“MEMORY LN” the street sign read, followed closely by “DEAD END.”
Why yes I am in Connecticut; why do you ask?
It’s occurred to me now and then in recent months that overseas assignments should come with a warning label. I mean, you know it’ll be hard to fit into the new country–in fact, hopefully you know that you probably never really will.
I can’t adapt to the French “doctor=God” mentality and it’s about to cause problems with our vet; I recently blew off an undercover cop who was trying to show me his badge because I assumed he was some kind of crook; we simply do not understand how to get someone to take us seriously about renting an apartment; everything just…causes more anxiety than it should.
That said, what people don’t talk about is the simultaneous loss of “home.”
I miss things about the U.S. CVS in particular, which Nick’s French coworkers descended on like a pack of locusts, and a lot of the food, too. Oh, and of course our families, although since arriving in CT I’ve spent most of my time clinging to my parents’ dog (Molly, for whom this site was sort-of named) and trying to teach her Jolie’s commands. Nick’s grandfather grilled steaks that had to be four inches thick, though, and this morning my mother made flax-seed waffles, so the family thing gets sort of intertwined with the food thing–well, I hear that that tends to happen a lot.
Anyway.
We’re just not quite comfortable here, is all. The voices are so loud; the clothes are so odd (did I use to wear flip-flops? Is there anyone on this continent who doesn’t wear flip-flops?); we’ve lost our instinct for when to greet and when to ignore. I get downright twitchy over normal questions and comments, because my responses can either be normal or accurate.
It’s not that we judge the U.S. because we like France better or anything like it; it’s that living in France for even just a couple of years has rewired our responses to American norms. There’s no choosing; no decision: we just see it through foreign eyes before we can help ourselves, and then have to reign in the response. We have to sift through our reactions to try to find the remembered ones rather than the instinctive ones. And while everyone knows that you can’t go home again, losing the old sense of home while being a permanent foreigner in the new one is something of a sucker-punch, wouldn’t you say?
I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything; I’m not trying to complain, here. It’s just…I wish I’d known.