It’s been a long week.
A few days ago, in an email, Elise told me she wanted to go
home, but that she didn’t know where home was.
Yesterday morning, as he was drinking his juice, Pete
announced, “My tummy just said, ‘Korea!’”
I don’t know how many kids are in Pete’s pre-school class,
but I do know most of them are Korean. Most evenings, usually during dinner,
Pete will babble incoherently as most 4 year-olds are wont to do from time to
time. Elise and I will look at each other. Except for with Pete, we swear he is
speaking in Korean. At this point, I don’t know if he would feel more
comfortable going to Seoul, back to Brazil, to Falls Church, or staying in
India. I imagine this conundrum will only grow with time. He stills call
parrots ‘papagaio’ and pineapple ‘abacaxi’. If you catch Clementine at the
right moment, she will head bobble at you like an Indian. Elise has caught me
doing it, too.
Elise’s email got me to thinking about where home is, too. I
don’t exactly know why, but when I think of being back in the States, I think
of Falls Church. I liked it there. I wasn’t so crazy about our temporary,
corporate housing apartment, but there were certain things about the area that
made it very comfortable. I’m not exactly sure what. Maybe it was the Lagunitas
IPA, the Chipotle and Starbucks, the running trail, the comic book store, tennis
lessons, the farmer’s market, the ‘Lion Man’ park, Lost Dog and Toby’s ice
cream, the Nats, the seasons.
I grew up in South Florida. We did not have seasons as most
people know them. There was hurricane season and that was about it. Christmas
was hot and only differentiated from the rest of the year by the fact that your
palm trees had Christmas lights on them. In Brazil, there was a rainy season
and a dry season, and in India, there is a monsoon season, but no fall. No
spring.
I think, when the time comes, I definitely want to live
somewhere with seasons. Northern Virginia had seasons. That’s not to say I want
to live the rest of my life in NoVa. I just would like someday to be somewhere
where the winters are cold and snowy. You have to wear a muffler and shovel the
drive. Somewhere where the springs are green and wet. Somewhere where the
summers are hot and you grill outside. Somewhere where during the fall, the air
is crisp, and the leaves fall. If there is a high school or college band
practicing for Friday or Saturday football that would be an added bonus.
I don’t know where this place is. It might be Seattle or
Bellingham. It’s definitely not Florida. Sorry. I find myself wondering what
Madison, Wisconsin is like. What Portland, Maine is like, or for that matter,
what Portland, Oregon would be like, and what Portsmouth, New Hampshire is
like.
Elise got me this awesome coffee table book for my birthday
of one of my favorite directors, Wes Anderson. I used to be into movies. I took
several classes in college, including “Film Noir” and “Hitchcock”, and two screenwriting
classes. My script made it into the semi-finals of a contest held by Universal.
Things may have ended up a lot differently had I won. But, as with a lot of
things, such as rock-climbing and scuba-diving, that interest kind of fell by
the wayside once I had a full-time job and three kids. I’m not complaining.
Anyway, in the book, Wes Anderson provides the following
awesome quote about travelling and living overseas: "...I think there's
something about when you're living in places where you don't really speak the
language and you don't really understand the language...That's something that
isolates you. You kind of wander through. You're sort of an observer. You're at
a remove. But what I like is if I walk down a street in Paris that I haven't
been on before, it's an adventure. Every day that you're abroad, you're
discovering something new. When that becomes routine, it's a strange and
interesting way to live...I really enjoy going back to a place again and
actually having some friends there now, and saying, "Should we go to that
place where we went before?" That to me is sometimes more fun than the
first visit to a place: getting to know a place, and getting to be known in a
place. It's really quite nice to be known, to know people in a place, and to
have certain restaurants where you go that are your restaurants, places where,
even though you don't really speak the same language as the people there, you
still have your communication with them, and you're known as this foreigner, so
you're different, yet you still have a place in their orbit. There's something
special about all that.”
Special, indeed. I feel at home here like I did in Brazil.
I’m afraid to go back to the States. When we go back to the States, we’re not
foreigners anymore. I remember the reaction Elise and I got shopping for new
cellphones upon our return to Brazil and having to explain to people why we
were updating two year-old phones. Living overseas is something that sets us
apart, that makes us special.
More than anything, though, I am deathly afraid I would get
back to the States and not be able to wait to “get back out”, that I would find
life there uninteresting and dull. I haven’t lived overseas all that long, but
already feel this way. It’s interesting to think of this experience from my
kids’ perspective. They don’t know any other way, and I take that for granted
sometimes. For instance, a few months ago we went for a family vacation to
Fisherman’s Cove, a beach resort an hour south of Chennai, for the weekend. As
we were packing, the kids were growing increasingly anxious, until I figured
out I had to tell them that we weren’t moving again, and that we were only
spending the weekend there. I take for granted when I have to tell them we are
going to a new house and when we aren’t.
I have been a Dave Matthews Band fan for the past twenty
years. Yesterday morning, I too the opportunity to play for Peter and Sam one
of my favorite songs, “The Best of What’s Around”, because in the lyrics is
some of the best advice I could give to anyone:
“Turns out not where
but who you're with
That really matters
And hurts not much when you're around
And if you hold on tight
To what you think is your thing
You may find you're missing all the rest”
That really matters
And hurts not much when you're around
And if you hold on tight
To what you think is your thing
You may find you're missing all the rest”
Either this summer or winter, November or March, another season will come: bidding season, and we will find out where we will go after we move from India. The process of finding our
third assignment, I am told, is challenging and stressful. I both look forward
to it and dread it. It’s exciting and terrifying to imagine where we could end up.
But, regardless of where that is, I have to remind myself that as long as we
are all together we could be anywhere.
Hopefully, it will have seasons, too.
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