Homesickness

Homesickness rolls in and out like clouds across the horizon, dimming the view momentarily, darkening the house, triggered by forces I’m not conscious of. Like a fast-moving storm, the change in atmosphere catches me off guard.

Sometimes homesickness is born of frustration because I miss something concrete and practical, like the abundance of closets, cabinets, and outlets in my house in America . Or I’ll miss a luxury like my Jacuzzi, which I pine for every night the way a teenager does for her first love. Sometimes it originates deep inside, drawn from a memory of a moment or season in Virginia—the warm mornings on the deck, the children digging ponds in the dirt, the sound of cicadas and crickets, the sweet smell of honeysuckle, the ghostly sight of the moonflowers opening on the fence at night, the earthy scent of the lake.

There are days when I long for the 24/7 convenience of the American retail landscape and my confidence in navigating all the choices it offers. I miss shopping in all its permutations—knowing the brands, the stores, the best time and place to buy. I don’t like to shop here at all because it reminds me of how lost I am.

There are items I sent into storage before we moved that I wish I had with me now, not for practical reasons but emotional ones—photographs, stuffed animals, the decorative plates that sat on my dresser—little things that triggered happy memories.

I miss every word in the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer Sunday service and the creaky floors, red carpet, and stained glass windows of St. John’s . Church here is a lovely stylish shoe that doesn’t fit. It’s not comfortable and I find excuses to slip out of it.

And perhaps most of all I miss my girlfriends, the laughter and support we offered each other and the experiences we shared. Complaining about housework, jobs and our families, dissecting our children’s behavior and their schools, sharing our accomplishments, joking at our own expense--it made us all feel better to know everyone occasionally sags under the load of their responsibilities. We reminded one another of the amazing things we accomplished every day. We learned to laugh at our failures and celebrate our milestones. Now I feel a bit like an adolescent, worried about finding my own place in the social landscape, fitting in without selling out, saying the right thing.

The worst and best part of my overseas experience is a sense of being unmoored and untethered. It’s been liberating to truly start over in a new culture but unnerving too. I know that having left America behind, I can’t go back and see it the way I once did. I can move back into my house in Virginia but not back into my old life. One day I will miss Belgium--the bread store we walk to on Sunday mornings, the winding tree-lined trails of the parks near our house, the cool summers, the old brick buildings and architecture, our favorite restaurants, all the gardens, the cobblestone streets, my life without a car.

Virginia will never feel the same to me—but I’ll hang on to it, much like a favorite pair of jeans that no longer quite fits but that I can’t bear to part with. Part of my history, part of my dreams, the substance of who I am and long to be.

September 13, 2005

September

This is my favorite month of the year. It’s a month of fresh beginnings and lingering pleasures, when the sun is still warm, the mornings cool, and a sense of anticipation is in the air.

The breeze lifts the curtains at the windows, the streets are quiet, the children are in school wearing shoes unsullied by the stress of a hundred recesses. Their notebooks still have covers, their lunchboxes don’t smell yet, and the year is like a shiny copper penny in their pockets.

The days are shorter but not yet short. The stars gleam before bedtime and the sun is up but not too high as we walk to the bus stop each morning. There’s a delicate balance to each day, as if the yearly pendulum has paused ever so briefly in the sweetest point of its arc.

The leaves are still green, but a few are yellow and falling. The trees whisper secrets among themselves. Flowers still brighten the gardens, the lawnmowers still whine every Saturday, and the apples are growing fuller and beginning to blush.

The catalogs in the mailbox remind us of the cozy days to come: wool sweaters and rib socks, suede boots and dark jeans. The fireplace yawns in the living room and prepares to welcome fall. The cranberry sofa is full of comfort and promises. A stack of books grows next to my favorite chair.

Leaning out the window over a landscape dotted with brick cottages, stone streets, green gardens and golden fields, my mouth whispers, “Soon,” and my heart answers “Not yet.”

