I left Green Bay, my first culture. The culture I called home for 22 years. The only culture I thought would ever be home. A culture I would soon learn to miss desperately and question critically.

6 months ago, I stopped crying in my second culture. I looked around Buenos Aires and thought profoundly, “This isn’t that bad.” I experienced my second culture, then I lived my second culture and finally I was my second culture.

1 month ago I returned to my first culture, dismayed that it seemed unrecognizable and unlivable. And so in true Fritz fashion, I panicked, labeled it depression of readjustment and boarded myself up until my first culture stopped slapping me across the face with Wal-Marts and McDonalds.

But I am not re-adjusting nor re-adapting nor doing any re-ing. I am experiencing my 3^rd culture for the first time. For my 2^nd culture not only changed me, it irreversibly changed my 1^st culture. So now I am walking through Wal-Mart with new legs. I am looking at the golden arches with new eyes. I am experiencing my third culture and I am living it with a new soul.

And like that first Sunday in Buenos Aires, I am abandoning my useless fear, getting on collectivo 128 and heading for the unknown of this new home. The guards I needed in my first culture, I learned to abandon and burn in my second. And upon reaching my third, I find the old guards are rusting and ugly and have no use in my painfully bright third culture.