On going home, when home is abroad

To date, I've lived in five countries (counting the aspirational nation I now find myself in) for a cumulative four years, including a significant chunk of my 'adult' (post-college) life. I am still no expert at the art of going home.

I continually struggle with plane travel, and have so my whole life. In many ways planes have defined my existence - planes between coasts between parents, planes between countries between academic years, planes between continents between career paths. Given this, you think I'd get it by now. I don't. I find it fundamentally de-locating (is that even a word? I don't know! That's how delocating it is!) to get on a plane in Tel Aviv and eleven hours later stroll out into Logan airport for a Dunkin Donuts iced coffee. The ease of the mechanism belies the complexity of the action. We should still travel on boats, so the effort is commensurate with the intention, so that time is at least given the due tip of the hat for the distance traveled! Instead here I stroll, iced coffee in hand, peeling off clothing, hugging my mom like it ain't no thing, when it's actually wordlessly, incredibly significant. In short, it mixes me all up.

I don't do well in general with life-significance amongst those I know; much like public emotional declarations, I am more comfortable in the company of strangers when giving life its due regard. Give me a refugee mom to hug or an unknown teacher to appreciate with a meaningful handshake and nod of the head - no problem, more than happy, in fact, probably overwhelmed with privileged joy. But tell my family how much their support over the years has meant to me, continues to meant to me? No dice. They'll just have to read it here and we'll pretend this never happened, ok, guys? But I do feel a compulsion toward Significance when I go home, and it angers me when I don't get it. Which is never, because I'm not comfortable with it. Classic.

Going home is also hard because it makes you realize that you don't live there. You don't know the inside jokes of your circle of friends, the bars they go to, the places they frequent. You don't know the latest music or tv or cool techy things (unless you happened to be employed at a cool techy company, zing!). Your nieces are grown. Your parents are older. Everyone seems tired, including yourself. It's almost easier to stay abroad and not go through that pain. But then you become The Expat. No thanks. More on that later, however.

I think for me the trickiest part is not getting stranded between the two places, home, and other-home. Becoming a ghost in both, emotionally detaching, and living in some weird floating netherworld, population 1. I can always feel the tug of this when I go home. It's in my nature, or at least has been forced into my nature, to be really good at leaving things. In elementary school I would head to the beach on the last day, not talk to or see any of my school friends for the summer, and have no problems what so ever with this. It's gotten much harder as I get older and the ties get deeper; sleeping for four nights next to my best friend in New York and seeing her splayed out like an Egyptian next to me was beyond bittersweet. Getting to wake up and laugh right in her face - magic. People in Ramallah commented that I was 'silent' while I was home. Well, obviously I was silent - how else would I be? I don't know how to be any other way. That doesn't mean I don't think about x when I'm in y - it just means I don't act on that thought, because I'm just not quite sure how that would work.

There's not really an end to this post, apologies. Make no mistake, I'm thrilled I went home; my childhood best friend got married (which caused me to wake up in a 3 am sweaty panic, also more on that later), I went to my 10 year high school reunion (so American, whisper the Europeans), saw many friends, including my college roommate who recently got engaged to another college friend (pure joy, some things are just right), got to hold the newest member of my giant family, my 10 week old niece (conclusion there: babies are like hot, heavy stuffed animals when they're sleeping ,which is a lot) and got to do a grand tour of the Northeast Corridor and catch up with beloved ones in Boston, NY and DC.

A lot of being home was being surrounded by people. To be honest, my favorite moment was in DC: I went for a six mile walk at night and listened to music. The air was heavy with humidity, the trees were so green they looked black, and the heat was hugging every inch of my body. People were happy and busy and free. Freedom, I guess, is sometimes company enough.