The fantasy had been with me for almost as long as I could remember. I
lived and relived our European experience in my mind’s eye for over 30 years. The
vision first took shape when I was a young adult returning from studying abroad, clarified
somewhat and merited its very own file folder as it remained in my heart as I
became a young mother, career ladder climber and dual college tuition payer and
then blossomed into an actual, concrete plan accompanied by spreadsheets, maps
and piles of references as I matured into a middle-aged empty nester. My idée fixe of a Gap Year in Europe with Joe sustained me
through many a professional trial, boring weekend, humid Washington summer and fleeting
vacation.
But now I find myself asking,
what will get me through those hurdles now that the vision has been realized?
What escapist imaginings will consume my idle hours? Will life be hard on us,
now members of the “those whose dreams have actually come true” club? I was overcome
with difficult-to-articulate feelings
as we prepared to go home.
As a child I watched a Hayley mills movie, The Moon Spinners, in which she and her friends get into
mischievous escapades on Greek hillsides dotted with windmills and the seed for
seeing the world was sown. I read Rebecca,
The Sun also Rises, The Talented Mr. Ripley, The Sheltering Sky
and The Drifters. They filled me with
longing for adventure in other countries and the reverie of some day living
abroad.
At every opportunity – when pinching pennies, the family budget and
work schedules allowed – Joe and I took off for Europe, visiting my beloved
France, but also venturing to England, Scotland, Italy, Germany, Belgium and
Greece. We visited my sister Peggy who lived in London with her husband for
several years. We took the kids backpacking through Italy and Greece, starting
in Rome and heading all the way south to Crete. We traveled with each other for
international business conferences and made special anniversary trips for our 15th,
20th and 25th celebrations. But as lovely and exciting as
these voyages were, they were short-lived and temporary. But we were determined
not to relegate living in Europe to the outer reefs of “someday isle” along
with all those other resolutions: someday I’ll lose weight, start exercising, change
jobs, visit friends more often, read Anna
Karenina, take dancing lessons.
I vividly recall Joe holding my hand, leaning over to me as our jet
took off in 2001 for our 20th anniversary trip to France and saying,
“Just imagine that those are one-way tickets in our backpacks and we’re leaving to live for a full
year abroad – how exciting will that be?”
So there we were in Paris, after our long-awaited year
abroad, poised for a ceremonial burning of clothes: Joe’s black sport coat
worn to the point of translucence, my limp, green hiking pants devoid of any
life they’d once had and white t-shirts stained, gray and ragged from too many
ineffective washings in the sink. Perhaps it was time to go home, time to allow
a bit more routine back into our lives, time to find a place to nest.
We would soon be back to the daily
grind, in the clutches of the Washington Beltway bourgeoisie, subject to the incessant drumbeat
of our modern world. I
could see the stresses lurking just beyond the horizon back in the States, ready
to pounce the moment we arrived. Anything
related to finding new employment and heading back to the
frenzied reality of daily life made me
anxious and prone to procrastination. We were resolute, however, about doing our best
to resist the pressures and remain dispassionate about the day-to-day
exigencies of life in the nation’s capital.
Thirty-one years after initially setting up housekeeping together, I
thought about what a gift we’d been handed: to once again start our lives anew.
World-weary travelers, I knew we would delight in settling down, being rooted
in the comfortable and mundane and anxious to loose ourselves in new routines,
untested and pregnant with possibility. Yes, we would get to begin again with no
idea of where we would work or where we would live. We would have the ability
to reinvent ourselves and our lives and play a whole new hand of cards. Life doesn’t
get much luckier than that.
I’m
going to miss being surrounded by languages other than our own every day, and
French most of all – at the Monoprix grocery
store, listening to the news on la télé,
on the metro and on the bus. I’ll have to suffer through withdrawal, like an
addict going cold turkey, as I distance myself from the pleasure that is
France, the pleasure that is Europe, the pleasure that is traveling.
Will we experience a bit of reverse culture shock on returning to the
US? Will the frenetic pace of American life surprise us?” Will we ask: “Why are
these people walking so fast?” “How is it that we understand everything that’s
being said and don’t have to frantically search for words to make ourselves
clear?” “Why do toilets flush with handles on the side and not buttons on the
top?” And last, but hardly least, “Why are these portions so huge?”
After being foreigners for so long, we’re certain to feel somewhat
foreign ourselves despite being back in our own country. We’ll have to get used to reading
signs in English and adjust to the daily visual parade of the morbidly obese,
chronically loud and badly tattooed. And
while I do love my country and our life in America, I do fear that in an acclimating fit
of pique I may one day scream at my fellow citizens, ”Why can’t you be more
like Europeans?”
Is there a new person who has emerged from her exploits across Europe,
wiping off the dust of magical places discovered? Perhaps I won’t know the
answer until we’re back in the melee and I see how I deal with the everyday.
But I experienced some revelations while we were away and chief among them is
the reinforcement of the virtues of simplicity and kindness. There were times
while traveling when we had an acute need for a kind gesture -- just a little one. And when it materialized in the form of a clerk’s smile
or a pedestrian who helped direct us, it made all the difference in the world.
I want my days to be filled
with kind gestures – both those I offer and those I receive. At this time in my
life, I’m not interested in being with people I don’t care for, who aren’t kind
and I’m embarrassed to be at a table with in a restaurant because of how they
treat the staff. The most important
thing in human life is to be kind and I find I now have no tolerance for anyone
who cannot be so.
One
the eve of our departure, if someone had knocked on our apartment door and told
us we were required to stay for another few months, smiles would have
overwritten our leave-taking frowns. A few more months among the wonders of
Europe would have suited us just fine.
But
knowing we would be back on US turf and seeing our children, friends and family
soon was not a bad thing either. Going home is hard when you love where you've
been but being in the same country as our kids will make our hard landing a bit
softer. It was hard on Chris and
Caroline at times to have us so far away and while we’re used to living apart,
the wide Atlantic Ocean between us was a very real gulf that made the
separation more acute.
It’s
difficult to admit, but after 12 months of being on the road, my contentment
pendulum had swung to the side of longing for a comfortable home base and the
desire to settle down. Moving into a place we can call our own, where we can
unpack knowing that in a few days we will not have to repack yet again and
where we can become reacquainted with those favorite things we left behind (our
bed, my coffee mug, the C&O Canal and morning TV).
But
I know myself well and the cozy complaisance of life in the familiar will only
last for so long. My craving for
novelty will once again wrestle with my very real desire for security. On some undetermined evening in the not-too-distant
future over a glass wine in the corner of an evocative bistro, my always persistent wanderlust will poke through the
fabric of our daily lives, and I will declare my need for some adventure, some
movement, some discovery. And the determined planning for more travel will begin
yet again.
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