Now that my time here is drawing short, I’ve started to wonder about what it will be like to come home. This has been such a bizarre experience, in many ways, and it’s been incredibly, unbelievably, breathtakingly fast. So much to integrate in such a brief span. (Pause to ponder the ontological and epistemological dilemma?) It’s been almost like being punched in the stomach, or having the wind knocked out of you. You have to let your lungs refill, slowly. And at first you screw your eyes up; you have to clutch your stomach for a minute before you can blink, and look about you. And even though it feels good to breathe, it hurts a little, too.
Weird image, right? But it fits, in its warped little way. I think that one of the things that no one could tell you before you did something like this is that it isn’t exactly fun. First, you wouldn’t believe them if they told you, and second, I think once you’re home and distant the things you miss become more prominent. I think in the same way that, here in France, I’ve missed being able to pinpoint and evaluate people and things the way that I can in the States, I will, once I go home, feel the absence of other people who know that these familiar things do indeed have different names, different ways of being described. I learned them. I feel like … that’s something.
I’m foundering, here. It’s absurd how tired I am. I had a lovely-but-strange conversation with my grandmother last night – yesterday was her birthday – in which she shared with me her hope that I’ll get married before she dies. Actually, it began with her telling me at length about her neighbor, whose cochlear implant surgery transformed her life, and the most meaningful example of this transformation is, of course, that immediately afterwards she began a wonderful relationship with the most wonderful man. His drawback, evidently, is that he has to do everything his own way, and, after six months of dating, he hasn’t yet asked her to marry him. Letting pass the assumption that he was the one who must perforce do the asking, I merely remarked that six months didn’t seem all that long to me, barring the intervention of buns and ovens and things of that nature. I learned, to my great surprise, that my insatiably traditional grandmother thought six months was quite sufficient, and that long engagements were also quite silly. The Berlitz approach to relationships, I suppose. I almost fell over when she said that she thought it was best for people to spend as much time together as possible when dating – thus facilitating the total immersion. I’m not sure if this is coming from the point of view that it’s best to rope the man in and tie him down before he can get away, or if it’s more a case of well-does-it-really-signify-who-we-marry-anyway, but it was all a bit too “truth universally acknowledged” for my comfort.
I suppose I’m saying all this because it kind of blindsided me. Not having my grandmother tell me that she wanted me to get married (and for the record I don’t know that she’d repeat the same logic if asked another time, being notoriously capricious in her ideology), but rather the concrete confirmation of someone having a vision of life so utterly different from my own. That she and I were so literally in such completely different places. She’s planning my imaginary wedding from her kitchen in Tennessee, oblivious to my actual life here in France. And I’m here, inhabiting a life as different from that as if it were on Mars.
So coming home. It’s not just the knowledge that everyone will think I’m pretentious if I’m fussy about cheese, or use French phrases because the English expressions don’t suffice, or that I won’t be able to find my favorite brand of cookies. I feel like I’ve been thrown off balance, and now that I’m finally getting my footing again, I’m getting hit from the other side.
I am as comfortless as a pilgrim with peas in his shoes -- and as cold as Charity, Chastity or any other Virtue. - Lord Byron
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