September 7, 2005

The Only Way to Travel

I rolled out of bed in my usual early morning daze and faced the additional challenge of having to look presentable for a driving class that you-know-who signed me up for. (I noticed he was far too busy to take time out of his schedule to learn the ins-and-outs of driving in Belgium . Now he will suffer from my insufferable arrogance as I lecture him with great AUTHORITY on Belgian traffic laws.)

I put the kids on the school bus and immediately go to catch my bus to the NATO support center that is offering the class. I arrive with 10 minutes to spare, navigate the labyrinth of hallways to find the conference room—and notice the door is locked and no one is there. I wait a bit, go to the bathroom, come back, and still don’t see any indication a class is getting ready to start here.

Out comes the cell phone and I call E-Man and ask him if he is sure the class is today. Yes he says. He gets me to describe precisely where I am and then tells me, “That’s the wrong conference room.”

Oh God. I’m never going to make it to class on time. This center is one of those government marvels of architecture, built bit by bit as they got funding and personnel levels expanded. It’s actually three or four separate buildings connected by pieces of stairwells, crossovers, elevators, and identical looking hallways that dead end or go around in big squares.

Fortunately, I can’t despair for long because the E-Man has the whole place mapped out in his mind in an amazing level of detail. With my cell phone glued to my ear, he tells me to make my way outside and stand by a particular door, and then like a human GPS, he guides me step by step to the location of the other conference room. My new term of endearment for him is going to be “Mappy.”

Mappy has signed me up for this class because he really wants me to start driving in Belgium and quit hanging out with Big Lip at the bus stop. I told him before we left the U.S. that I wasn’t driving in Belgium . He can call me Metro-Grrrl or Super Bus Woman. I did not see myself as Smart Girl in a Smart Car. No, from the beginning I was going to be punching my Metro tickets and flashing my bus pass as I conquered my own little corner of Europe .

There are lots of things that freak me out about driving in Belgium . There’s the near-death experiences, for example, the Belgians propensity for creating their own lanes or driving on sidewalks, the constant presence of bicycles, pedestrians, and honking horns, the narrow, curving streets that are two-way but have room for only one car to pass, the lack of street signs, the abundance of signs in languages I don’t read, and the fact that both city names and street names change languages as you move from one section to another.

So I worry about getting lost in places where I can’t read signs or speak the language, having a head-on collision, bicyclists pedaling in my blind spot, pedestrians stepping out from between parked cars, and getting nailed by cars entering the road from the right. The latter is a possibility because in Belgium any car entering the road you’re on from the right has the right of way. So as you’re driving, one eye must always be on the intersecting side streets because at any moment, a car can zip out and if you hit them, it’s all your fault. There are no stop signs—there’s only a complicated system of PRIORITY, the Belgian term for right-of-way.

The driving class instructor begins by telling us that most Americans are stationed in Belgium for four years and nearly all of them will have at least one accident. This is a real confidence builder for someone who was involved in three accidents in six months in the U.S. and NEVER WANTS TO BE IN ANOTHER ONE, least of all in a foreign country.

The conference room, like the rest of the buildings here, is not air conditioned and it’s hot. The lights are dimmed as the instructor begins a slide show to accompany his lecture. I’m under the influence of drugs and trying not to fall asleep. My sympathy is with the young MP next to me, who worked all night and then had to come to this class. We’re both fantasizing about curling up into fetal positions under the table and sleeping for hours. The instructor goes over traffic laws, hundreds of traffic signs, pavement markings, typical speed limits, hypothetical situations, etc. I’m furiously taking notes, trying to stay awake and remember everything he says. It seems for every rule, there are three exceptions. After a while, I just listen.

When we break for lunch, I’m out of there. Unlike the other poor souls in the room, I’m not required to take a test in the afternoon and get a Belgian license. I grab my backpack, thank the instructor, and make a dash for the nearest exit. I know the next bus leaves in five minutes, and I aim to be in the front row seat, on my way home, protected by a few tons of steel and the expertise of a professional driver. It’s the only way to travel in Belgium.

