My middle son Johnny’s best friend recently moved to Poland, and I’ve been having flashbacks about my own childhood ever since.

His friend was born in America to Polish parents, but when the economy got bad, his parents decided they had a better chance of making ends meet back in their homeland. So, they moved back to Poland, even though all of their kids (all five) had never been there.

The exact same thing happened to me and my siblings in the 1970s. Except we didn’t move to Poland; we moved to Germany.

And it happened just as suddenly. My Dad came home from work one day and said: “We’re moving to Germany.” Within a few weeks we were gone.

I had the same type of upbringing as Johnny’s friend. We spoke German in our home. We lived in a Chicago neighborhood that was entirely German. We socialized with Germans, attended sporting events (soccer games) with Germans, and went to stores owned and operated by Germans.

It wasn’t until we moved out to the suburbs that we began to integrate into American society. Moving to the suburbs meant moving out of our comfortable German bubble and into America proper.

How German were we? My mother actually sent me to the first day of kindergarten dressed in lederhosen because she had no idea how strange that looked to the other kids. I had to learn English in school. I played a sport, soccer, that the other kids in the neighborhood didn’t even know existed.

As my mother puts it now: “the school nurse was calling us every day.” The bigger kids picked on me physically. They made fun of my name, my heritage, my sport, and our accents (Hogan’s Heroes wasn’t exactly helpful either). I felt like a freak. And I was a white kid. I can only imagine what it would have been like for an Asian kid, or an Indian kid, or an African kid.

I can point to the precise moment my life changed forever. The neighbor boy Stu rang our doorbell, and said: “Hi, I’m Stu, and I’m going to be your best friend.” Stu took me under his wing, showed me what it was like to be a normal American boy, and helped transform a dangerously shy German boy into just another kid in the neighborhood. By the time second grade started, it was effortless. I felt I belonged.

Then in fifth grade, it all fell apart again when my Dad told us we were moving back to Germany. I was absolutely crushed.

Johnny’s friend is exactly the same age I was. I could see the panic in his eyes when he told us he was moving to Poland. He had worked so hard to integrate, and now he was going to be a fish out of water…again. I knew exactly how he felt.

But before he left America, I told him something to give him hope. When I moved in the 70s, the only realistic way to stay in touch was via letters. Letters that often took weeks to arrive. Despite this barrier, I remained friends with my buddy Stu in America because we actually took time to write. In fact, when my family moved back to America (in the early 80s), we picked up right where we left off, and Stu remains one of my best friends to this day.

In this internet age, with e-mail, social networking, cellphones, texting, and skype, it’s easier than ever to stay in touch. So far (it’s been a few months) they’re doing a great job.

But I must admit, as badly as I feel for my own son (the loss of his best friend), I can’t stop thinking about that boy in Poland. His whole world has turned upside down.

I told Johnny that his job is to make sure his world here remains familiar enough that when he returns, it will be like he never left.

Everybody needs a Stu.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 13th, 2009 at 11:26 am and is filed under parent. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.