Home Teams

Last Sunday, a record number of people watched the Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots face off against each other in Super Bowl XLIX.  With 114.5 million viewers, or over a third of the population, it was the most watched T.V. show in U.S. history. 

American football is definitely gaining a fan base in Europe, but surely will always play second string to European football, or soccer, as it’s known the U.S.  Just trying to find a venue to view games in Amsterdam highlights this reality, with only a handful of sports bars and pubs hosting live Super Bowl action.  And let’s face it, given the time difference and the fact that a typical Super Bowl lasts four hours, catching a game pretty much means an all-nighter for those of us on this side of the pond.  This year’s Super Bowl didn’t even start until 12:30AM, and as working parents of two young children, this was basically a non-starter. Except we’re from Seattle.  The Seattle Seahawks won the Super Bowl last year.  To miss their attempt to repeat world victory seemed like sports heresy in the highest degree.

We moved to Amsterdam almost two years ago now.  It was an exciting move for both my husband and me, fulfilling professional and personal goals for the both of us.  Young children are frequently touted for their flexibility, and indeed ours adapted quickly and happily to life abroad. Our five-year old son plunged into his new Dutch surroundings, experiences he’ll remember for a lifetime; and being only three when we left Seattle, his memories of his hometown are fuzzy and abstract, more of a feeling than a cohesive chapter of his life.  Yet, every now and again, he recalls something specific, a dinner at the top of the Space Needle for instance, or latches onto something distinctly Seattle, like his growing passion for the Seattle Seahawks.  Watching our son bounce around the house in his Russell Wilson jersey, chanting “Go Seahawks,” and hearing him tell everyone he encountered he was rooting for the Seattle Seahawks, I got to thinking about the various meanings of the word “rooting.”

For a five-year old boy, of course, this means throwing unbridled support toward his team or player of choice.  As an ex pat, rooting is about fixing oneself to a new environment, developing roots. Like many other ex pat families, we navigated tricky waters in our efforts to make a true home out of a temporary assignment.  Upon arriving in Amsterdam, we immediately established routine and a regular life revolving around school and work, but we did this while simultaneously seizing the opportunity to continuously delve into the new culture in which we found ourselves.  We hop on our bikes each morning and pedal off to school or work, but we’re always sure to wear our explorer hats, which conjures up yet another understanding of the verb “to root,” which is to poke and dig about.  It’s an approach to daily life I hope we take with us wherever we go, to establish a base while still poking and digging about.

Yet, establishing a base in a potentially fleeting situation begs the question of what to attach oneself to.  To the exotic experiences in one’s new setting?  To the customs and norms of local people, or the familiarity and connection with other ex pats?  How much does one invest in relationships that may be artificially shortened, with all of us coming and going?  In the end, I think it is the shared experienced with others under these heightened circumstances that transcends the traditional definition of having roots.  As an expat, it becomes my responsibility and adventure to link these experiences together over time, to worry less about the depth of my roots in any given new setting, but to nurture the breadth of those roots across settings and my personal history. For me, if I rely on poking and digging about as my guiding principle, the depth of my roots seems to take care of itself.

And as is the nature of ex pat assignments, they can change.  Companies re-organize, new jobs materialize, ex pats fall in love with their adopted homes and figure out ways to stay.  We, too, recently experienced a change in circumstances; we’re unsure when or if we will return to Seattle. Not knowing where we may land next, we celebrate our son’s enthusiasm for the Seattle Seahawks for he is naturally taking care to nurture the breadth of his own roots, because his enthusiasm for the Seahawks is only matched recently by that which he displayed for The Netherlands during their World Cup journey.