September 6, 2005 

Why I Love Public Transportation

Ever since my first child arrived on the scene 10 years ago, everything about driving or being in a car has become stressful. Just getting the car out of the garage is a challenge. In the beginning of parenthood, outings were wedged between meals, naps, and crying jags (mine and theirs) and involved packing bags and hauling equipment and twisting my back into impossible positions as I loaded and buckled the kids into their car seats in our two-door hatchback.

Later when the kids were preschoolers, things improved slightly when we left diapers and strollers behind, and everyone was responsible for wiping their own noses and butts and buckling themselves in. Now with elementary school kids in tow, our goal is to eliminate whining and food purchases on car trips. Even a 20-minute drive across town must be treated like a trip across the Sahara with adequate food and water supplies taken along. Andrew is always thirsty, Emily is always hungry, and both are persistent in keeping thirst and hunger issues on my personal radar, pinging their requests and complaints to me in neat intervals until I feel my brain is being microwaved. Now I know why dogs hang their heads out the window when they’re riding in the family car.

Yesterday we proved once again that even going to church can be traumatic as various parties got into the car and then got out again—“Go comb your hair,” “Grab a sweater, it’s chilly,” “You are NOT wearing those shoes to church,” “Wait! I just want to start the washer,” “Leave the (insert toy name here) at home” and the ever popular, “Did you check the lights (and/or) windows upstairs?” By the time we get in the car for the tenth time after rushing around and fighting over who should be doing what, we’re all in a bad mood. We’ve already violated most of the Ten Commandments.

So it’s no surprise things go down hill from there. As E-Man is driving, navigating the ever dynamic Belgium traffic, I keep clutching my heart and flashing back to The Day I Was Creamed by the Tractor-Trailer and the months it took to recover. While I’m freaking out about cars, pedestrians and bicycles threatening to collide with the car on the passenger side, the E-Man is telling me in an increasingly loud voice to shut my pie hole (not using those words, mind you) and he begins lecturing me on safety, reminding me that I don’t even drive here and he does. He delivers his message in his self-righteous, ultimate driver voice, which I HATE.

To counter the smug “safety-lecture voice,” I employ my “superior church lady voice,” as I remind him that damn it, he is NOT perfect and that sometimes my concerns are justified—like when he has headed down streets in the wrong direction or nearly mowed down a pedestrian in a crosswalk, ignoring my escalating cries of “stop, stop, stop!.” The Muslim woman who almost met Allah that day in the crosswalk reached out to touch our car as she jumped out of its path. The journalist in me saw an international incident in the making. Headline “American Male Kills Muslim Woman Walking to Mosque.”

E-Man accuses me of over reacting, and he asks me if, at this moment, I am wearing prescription glasses. (Let the record show I was indeed wearing my prescription glasses from Lenscrafters, thank you very much!) I resist the urge to remind him he is BLIND in one eye. I don’t smack him because I don’t want to ruin his good eye. (See how NICE I am?) Instead of punching him, I tell him that having an accident of any variety in Belgium will be a nightmare unmatched by anything we faced in the States. (“I KNOW that already! Don’t you think I know that! I’m not stupid!”)

By the time we arrive at church, I’m ready to call a lawyer on my cell phone and start divorce proceedings. He’s ready to suggest medication and a straight-jacket. Above all, as we walk into church (separately I might add, because damn it, I’m not SPEAKING to him), we’re wishing we didn’t have to smile and look like a nice friendly family. We are two people squelching murderous impulses. We are not June and Ward, we are Ozzie and Sharon.

All I have to say is that in the car, Silence is Golden. And Jesus better arrive with the Premarin M&Ms soon—and bring some duct tape for our pie holes.

Big Lip at the Bus Stop

On Friday I hurried to the bus stop to catch Bus 316 to the Metro station and head into Brussels for a chiropractor appointment. There’s a girl waiting there who looks to be about 18, her yellow hooded top revealing a narrow sliver of brown belly above her jeans, her white sneakers are scuffed, her cell phone waits in her hand. She’s leaning on the bicycle rack, and tired after a long week, I slip over to the glass bus stop enclosure and drop down on a bench.

