This morning my husband and best friend is on a plane headed to
New York City. He will be back in Europe in ten days. But remaining
behind in another continent brought into sharp focus that the reality
is, home is where the heart is, and if in fact that is true, then my
home and my heart are back in New York with my family.
Being an expat is something that everyone should do once in his or her life. It is an experience that will forever change you.
It stretches your thinking. It tries your patience when you quietly steam as to why things don't operate as efficiently as they do back home. It forces you to become an ambassador for your nation, even when foreigners have strong opinions about what it means to be an American and they challenge you to explain American policy and business abroad, as if you were the Secretary of State or the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. And, it teaches you to improvise and continually think and live outside the box.
Being an American, especially from New York, sometimes is seen as a curiosity, especially where I am now in Costa del Sol where the foreigners that visit or live arrive from England, Germany or one of the Northern European countries.
There are two questions I am repeatedly asked as a New Yorker: Did I ever live in Manhattan? Yes. Was I there on 9/11? Yes.
Today, as I write, I can look out my windows and see the Mediterranean Sea glimmering in all of its blue-hued morning glory. I have never lived so close to the sea. And if I look out the other window, I can see the ruddy peaks of mountains that bookend with the sea the valleys and towns along Spain's Costa del Sol.
My favorite memory here occurred in Malaga at the end of last year. I met a crumpled old man who asked for a pen to write me something. As he tried to get the pen to write, I asked in Spanish, "Does it work?" He turned to me and said he would teach me a more elegant way to ask the same question. He said, "Does the pen paint? Does it work is very American. Work. A pen does not work. A pen paints. Writing is art." He was a writer. And, indeed, I don't think I would ever hear an American asking if a pen paints.
But as much as intellectually I look at the new and interesting things on the journey, I still have not found my tribe.
This is not home.
Sometimes it is evident that I don't quite belong. I am an outsider who does not fit in with the British who live here and their peculiar colloquialisms. They tease us in return about the strange lingo we seem to use. And the Spanish, although welcoming, have a very different rhythm that seems to run completely contrary to the American, especially a New Yorker's, intensity. I have quickly learned that time is an elastic concept that can mean anything from an hour later to perhaps sometime tomorrow, whereas in New York, if you are on time - you're late.
I am an American, and a New Yorker at that. I am used to living in the messy and frenetic international city that is Manhattan. I never necessarily agreed with the notion that every part of the United States was a melting pot, but New York City is certainly a place where everything goes from anywhere around the world.
But, as I look out the windows that wrap around the apartment where I am currently staying I feel distance with my surroundings. It is all very picturesque and beautiful. But it feels somewhat like Van Gogh's "Starry Night", which depicts an idealized view outside of his asylum room window in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. It was a reality that he saw only in his imagination, as he could not have possibly have seen the village in his stylized painting from the window.
The journey continues.
It does not mean a return to New York. That is my past. But, I am not certain what my expat future will bring with respect to a home.
And so every day, as I reconcile the unfamiliar world around me where I have been seemingly photo-shopped into a photographer's picture of the area, I know that I am one step closer, one day closer, to claiming a place where we will dig in our heels. And it will be at that point; this roaming nomad will begin to find her tribe.
Being an expat is something that everyone should do once in his or her life. It is an experience that will forever change you.
It stretches your thinking. It tries your patience when you quietly steam as to why things don't operate as efficiently as they do back home. It forces you to become an ambassador for your nation, even when foreigners have strong opinions about what it means to be an American and they challenge you to explain American policy and business abroad, as if you were the Secretary of State or the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. And, it teaches you to improvise and continually think and live outside the box.
Being an American, especially from New York, sometimes is seen as a curiosity, especially where I am now in Costa del Sol where the foreigners that visit or live arrive from England, Germany or one of the Northern European countries.
There are two questions I am repeatedly asked as a New Yorker: Did I ever live in Manhattan? Yes. Was I there on 9/11? Yes.
Today, as I write, I can look out my windows and see the Mediterranean Sea glimmering in all of its blue-hued morning glory. I have never lived so close to the sea. And if I look out the other window, I can see the ruddy peaks of mountains that bookend with the sea the valleys and towns along Spain's Costa del Sol.
My favorite memory here occurred in Malaga at the end of last year. I met a crumpled old man who asked for a pen to write me something. As he tried to get the pen to write, I asked in Spanish, "Does it work?" He turned to me and said he would teach me a more elegant way to ask the same question. He said, "Does the pen paint? Does it work is very American. Work. A pen does not work. A pen paints. Writing is art." He was a writer. And, indeed, I don't think I would ever hear an American asking if a pen paints.
But as much as intellectually I look at the new and interesting things on the journey, I still have not found my tribe.
This is not home.
Sometimes it is evident that I don't quite belong. I am an outsider who does not fit in with the British who live here and their peculiar colloquialisms. They tease us in return about the strange lingo we seem to use. And the Spanish, although welcoming, have a very different rhythm that seems to run completely contrary to the American, especially a New Yorker's, intensity. I have quickly learned that time is an elastic concept that can mean anything from an hour later to perhaps sometime tomorrow, whereas in New York, if you are on time - you're late.
I am an American, and a New Yorker at that. I am used to living in the messy and frenetic international city that is Manhattan. I never necessarily agreed with the notion that every part of the United States was a melting pot, but New York City is certainly a place where everything goes from anywhere around the world.
But, as I look out the windows that wrap around the apartment where I am currently staying I feel distance with my surroundings. It is all very picturesque and beautiful. But it feels somewhat like Van Gogh's "Starry Night", which depicts an idealized view outside of his asylum room window in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. It was a reality that he saw only in his imagination, as he could not have possibly have seen the village in his stylized painting from the window.
The journey continues.
It does not mean a return to New York. That is my past. But, I am not certain what my expat future will bring with respect to a home.
And so every day, as I reconcile the unfamiliar world around me where I have been seemingly photo-shopped into a photographer's picture of the area, I know that I am one step closer, one day closer, to claiming a place where we will dig in our heels. And it will be at that point; this roaming nomad will begin to find her tribe.
© 2015 Linda N. Spencer and "Living For Purpose". All rights reserved.
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