You Can't Go Home Again
In Thomas Wolfe's novel You Can't Go Home Again (famous in its own right, and not just because I stole the title for my blog post), a young writer publishes a novel based on his family, friends, and hometown. When he returns home after the novel is published, they are none too pleased to have their dirty laundry aired for all to read about, and the author is driven out of town. He realizes, "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."
Despite's Wolfe's admonition, I do go "home" again, even though we sold the place we used to call home, back in July. This means that we have no "home base" when we return, no place to wash our dirty laundry, and no rooms of our own to wander in when we sit bolt upright in bed at 5 a.m. with U.S. jet lag. Many of our expat friends do still own their home. I think that helps them feel more grounded when they arrive, unlike the Drucker-Vines who must wander from pillar to post, or more accurately from pillow to post. We experience an "If it's Tuesday, this must be Belgium" phenomenon, especially at wake-up time. Are we still at my mother-in-law Lenore's house? Or have we already broken camp and headed to our friends Kate and Howard's place? This lack of a home-base must be particularly hard on Rachel. College students take for granted that they can wander home whenever school is on break (which is a lot of the time) with dirty laundry and an open mouth eager for home-cooked meals. Except when there is no home. She has coped remarkably well, relying on the kindness of Maplewood friends and our family to fill in the gaps. She has a new-found appreciation for what international students at school have to contend with.
When you go back to your hometown, but you don't own your home anymore, you can still stalk it. You case the joint just to see if they really did redo "your" brand-spanking new kitchen. And the best part of it is that you don't have to rake the leaves whilst you are spying. I wonder if Casey still has dreams about that backyard and the white picket fence? Truth be told, I really just put this photo in because it's the best photo Ben ever took of Casey. Also, when it comes to being confused about what a home is, I think Casey would have a lot to say on the subject, if only I could understand what he is saying.
For an expat, the concept of home is fraught with complications. On the one hand, it's the comfortable place you packed up and left, where your family often lives, too, and so do the friends you left behind. On the other hand, home now is also your new country. The longer we are here, the more it does feel like some version of home. While some expats bring only their clothes and live in furnished rentals, we set sail for Amsterdam with quite a bit of our own furniture and other belongings. I think that helps bridge the gap between the old and the new homes. However, plenty of our belongings are stacked up in a storage box somewhere in Florham Park, N.J. since apartment living is not on the same scale as suburban N.J. living. It does make you realize how much less you can survive with, now that we have lived for a year without those "essentials". Frankly, I can't even remember what's in that storage box.
I recently read an article about Saorise Ronan, a young Irish actor who stars in the film Brooklyn (which I haven't seen yet, but hope to soon). Feeling homesick for Ireland while living in London, she asked the Irish director, now an eighteen-year resident of London, about her feelings. She wondered whether or when her homesickness might ease. He told her that it eventually would, but he added the following: “You’re not from the country you’re living in, however great that is. When you go home you’re no longer from that place either. And people view you differently, and you view them differently, and it’s all different. And you can’t tell why.” Exactly!
I certainly felt that way when we went home for Thanksgiving this year. We managed to see most of the family, thanks to the nature of Thanksgiving itself, which gives you the chance to see giant groups of family members in one fell swoop, all while downing giant mounds of food. Yet I was beginning to feel different, like I wasn't quite at home.
Thank goodness for the chance to meet new members of the family, like beautiful Sasha Levin. Since babies change so much, so quickly, she will no doubt be shopping at Forever 21 by the next time we see her.
So much of the expat visit "back home" (note the contradiction in labeling something both a visit and "back home") revolves around errands. There is the mad dash to your familiar haunts to pick up items you either can't find in Amsterdam, or that you could find if you looked hard, but you just can't be bothered. That means, for most of us, a run to CVS for essentials: lotions and potions, prescription meds that doctors here would never dispense (or so we are told), and a quick flu shot (also not something they readily give out here). But CVS alone does not the expat visit make. There is the run to Trader Joe's to load up on snack foods you can't live without, to Target (even though we have a perfectly good Dutch version called Hema), and in my case, to the local mecca: The Able Baker. For those of you who don't live in or near Maplewood, N.J., it's home to the world's best scone. And I do mean world's best, because I have tried my darndest to find a suitable replacement. Luckily, I finally followed my more senior expats' advice and brought an extra suitcase so I could fit - among other things - the six butter-laden scones that I brought back to Amsterdam with me.
It's not that Amsterdam doesn't have its own share of delicious treats. It's just that nothing compares to an Able Baker scone. Here's my niece Alissa and her husband Scott indulging in an Amsterdam waffle with melted dark chocolate at the outdoor Albert Cuypstraat market. It did look good. But it's just not on a par with my beloved scones.
Yes, I have to admit that I have this song running through my head as I approach the doors of the bakery, wondering whether they will have my favorite flavors: vanilla, cinnamon raisin, or pumpkin maple walnut. I doubt this is what the fabulous Pointer Sisters had in mind when they sang about being all excited and about to lose control. But I can assure you this is how I feel when I approach the Able Baker. "Get in this town and show me some affection. We're going for those pleasures in the..." bakery. Can you imagine better outfits than the ones the Pointer Sisters are wearing in this video? I can't.