And that’s when I see him, the old guy that haunts my village, wandering streets and stores, aimlessly riding the buses, bumming euros from strangers. I shrink into my own skin a he approaches the bench I’m sitting on and sits down next to me.

I want to escape, but the words I always preach to my kids ring in my own ears: “Treat every person with dignity and respect.” Damn. I hate it when I have to be a better a person than I am. Parenting does that to you. I sit up a little taller, I take a deep breath, I don’t run away.

My new companion has an enormous bottom lip that curls down toward his chin like a giant wave ready to crash onto shore. Gravity pulls its weight towards his chest and reveals the lip’s glistening pink underside, which trembles a bit as he talks.

“Want a cigarette?” Big Lip asks.

“No, thanks.” I check out his bony frame, his dark brown pants, loose fitting buttondown shirt, and the dusty leather Docksiders he wears on his feet. His hair is shot with gray, neatly trimmed but long and stringy, very dirty looking. It is in total disarray. But he doesn’t smell, and for this I’m grateful.

“Are you English?” he asks.

“American,” I answer.

“From where?” he asks.

I’m doubtful it matters, but I answer anyway, “ Virginia .”

“I’ve been there,” he exclaims. “ Virginia Beach !”

I’m surprised. “I have a good friend there,” I say, and then stare off into the distance, thinking of Lynn, who is getting ready to start a new job this week. What would Lynn do if she were here?

He admires the spectralite necklace I’m wearing, the one Eric bought me in Finland in April. “It’s very nice, “he says. “Very beautiful.” His words are a little slurred: Is it because of his vibrating lip or has he been drinking? I don’t smell alcohol on his breath.

“I should stop smoking,” Big Lip says, “I want to stop, but it’s too hard,” he explains as he extracts a crumpled package of cigarettes out of his pocket. I nod in understanding and wonder if he’d slept with the cigarettes, slept in the rumpled clothes he’s wearing.

He lights the cigarette, takes a long drag, and immediately begins coughing. His breath rattles in his chest. This is my cue to casually escape the glass cage I’m in.

I wander out to the sidewalk and start to pace. Where the hell is the bus? It’s late.

The teenager is looking bored, praying for her cell phone to ring, the bus to help us get on with our lives. I edge closer to a tiny stone building next to the bus stop. It has a peaked roof and a French door. I peer in to see an altar to the Virgin Mary, the words “Ave Maria” set in stone, the year “1937.” Who built this and why is it here? It’s no bigger than a porta-potty and the door is locked. Are those flowers on the altar? Who put them there?

Full of questions, I turn my eyes back toward Big Lip, who is pulling a long strand of drool off the precipice of his lower lip and flinging it onto the sidewalk as he stands and hitches his pants up on his bony hips.

“How long ‘til the bus?” he asks me.

“Any minute,” I say. The girl and I exchange impatient glances. I move closer to her and we watch as Big Lip shuffles over to the side of the bus shelter, opens his fly, and takes a leak. The girl and I roll our eyes at each other and she shakes her head and says, “God, some people are so weird!”

I tell her if we position ourselves to get on the bus last, then he can’t sit near us. I immediately feel guilty. Mary’s ghostly white face is a shadow in the roadside shrine. Once again, I shrink into my skin.

A bus approaches. It’s 318. Big Lip flags it down. I sigh in relief. Me and the girl are waiting for 316. I watch as 318 carries away Big Lip but leaves my shame behind. I carry it with me as 316 pulls up to the curb.

September 3, 2005

The Season's Bounty

Tuesday. A market is held in Stockel today. If I grab bus 316 to the Metro and then ride one stop to the end of the line, I’ll be in the thick of things. Stall after stall of fresh vegetables and ripe fruit manned by pink-cheeked women wearing aprons. The clothes vendors will be out as well, with bohemian skirts and gauzy blouses, t-shirts and children’s clothes. Cheap jewelry sits on tables covered with black velvet. Purses hang from awning supports. A man and woman in white sell freshly made Belgian waffles. Women line up to take home whole chickens cooked to glistening perfection on a rotisserie. The cheese man, stout and dark-haired, cuts wheels and blocks on command. The frite shack does brisk business, and a side street is lined with cut flowers and blooming plants.

