And yet, disorientation still finds us. We are not quite Italian, but slowly less American. Not quite fluent in Italian yet sometimes reaching for English words we’ve forgotten. We live in the in‑between, and we love it. That middle ground keeps us curious, keeps us younger, and helps us approach situations with fresh eyes.
Over the years, we’ve realized that living abroad has more than a few parallels with getting older. Both involve a slow shedding of certainty, a recalibration of identity, and a humbling encounter with the limits of your own understanding. Both ask you to be patient with yourself, to laugh when you miss the joke, and to keep showing up even when you’re not sure how.
This post is about those parallels—how moving abroad and getting older mirror each other. But before we begin, we want to acknowledge that our story is one of privilege. We chose Italy, supported by passports, savings, and the safety of knowing we could always return. For many, migration is not a choice but a necessity—an act of survival rather than curiosity. Our reflections are not meant to equate the two, but simply to share what we’ve learned from our own, far easier journey.
Accent
We like to imagine our American accent has softened over the years, but the truth is, it hasn’t. It clings to us, unmistakable, a kind of passport we carry in our very voices. It marks us as outsiders, though not always in a bad way. Aging does something similar: your voice shifts, thins, or weakens, and suddenly people treat you differently, as if volume or clarity were the same as comprehension. In both cases—living abroad or growing older—others may slow their speech, raise their voices, or simplify their words, assuming you can’t quite keep up.
Then there are the gaps. In Italian, we often know exactly what we want to say, but the word slips away at the crucial moment. What comes instead is a pause, a gesture, a workaround. It’s not so different from the lapses of memory that come with age: the name on the tip of your tongue, the phrase that refuses to surface.
At first, we bristled when our “Ciao” was met with a cheerful “Hi.” How could they know, so quickly, that we weren’t Italian? It felt like failure, as if our accent betrayed us before we’d even begun. But over time, we reframed it. Those exchanges became opportunities to help others practice their English, and we discovered that once conversations moved beyond pleasantries, they almost always circled back to Italian. What once felt like a wall became a doorway.
Cultural cues
In Italy, we sometimes miss the joke. Humor is slippery as it depends on shared history, on references you don’t yet have. In a new culture, the punchline can sail past you just as an older person might miss a cultural reference in their own language. Each missed cue becomes a small research project, a chance to learn the context and catch it next time.
We were reminded of this long before moving abroad. On a Christmas road trip from Seattle to San Francisco in 2012, we stopped at a Dutch Bros drive‑thru. The barista asked something perfectly ordinary, but her phrasing and expressions threw us. After a few confused “huhs,” we finally understood. For a moment, we felt like strangers in our own country. From that day, we joked that you could feel foreign anywhere, even at home.
Italy has only deepened that lesson. We’ve had to learn the choreography of greetings, the etiquette of queues, the subtle rules about when to address someone formally and when not to. Aging brings a similar recalibration. The rules you grew up with—about gender, technology, etiquette—shift beneath your feet. You adapt, or you don’t. Either way, you notice. In both cases, you find yourself in new terrain, learning how to belong all over again.
Looked at and overlooked
In a past blog post The Expat Life – Thoughts and Suggestions for Better Terminology, we suggested “transplant” as a better word than expat. No one has taken us up on it yet, but the metaphor still feels right. Living abroad is like a long hike: you've transplanted yourself somewhere else, you’re exploring, awed by what you find, and constantly aware of the terrain beneath your feet.
On that hike, we are sometimes hyper‑visible and sometimes invisible. Hyper‑visible because we’re easy to spot—our pace (always too fast), our clothes, our names, the subtle cues that mark us as not‑quite‑Italian. Cars beep at us on the street, and we turn to each other asking, “Who was that?” They recognize us, but we don’t recognize them. Around here, anonymity is rare; stepping outside almost guarantees at least two encounters before reaching the corner. It can be inconvenient when you’re in a rush, but mostly it’s a joy.
And then there are the moments of invisibility. A driver asks for directions, but as soon as we answer, our accent betrays us and our advice is dismissed. In conversations with new acquaintances, we’re asked the usual questions—why Bergamo, what brought us here—but once the talk turns to politics, sports, or scandals, the thread slips away. Sometimes we jump in to prove we can follow along; other times we let the pleasantries stand. Either way, the message can feel like you don’t quite belong in the deeper layers of the conversation.
