Chapter 20 - Crisp Uniforms

The student nursing dorm is an ancient brick building that had housed the original Swedish Hospital. The newer hospital building across the street is eight storied, tan colored. (The whole complex is now called Metropolitan Medical Center.)

There are over 60 students in my class, all female, largely from the upper Midwest. Our orientation is led by elderly Miss Linnerooth who is strict but kind. “You are all budding roses, and good disciplined habits will help you bloom well,” she informs us. Some girls snicker quietly, others smile thoughtfully.

As the weeks pass I try to fit in, to adjust once more in a new subculture. Most of my classmates have left home for the first time. Not only am I a year older than many, but I’ve lived away from home in boarding school since 6th grade (except for my senior year). And after adjusting to one year in an American high school, and one year in a small Bible college, I am weary of adapting to a third place. I miss Mom and Dad and my siblings…I miss Zach. I’m in downtown Minneapolis, trying to conform in a female student body that seems two-dimensional—it even feels like a modern nunnery of sorts!

Also, these girls only know America. I am very Dani in my heart, but realize that telling too many stories of tribal life might make me seem extreme and different to them. So I slowly make a few good friends, but don’t immerse myself fully into student body life. THIRD CULTURE KIDS, Growing up Among Worlds, states:

“Though third culture kids have a wealth of tangible and intangible realities that give

their lives meaning, many of the worlds they have known are far away. Therefore, what

they loved and lost in each transition remains invisible to others and often unnamed by

themselves…..Hidden or unnamed losses most often are unrecognized, and therefore

TCK’s grief for them is also unrecognized—and unresolved. It’s hard to mourn

appropriately without defining the loss.”

On a deeper level, however, I feel fulfilled since nursing school is key to walking out God’s call on my life. I am finally going to live the dream of caring for the sick, delivering babies, binding up wounds. Eventually I’ll return overseas to reach a tribe, share the Gospel. So I try to take the long view, plunge into my studies with diligence. I like our crisp uniforms—white collared, blue pin-striped, with a starched white pinafore!

Our clinicals are basic, practical: take vital signs, make hospital beds, give backrubs, chart. Eventually we give injections, insert foleys, start IVs. I find that the abstract, the bookwork is easier for me than the practical hands on work, and am surprised.

Continuing to date Zach on weekends, we attend church together and often visit his grandparents in St. Paul—a retired pastor couple who become like family. Their modest, brick home is a haven for me. But there is still an emptiness, a need for closeness, and I look to Zach to fill it. Even a missed evening phone call from him makes me uneasy, restless.

I write my parents faithfully, knowing it takes at least six weeks to get answer. One time after sharing my loneliness and struggle, Mom writes back their concern saying, “Your dad even cried over your letter!” I am grieved—I had hardly ever seen my dad weep. So, I decide I can’t share any deep pain in letters. It’s unfair to my parents. However, feeling more isolated, I lean on Zach more, and become too emotionally and physically close.

Romaine arrives in the States after my first year of nursing school, slightly taller than me now, with long, golden hair. She is cheerful, has enjoyed her years at Dalat School (now in Malaysia, due to the Viet Nam war). And she’ll be at St. Paul Bible where Zach is. She and Zach attend my capping ceremony, and we glow with joy and pride over my winged glory, my long blond hair tucked up into it. If only Mom and Dad could be there too!

A few of my nursing classes are held at nearby Augsburg College to which we students walk through open fields. Microbiology there is rather pedantic, but anthropology is a joy…I love the study of other cultures. Our instructor Mr. Habib, a swarthy Indian from Bombay, takes an interest in me. He plays some of my dad’s videos of the Ilaga Valley to our class, after I show them to him.

“You don’t have to take the final, Marti,” he confides later. “You already know about all this multiculturalism.”