Our visits back to the U.S. (see, I almost said back home) always have a whirlwindy feel. There is never enough time to spend with any one person, or enough time to even see everyone you want to see. As soon as I arrive at my destination, I'm already thinking ahead to leaving, to moving on. This month, I read The Empathy Exams for one of my book groups. One essay in the collection is about the author's visit to see a prisoner, and how the concept of leaving is present throughout the visit. "No matter how much we talk, or what we talk about - no matter how well Charlie describes prison, or how well I listen - our visit will end. Every moment we spend together gestures toward this horizon of departure - like the perspective point in a painting, everything refers to it. Confessing it does nothing to dissolve it." There you have it: "the horizon of departure". I feel like I'm saying goodbye over and over and over again, all week long, during the drive-by visits to see as many friends and family members as we can cram into the short time we are there.
Sometimes I feel guilty for making everyone drop everything to see us, just because we are in town. I worry that they are humming the words to the best-ever Gloria Gaynor song, "You felt like walking in and just expect me to be free". But really, aren't you still that chained-up little person still in love with me? And didn't you crumble, just once or twice, without me? I have always loved that "chained-up little girl" phrase. It was just a matter of time before I worked it into a blog post.
It's not just in the U.S. that we say a lot of goodbyes. We get a lot of practice here in Amsterdam, too. Because of the nature of the expat existence, people are always coming and going. In my short time here, I have said goodbye to several friends who each helped me adjust to life in Amsterdam. Angie steered me into joining the American Women's Club before setting sail for Portland. Kirsten and her dog Baxter, introduced me to other gals with dogs. Casey and I are eternally grateful to Kirsten. After meeting her, Casey's dog dance card was always full. And recently we found out that our friends Laurel and Richard are heading back to Maine. When expats "move back", you end up inheriting their things: lamps with European plugs, half-full bottles of olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and U.S. cold medications.
Sometimes, the expats don't "move back". Instead they move again. Tracy and Phil recently moved from Amsterdam to Dublin, where they will feel at home in the rain. No sooner do you build up enough time with someone to call them a friend than they leave you. I imagine that kids who go to the International School get a lot of practice saying goodbye to classmates. Maybe I should ask them for tips. This blogger hit the nail on the head when he wrote about this continual process of saying goodbye that is so much a part of the expat life.
You end up with some serious ex-expat swag when your friends leave. Thanks, Laurel and Richard, for these boxwoods. And for the lamps and liquor, too. We will all miss you.
I wonder if the longer you stay in your overseas house, the more it begins to feel like home. It's like the start of college. As a freshman - or first year, as I'm told the politically correct/non-gender specific term goes these days - your allegiance is still to your high school crew. You can't wait to get back to see them during your breaks. Somewhere during sophomore year, that allegiance starts to swing. Your "home" becomes college, and you can't wait to go back after your breaks. It's where your new friends are, and the place you feel most comfortable. Or at least that's how I remember it. Except as the years go on, you find that it's the friends from way, way back that you treasure the most. When you inhabit a new place later in life, you return to that same college transition: at first, you feel consumed by homesickness; you constantly imagine what is going on without you in your old haunts. Gradually, those feelings subside and imperceptibly, you start to feel like the new place is your home. Of course, the many means of staying in touch via social media have made it so much easier to feel a part of life back in the U.S. I can't imagine what this move would have been like if we had to rely on that wafer-thin blue airmail stationery as our only form of connection. The process of gradually turning my allegiance to Amsterdam was made a whole lot easier this fall when I returned form the U.S. to glorious fall weather that looked like this:
You might say that all this angst over defining home, and fitting in, is a first-world problem. I can't help but think about all of the refugees who have had to leave home for new places. I smiled with recognition when I read the following definition of the word expat: when you have money and move abroad, you're an expat. If you have no money, you're a refugee. I'm sure people who had to quickly uproot are just glad to have somewhere to sleep. They don't have the luxury of tossing and turning over having to say so many goodbyes when they visit relatives, or when their buddies "move back". For them, there is no moving back, or at least they hope not. We expats are lucky to have problems like which one of our comfortable lives to call home.
When you lead an expat life, maybe it means you trade the security of having one place to call home for the excitement of traveling around. You have to deal with a sort of in-between status in which you don't really truly belong in Amsterdam, but yet you don't really completely fit neatly back in where you came from. So your home is really neither the U.S., nor Amsterdam, or maybe it's both. Conveniently for the purposes of this blog post, Thomas Wolfe wrote another famous novel: Look Homeward, Angel. I think he's trying to tell me something: I need to do my best to keep in touch with my old home, even as I develop ties to my new one.
My face is jet lag personified. I can't account for the yellow glow. Luckily, it seems to be lighting up Rachel and Ben, too, so I can't blame it on jet lag. Ben had just flown in from San Francisco, but seems to be untouched by the ravages of jet lag. Ah, the joys of youth!
Let's go back to Mr. Wolfe again for some sage advice. He wrote in You Can't Go Home Again, "I have to see a thing a thousand times before I see it once." And I think that means I will learn to see my U.S. home in a different way once I see it as a sort-of outsider every time I visit. And even after 15 months of living here, I may need 500+ more times of seeing our apartment on Van Breestraat until I feel it's home. On the other hand, maybe this idea of being at home in both places is really a chimera. I've seen that word tossed around for years, but can never remember exactly what it means. Ah, the beauty of reading on a Kindle: it's just so easy to look up new words. And since I'm learning so many new words in Dutch, why not try to keep learning some in English, too? So I learned recently that a chimera is "a thing that is hoped or wished for but in fact is illusory or impossible to achieve". I hope it's not impossible to keep my feet in both places for now. As my friends The Talking Heads so perfectly sang, "Home - is where I want to be, but I guess I'm already there."
Happy Holidays from our home here, to your homes: here, there, and everywhere!
And a Happy, belated Hanukkah, too!