A man selling brightly colored tablecloths begins to speak to me in Dutch when I stop to examine his goods. I look up at him and ask “Do you speak English?” He smiles and reveals missing teeth, and then launches into his sales spiel in accented English. He asks if I’m British, and with a bit of reservation, I tell him, no, I’m an American, but I live in Belgium now. He smiles so wide I think his ears are going to fall into his grin. He taps his chest and says, “I love America ! I love it!” He then enthusiastically describes his brother in America and how he goes to visit him in Ellie. “You know Ellie?” For a moment I’m lost, and then it hits me, he’s saying L.A . He has traveled up and down the California coast and visited Yosemite . He’s going back in October—he can hardly wait!

I wonder what California looks like to a Belgian. Glass, steel, wood, concrete and smog. This is a place where every building is made of brick, even the barns and the sidewalks and driveways. Belgians are in love with clay and stone, from their ceramic tile floors to their red tile roofs and the cobblestone driveways and byways. It is no wonder their buildings last hundreds of years. The burnished reds contrast with the always green grass and often gray skies. When we first arrived here, my 15-year-old cousin asked me if I had ever been to Beverly Hills . “All the houses there are white, no?” America shines bright with newness to people with thousands of years of recorded history under their feet.

Gardening is a national past time in Belgium, and the yards are bright with color—window boxes of geraniums, climbing vines trained to frame the garage doors, huge beds of fragrant lavender, begonias in bloom, and piles and piles of roses. Everything is hemmed in by meticulously trimmed hedges. From early spring through the fall, the gardens are never stagnant or neglected but vibrant and ever changing.

Every community and village has multiple parks and hiking trails. Go walking in America , and you’re most likely to see youngish women in white leather shoes and hoodies out on the roads walking with swinging arms and determination. Here walking is a way of life, not a daily discipline. No one dons special shoes or athletic gear to walk. Old and young, men and women, families—they all walk and wander through parks and paths, often accompanied by dogs. The best walking routes are littered with what the dogs leave behind—dodging these canine calling cards is part of life here.

There is a tree-lined lane that curves around wheat fields just outside my neighborhood. I love to walk there, occasionally stepping off into the wanderliing that run into the forests. Take the trail around and it comes to a small pond, the surface skimmed with an uninterrupted blanket of green that cloaks the area in magic and mystery. Towering trees and a weeping willow sweep its edges, and I’ve seen baby ducks emerge from a hidden area in the bank and cautiously part the plants as they explore the pond.

This summer I discovered blackberry bushes off the trail, and the kids and I visited often, staining and pricking our fingers as we tried to extricate the tender fruit from the brambles. We’d carry our pickings home, divide them into heavy ceramic bowls, dust them with sugar, and taste summer. Sweet and tart with hints of sunlight and dusk—a pleasure as old as time, connecting us to the earth and all those who have passed this way.

August 30, 2005

Nothing but Blue Skies, Hidden Tears

When I woke up this morning and pulled back the curtains, I was greeted by a cloudless sky. Belgium is notoriously gray and drizzly (think London or Seattle), so when the sky is clear and the sun rules the day, it’s like a benediction. You tilt your chin skyward, inhale deeply, and count your blessings on those rare mornings that don’t require a windbreaker or an umbrella.

My blond-haired blessings were tucked in their beds under the piney eaves of the house. Emily under her pastel quilt, a garden of carpet flowers and butterflies dotting the floor of her room and piles of clothes and baby dolls in every corner. Andrew, wrapped in a blue and green cocoon of flannel, waiting to emerge and read the Archie comic books piled on his bed. Emily wakes up when I put the cat on her chest and is eager to put on her frilly skort and brand new sneakers. Andrew is coaxed out from under the covers when I sing him a silly rhyming song, composed on the spot to entertain and delight him and keep morning crabbiness at bay. The song is accompanied by much tickling, snorting, snuffling, and rabid kissing. He laughs and laughs, much like the toddler I used to lift from a crib in the apple green room in Virginia.

