About Me — Caroline T.

Brit in Germany. Motherhood newbie. Writing Wannabe. Day job: editing for world peace.

I am what I like to describe as ordinary. Many of my friends disagree, as if being ordinary were something bad, but I am actually pretty content and happy being ordinary, having spent most of my 35 years up to now feeling ‘different’ and under some kind of internally imposed pressure to be ‘exceptional’.

I grew up in the north of England in a former mill town — one of those places that gets featured on news reports about entrenched poverty, a favourite spot for journalists looking for pro-Brexit vox-pops and angry white men complaining about immigration.

I moved away when I was eighteen and, although I still visit regularly to see my dad and old school friends, I haven’t lived there since and probably never will again. I do have a fondness for the place though. The countryside on its doorstep is green and rolling, it’s not far from the coast, the people (aside from the angry white anti-immigration men) are friendly and warm. It will probably always feel like home in some ways, even if it never truly is again.

I did a BA and a Master’s in modern languages and literature at a prestigious university where I basically spent four years reading experimental literature and trying to formulate opinions that sounded as clever and complicated as the books themselves. I always felt stupider than everyone else and like I didn’t deserve to be there, but the close friends I made during that time assure me they all felt the same.

My supervisor convinced me that if I could be happy doing anything else, the current state of funding and precarity in academia meant I should be doing that instead of a PhD. And so, I embarked on a career in publishing and held a few of the decently-paid but ultimately thankless jobs lots of people who want to work in publishing would dream of. If I wasn’t happy living the dream, I was obviously following the wrong dream.

So I came up with a new one. I now live in Hamburg, Germany, where I am currently a SAHM to my four-month-old son, whose main pleasures in life include shrieking loudly, chewing his fingers and my hair, and play fighting. I’ll be returning to work later this year, editing an academic publication on peace research at the university. For the first time in my life, I’m comfortable with where I am.

Pre-baby, I drafted a dystopian novel and hosted a writing group, where I met my partner. The novel still needs more work, the writing group is kind of on ice during the pandemic. I’m hoping I will be able to return to both when the mound of nappies starts to dwindle and I’m not permanently covered in drool and pureed carrot. I have no expectations of ever publishing that novel, but my partner, ever the optimist, is convinced that one day it will be a success.

Growing up, I helped my dad care for my mum, who had muscular dystrophy, hence the feeling that I was ‘different’. I find remnants of these experiences cropping up in my writing: I guess I am exploring the ways it impacted me at the time, and how it continues to shape my relationships — including the one with myself — and my perspective on caregiving and disability in a broader context now.

My mum sadly passed away in 2007, and her loss remains one of the most profoundly difficult and transformative experiences of my life so far. Especially since I learned I was going to become a mother myself, I have started to feel like I understand her more and wonder what she would have made of the person I have become. I doubt she would have approved of all my choices, but I hope at the very least she would have been glad to see me happy.

In the last few years, I have ‘adopted’ a couple of surrogate mother figures. I volunteered with Age UK, visiting a woman in her seventies named Jessica while I still lived in London, and since moving to Germany I have become close to Joyce — the mother of one of my university friends — who lives in a nursing home here following a severe stroke a couple of years ago.

Jessica sadly passed away last year, and I couldn’t visit due to the pandemic. I did speak to her on the phone every weekend though, right up until the end. Due to the lockdown restrictions on socialising, Joyce is one of the few non-medical people besides my partner to have met our baby, and she adores him.

Perhaps caregiving is part of who I am, or perhaps I have just found a source of love, support and strength with my partner and within myself now to be able to care well for those around me. Either way, it seems to come naturally these days.

Fun facts

• There’s a huge box of medals and trophies in my old bedroom that I won for Irish dancing. I once shared the stage at the Great Britain Championships with the World Champion — and she fell because of me (not deliberate sabotage, more unfortunate clashing of feet).
• I can speak 5 European languages and yet I am no longer eligible for an EU passport. This is a very sore point for me. Thankfully though, my German residence permit is on its way.
• I taught myself to swim, which I consider one of my greatest achievements in life. Pre-lockdown, I swam at least 1km every day.
• A large rock fell on my head while I was minding my own business on a beach in Tenerife. Hardcore that I am, I didn’t even lose consciousness, while my boyfriend at the time fainted watching the doctors stitch up the wound.

Lifetime highlights: living in Salamanca, Spain; learning Italian in Sicily; teaching in Nancy, France; hiking in Arizona, USA; building my family in Hamburg, Germany.

Future goals: expanding my child’s palate beyond carrots, fingers and hair; relearning to play the piano; adding Russian to my collection of languages; seeing an alligator in the wild, and helping my partner find Atlantis. I reckon at least one of those should be achievable within the year.