I think I’m
in denial. It feels like next
Tuesday is no different from today, just a trip and then I’ll be back home.
And there it
is, the key phrase : back home.
Earlier this
semester, I wrote a post about feeling a bit lost, as if I was afloat in the
sea with no real roots. It felt
like I had no home, because nothing felt permanent, not San Diego, not
Middlebury and not Paris. But somehow
in the last few months, that’s changed.
Home kind of snuck up on me, and suddenly I find myself struggling to
come to terms with the fact that this is, in fact, not permanent.
The truth is,
I can’t actually imagine what it’s going to be like to get on that plane –
checking my bags, walking through security, the voice of the desk attendant
calling out the departure, sitting and watching out the window as the tarmac of
the Charles de Gaulle airport fades into the clouds…
I can already
imagine the moment it will truly hit me because the same thing struck me when I
was in New York for a few days earlier this spring ; whether it be on the
plane when the flight attendants switch from announcing in French to announcing
in English, or when I step off the plane in San Francisco, it will be the fact
that everyone is speaking English.
American English.
First
thought? Ugh, freaking tourists, just
pipe down.
Except they
won’t be tourists.
And I’ll just
be another American, getting off a plane from Par-ee, that place with the
Eye-fill tower and the Ark duh Tri-umph.
Signs in English will glare at me, with big bold letters greeting me to
the land of the free, the land of the brave.
The customs
agent will welcome me “home”.
And there it
is again, home.
I suppose as
someone who hopes to move and travel quite frequently, this revelation, that home is such a difficult term to define,
is timely. Will the US always be home purely because I am an American
citizen? Or could a place like
Paris be home? Can one have multiple homes? Or will that just lead to a perpetual cycle of wishing one
was elsewhere? Don’t get me wrong,
I’m looking forward to being back in Solana Beach with my family; but I know
that I will so many things about the life that I have created here : jumping on
the bus, grabbing a glass of wine at the nearest bar with a friend, Annie’s
incredible cooking, and discussing French politics with Annie’s friends.
Because the
truth is, Paris, you have become home, and leaving you will not be easy.