I have carefully packed their backpacks and checked my lists, but I haven’t checked my heart. I’m surprised to find myself sad behind the jovial façade I wear for the children. I’m a veteran of the back-to-school process, I’d been looking forward to this day, and so I’m caught off-guard by my regret as I fix them breakfast, supervise tooth brushing, tame Andrew’s cowlicks, and walk them out the door.

I will miss their laughter bubbling down the stairs, the way they eagerly call to each other all day, the plaintive shouts of “Mama!” which remind me that I’m needed and loved. My freedom has its own intoxications—quiet time, morning walks, less housework, more writing—but love and responsibility feed the soul.

From the moment the umbilical cord is cut, we begin a dance of holding on and letting go, running to and away from each other, feeling smothered or joy-filled with each embrace. Today I feel I’m dancing with two left feet, a little off-balance, out of time with the music.

I won’t cry today. I’ll thank God for the sun that anoints us and never falters in its daily dance, reminding us that eternal things don’t change, that today as always, we carry one another in our hearts.

August 29, 2005

One Cool Summer

(and why I’m glad it’s over)

Unlike my friends in the Southern U.S. , I didn’t spend my summer in an endless sauna, with clothes stuck to my back, a dashboard that could double as a griddle, and enough oil pooling on my face to make OPEC’s reserves obsolete. No, my first summer in Belgium was cool in every sense of the word.

The daylight stretched until 10:30 p.m. , the temperatures hovered in the 60s or 70s most days and in the 50s at night. There were more gray and rainy days than I’d like to remember, and even on sunny days, huge fronts of clouds would come rolling over the flat Belgian landscape and drizzle or dump on our heads. There was an upside to this. We are collectively the whitest people on the planet (or as I prefer to be known, “the fairest of them all”). Yet despite my obsession with avoiding skin cancer, we didn’t even consume one full tube of sunscreen. It will be known as the summer of no tan lines.

And nothing bugged us. Literally. There were no moths congregating around the outdoor lights like a mad crowd threatening to get in or die trying. My white legs were not decorated with pink mosquito bites, and nothing small and annoying was buzzing around my ears (unless you count the kids, but let’s be charitable here). The black flies were also few and far between. Maybe they all summer in the south of France like the rest of Europe .

We visited Paris, marveled over the castles in the Loire Valley, went to a wine tasting, stepped into Monet’s colorful gardens and house, cheered for Lance Armstrong, hiked in ancient forests, saw our first Michelangelo, toured Belgian’s oldest city by canal boat, and consumed too much of the country’s specialties: chocolate, beer, and frites (known at home as French fries—how rude, how wrong!).

But tomorrow I walk my kids to board the big blue school bus (yes, BLUE) and return to a life that does not revolve around food. All summer I feel I’ve spent inordinate amounts of time in the kitchen preparing meals and snacks, scraping food off the table and counters, sweeping crumbs off the floor, wiping spills, washing dishes, and grocery shopping. My children eat like they have tapeworms and act like they were refugees in their last life. They treat every meal or snack as if it might be their last. Conversation revolves around what they’ve eaten and when they’ll eat next, and all social events, day trips, and vacations are judged by the quality and quantity of culinary delights.

No, they’re not overweight. Yes, they’re active, and I know they’re growing. But geez, I feel like a sous chef in Hell’s Kitchen. Maybe I’m just jealous because they’re growing vertically and I’m growing horizontally. Too many snacks with the kids and my stomach looks like a mound of rising bread dough. Really, I’d prefer for excess fat to be stored so that my cups would runneth over, not my waistband. Life is too cruel.

But if I can resist the temptation to crawl back into bed after the big blue bus chugs off into the distance, I can put some miles on my Nikes and some slack into my jeans. And that would make for a very cool fall.

August 28, 2005