You Can Go Home Again… For a Price

“There are things you just can’t do in life. You can’t beat the phone company, you can’t make a waiter see you until he’s ready to see you, and you can’t go home again.” -Bill Bryson

“You can’t go back home to your family, back home to your childhood … back home to a young man’s dreams of glory and of fame … back home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time — back home to the escapes of Time and Memory.” -Thomas Wolfe, You Can’t Go Home Again

“America is my country and Paris is my hometown.” -Gertrude Stein

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There is something that happens to someone when they live abroad. It doesn’t matter where they live, or for how long; spending an extended period of time living in a country that is not your own will affect anyone who tries it. If you’ve ever done the expat thing, you know what I’m talking about.

I had moved around within the U.S. quite a bit before moving here to France. I had done a lot of traveling in my own country as well as a bit outside of it.

I was confident that I’d seen a lot. I felt that I had met a lot of interesting characters from all over the place. Because I had.

Yet, it was nothing. The world is too big and there are so many people. “A lot” usually isn’t. The more of the world that you see, the more your perception of your own world changes.

The big picture, it gets bigger. The little picture…well, sometimes you can’t even see it anymore.

What really started this for me was the various French classes that I took during the first year that I was living in Paris. Most of the people that I’ve met in France have of course, been French people. Now, regardless of what many Americans think, French people, in general, are fundamentally no different than Americans.

But, these French classes were full of people from all over the world.  I was no longer just an American.  I was now a lost foreigner just like the rest of these people.

I met women who barely spoke, for they came from places that gave them few rights.

I met people who had no siblings because they came from a country where that was forbidden.

A Cuban cross-dresser said to me one day, “Sometimes I would like to see my home again, but I don’t think I will.”

There was the Serbian guy who just happy to be here and the German guy who was a little tired of Nazi jokes since he wasn’t born until 30 years after WWII ended.

There was the girl who said to me, “You were so lucky to grow up in a free country,” as others nodded in agreement.

I can’t even explain to you what that felt like. As miserable as I was growing up, it doesn’t really compare with people who only grew up at all because they survived bombings, dictatorships, and ethnic cleansings. There are people living here who still remember the fear during the German Occupation, or that were in the Resistance. Remnants of war are everywhere.

I don’t make it home very often, but once a year, or every other year, Olivier and I will make a trip back to the states. I’m always excited and happy to be home, but everything there looks a little smaller. Some of the things that people bitch and shit themselves about seem meaningless to me.

“Wal-Mart didn’t have any more purple Crocs on sale. I’m so pissed.”

“Those people in my office are always talking about me. You have no idea the hell I’m going through with this.”

“Some asshole got the last fondue pot at the Black Friday sale. Christmas is RUINED.”

Okay… to be honest, these things were pretty meaningless to me before I ever left the states. But, you still get the gist, right?

Am I saying that Americans don’t have real problems? Of course not. Some of the most incredible examples of fortitude have come from some of my American friends. But, the fact of the matter is, we Yanks often don’t realize how good we have it, yet we piss and moan about superficial shit when so many who have more right to, don’t.

In just a few days, Olivier and I will fly out to Pennsylvania to visit with some family and will then hop on a Greyhound bus to spend a week at home in Colorado. Naturally, I’m excited to see everyone and can’t wait to stuff my gob with Arby’s. I’ve been jabbering for the past few months about what I’m going to do, who I’m going to see and what I’m going to eat in the U.S. while we’re there.

And I will be missing France the entire time.

That’s the price: being doomed to forever after live between two countries, between two worlds.  Not quite at home in either one, always longing for the greener grass of the one you’re not standing in.

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