Immigration Issues: 4. Can you ever go back?
That's the constant question for the immigrant. After fighting through the adaptation process of the new country the prospect of just returning home even if just for a visit seems more and more appealing. Finally, no comparing, just fitting in. Well. More times than I can count going back just left me more confused than before.
Unfortunately everything is more complicated and this simple question turns out to be incomplete. Going back to... where or when? To who? To what? The immigrant always returns to the past as well as the place. There is just no other way. Time has elapsed but your memory is stuck and you come back expecting your life to greet you but all you get is the visual track for your memory because everything else seems gone. Depending on how and why you left your country this will be a major or minor inconvenience (I'm sure some people are glad not to find the exact same misery they left.), but it will leave you desperate to find a connection because at the same time you know that what you left is such a big part of you.
So you turn to people, meet old friends, spend time with family. Everyone is happy to see you but then there is the silent awkwardness. They are not sure if you are still the same. And you aren't - it never bothered you, but now you wish you could just erase the new experience and just melt with your surrounding. You do the same things you used to do, everybody is trying to erase what happened in the meantime. You try to fast forward on your life in the home country, trying hard to convince everyone it's the same old you. But it's not. At some point it gets too much and you stop hiding. That's when the real friends show themselves and you have to let go. The truth is, people who stayed are not the same either but for some this is an impossible realization. They thrive on patterns and who are you to come here and try to make it all irrelevant? Not insisting on certain regional and national idiosyncracies equals suicide to them. Oh, you have an accent now! Oh, you wear different clothes! Oh, you don't share my exact daily reality! What a betrayal! It hurts. But when the emotion subsides you realize they do it for their own protection and slowly you need their affirmation less and less. Maybe their definition of the "real native" is something completely different to yours? You are left amazed by the fact you never noticed that before.
As an immigrant you have the advantage to actually "see" time go by. Certain periods of your life are limited to a certain setting and so visiting often means visiting your childhood or your adolescence. Since you also usually only visit for a short amount of time, the entire experience lends itself easily to lots of nostalgia and idealization. I usually end up in an inner frenzy of comparing... the then-and-now, the here-and-there. Is it what it seems? What is my conclusion, where do I stand on the perpetual identity-question? It's never conclusive, you just get a headache.
It's hard to go back. You see what you left and you have to let it go all over again. Then again it's nice. you see what you left and you find yourself in it. And so you hang there... spread like a bridge between two places, neither here nor there.
Can you ever go back? I don't know.
Posted at 04:41 PM on January 28, 2004 | Comments (4)Farewell
So I had to say goodbye to my family a week ago. The longer we live on separate continents the better we learn to deal with it. Or so it seems. But the missing doesn't really get less, because we are painfully aware of the time passed. There's something about goodbyes... I always feel like there's something left unsaid, something lost. I guess it's just the nature of it. Goodbyes make chapters out of time and make you feel like you can't leave the ends loose. You want to conclude, make a statement. But then it's too much and you'd rather get it over with fast. I've gotten good at them. Goodbyes, I mean. I have practice. You develop a certain discipline. Unfortunately it doesn't make them easier at all.
Posted at 04:03 PM on January 28, 2004Slipping in a little pride...
Veronika and I spent some time away from Lincoln recently. It must have been the first time for me since one night in 2001... I think. Anyway, it was strange going to my room at night and be by myself - and then realize, oh, I'm not. There's my daughter. I feel like I've grown into this mother-thing more and more, but I will never stop having those moments when I look at her and see this new person that I will (if I do my job right) be friends with one day and think: "My daughter". That's just crazy.
How to spell T I R E D
Jet lag is clearly part of the axis of evil. It's the only thing that makes me doubt God ever intended for humans to fly across the ocean. It's a feeling between being thrown up on by a rhino or having enjoyed a massage with cookie cutters. If you want to intensify the feeling add a jetlagged 5-month-old and the peaceful picture of a sleeping puppy will make you want to scream.
Luckily God also made husbands like this to alleviate the misery.
Posted at 07:04 AM on January 20, 2004 | Comments (2)You might have noticed...
... the even slower than the usual slow progress of this blog. I am on a very deserved vacation and blogging-time is rare (uh, like I usually have hours and hours of free creative time... yeah, right.). I never make New-Year-resolutions, not out of conviction, I just never have. Only this time my resolve to update this blog more often coincided with the beginning of 2004. You are free to remind me of this when I start slacking off...
Happy New Year everyone!
Posted at 06:35 AM on January 12, 2004 | Comments (2)