Aging carries the same duality. You’re either fussed over or ignored, depending on the moment. You’re visible when people project assumptions onto you, invisible when they assume you have nothing to add.
And like aging, living abroad often requires asking for help with things that once seemed simple—forms, instructions, even the right word at the right time. The lesson in both cases is humility. You learn to ask. You learn to receive. And in that exchange, you discover a different kind of strength.
Né pesce né pollame
Neither fish nor fowl, we live with one foot planted in each world. There’s no neat percentage that can measure how Italian or how American we feel. Identity shifts like the weather—on some days we lean into our Americanness, on others we find ourselves moving, speaking, even thinking in ways that feel distinctly Italian.
This in‑between space, far from being a liability, has become an advantage. It forces us to stay flexible, to notice, to adapt.
Sometimes that means starting over with things we thought we’d already mastered—earning a driver’s license again, building a credit history from scratch, learning the rules of a new system. There’s a strange grace in being a beginner twice in one lifetime.
Other times, the parallels are so close to our American life that only small adjustments are needed—a tweak in etiquette, a shift in timing, a new rhythm to familiar routines.
And then there are the discoveries: foods that surprise us, rituals that anchor us, pleasures that remind us why we came. These are the gifts of transplanting yourself to another place. But they are also the gifts of aging—of realizing that change, whether chosen or inevitable, keeps reshaping you long after you thought you were fully formed.
Places act like time
In her 2025 essay “Sky Full of Forests,” part of the collection No Straight Road Takes You There: Essays for Uneven Terrain, Rebecca Solnit reflects on the upheaval brought by climate change. She writes: “We are leaving behind our old familiar world whose stability we can remember as a great kindness and entering into a rough new set of circumstances. Like refugees leaving a place, we are leaving a time. What should we carry with us?”
That image—refugees in time—struck us. It captures the disorientation of change that arrives uninvited. You don’t move, but the world around you does. The familiar dissolves, and you find yourself in a new reality without ever packing a bag.
But there’s another kind of shift: when you do move, when you leave your natal country and step into unfamiliar terrain. In that case, you’re not just swept along by change, you initiate it. You choose to disrupt the stability, to trade the known for the unknown.
Both paths lead to transformation. One is passive, the other active. But each raises the same question: what do we carry with us into the new time?
To understand how change shapes us, perhaps we need a metaphor like Einstein’s Twin Paradox. Imagine two twins: Bob and Joe. Bob moves to Italy; Joe stays in their hometown. In physics, the paradox explores time dilation. But here, let’s consider something more personal and let's call it experience dilation: the idea that place, like time, can stretch or compress the way identity evolves.
So, does Bob experience more, less, or the same as Joe, assuming all else is equal? That’s the catch—everything else is never equal. The answer depends entirely on the individuals, their circumstances, and the unpredictable variables of life.
And then there’s the vanity question: does Bob age faster, worn by the stress of adapting to a new culture? Or does he age more slowly, rejuvenated by adventure, lifestyle, the Mediterranean air? Is the living abroad a wrinkle-maker or a wrinkle-smoother?
We ask because we’ve been wondering about our own aging—especially in comparison to friends who never left the country. Has the move helped us age better? We’d like to think so. But without a version of us who stayed behind, there’s no control group to measure against.
At the next reunion, will we look radiant, glowing from a life lived boldly abroad—as one friend calls it, “living the dream”? Or will we show the wear and tear of navigating Italy’s bureaucracies, cultural shifts, and daily challenges? Only time—and perhaps a few candid photos—will tell.
In closing - for now
As we think about how moving abroad has shaped us, we’re also aware that our journey is just one version of migration. As we mentioned in the introduction, others carry heavier burdens, forced to leave homes behind under far harsher conditions. Their courage reframes our own small disorientations. If anything, our experience has taught us to practice humility—for what we don’t yet understand, for what others endure, and for the truth that moving, whether by choice or necessity, reshapes us all.
Perhaps that is the real gift of both transplanting yourself and aging: the chance to be beginners again, to carry humility like a passport, and to discover that belonging is not a fixed destination but a practice renewed each day.
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