Two hours home in the car, talking with my dad about french philosophy, art films and humanism - topics that, upon reflection, I was probably uttering pure drivel. I strongly suspect my dad was talking to humour me as I was probably drifting in and out of sleep.
Anyway, we got home. It's always strange, going back to a town that hardly changes, yet seems so different. I know it's probably mostly me.
One really great thing was driving into the car port with my kids in the car. Telling Amelie that this was my house when I was a little girl, and then I corrected myself and said, "Well, not a little girl but smaller than I am now." Like she's listening, like she cares. She's on a big adventure all her own.
I'm sleeping in my old room, the one that was all pink, with the bay window and window seat and curtains and cushions all in tiny pink roses. Now it is full of furniture and two twin beds put together to make some kind of giant, king size something. It's not really a bed, more of a platau. And the room has substantially less pink. Gone are the Jonathan Brandis posters, that were more about my idea of fitting in than a true crush. Gone is the chipboard wardrobe that the robbers busted the locks on when they broke into the house all those years ago. Why I ever locked it before we went away I'll never know. There was never anything valuable in it. Gone are my books from the weird cupboard that should have been a closet but wasn't.
Before I lose complete track, yes, upon coming home, I did get nostalgic, just a little. How things can change in 10 or 15 years. Or even less than that.
Here I was at my old house, with my two little girls.
A couple of novel things for them:
1. Amelie was in a bigger twin size bed. She only fell out twice. Once she didn't even notice she'd fallen out, she just continued sleeping on the floor.
2. The back yard.
3. The trampoline.
It didn't take them long to get the hang of it.
and...
and of course, #4. Bella, the dog next door
And everything was off to such a good start.
Then I went downtown.
I don't know what was the most alarming part about it. Perhaps I hadn't realized already that the accent was starting to grate on my nerves. Not that there is anything wrong with it per say, but there is a certain melodiousness to American accents that is pleasing to mine ear. And right there I think is where the wondering started in. Am I a snob?
And then, outside of Village Fair (or as it's now known, Market Plaza) sitting on the benches waiting for the bus, (how do I say this) the same sad, goofy, crazy faces that were there all of my growing up. One guy, I swear he's been sitting in that same place all these years - the one with the hair cut like a 15th Century monk, but glasses like Donahue, all rectangular and wiry. And the obese woman, whose laugh sounded like a gurgling drain pipe, clearly a kangaroo lose in the top paddock, shouting obscenities at every pick up truck that drove by.
I know every town has them. I just didn't expect them to be the same, in the location, sitting in the exact same place as when I left. I kinda stood there, stunned, having changed myself, realizing some things don't change. I felt embarrassed, snobby, and sad all at once. And it wasn't even them, that was just the moment it all came crashing down. I did not belong here, and yet this was the place that raised me, the place that created me. There was something so depressing about the immobility of the place that I had escaped from, that coming back made me feel claustrophobic, and caged. How glad I was to have gone, how relieved I was that God had moved me so dramatically, how much I loved my home, how out of place I felt in a place that had once been my home. It was like a strange alternate universe, and I was alien, again, but on my home planet.
And what's more, had I tried to explain it to anyone, I didn't know I could say it in a way that didn't make me sound as though I thought myself superior to them.
I battled myself for ten days. I worked hard at trying to love people, to accept people... None of it was what I expected. It was like biting off a sweet chunk of cookie, and trying to wash it down with a cool glass of milk, only to find you're drinking curdled cream.
And then finally, from across the world, R says to me, "Don't worry love, you just have a case of culture shock."
What?????
