The Fog

This post is long overdue. In fact, exactly two weeks overdue. I haven't had the words, and that is a rarity for me. I have sat in front of this screen multiple times and they still have failed to come. It's hard to describe what it means to relocate twice in less than a year, and by relocate I mean to move from one country to another, across an ocean, across a vast cultural landscape, and to arrive back where you started. Well, almost where you started.

Let's look at just one piece to what it means to move from the US to Europe or vice versa. Jet-lag. According to our pediatrician, it takes an adult up to 10 days to recover from jet-lag and a child up to 22. Your body confuses day for night, your metabolism speeds up at the wrong intervals and your melatonin levels increase when you should be awake. But most people don't get 10 days of recovery time to adjust. Most people have to start back to work or get up in the middle of the night with a crying baby. Which means that for a good two weeks you walk around in a fog. And when you move from sunny Rome to cloudy Portland that fog saturates both your head and your physical being. It's unsettling and a bit like living in a dream.

And when you walk around the place you left 8 months ago in a fog, you notice that things are the same, albeit with a slight variation. This variation is just enough to set off the alarm that says you've been gone while other people have continued on. Babies have been born, buildings have been built, streets have closed down, people have moved; all subtle reminders that some time warp has occurred. And then you have to reintroduce your newborn, the bald kid you left with who still threw up at regular intervals and laughed with a toothless grin; who is now babbling and walking and eating adult food.

Then there's that other huge thing; the fact that people here speak a different language. I don't think I can address that part yet, it's a little bigger than I can handle.

You may want to know why we moved back or you may wonder if we feel like we gave up or if we regret anything. The short answer: work. We took an 8 month sabbatical from it, and now we both have it. Regret is a strange word. Yes, there are things I would change, but going to Rome for 8 months, taking trips to France, Germany, Spain and 10 days in Sardegna; that I would not change. There are moments when I miss Rome a lot. And there are moments when I realize that I'm home. If you have a connection to two countries there will never be an escape from the feeling that you are missing something by being away from one of them.

There are just some people who are difficult to satisfy. People who need a steady stream of stimuli and increasingly difficult challenges. People who don't find contentment in the day to day joys like other people. People who are always looking for what's next. Perhaps an undiagnosed disorder like ADD would explain it. Whatever it is, it's exhausting. At some point I have to find solace in knowing that about myself and just deal with it. It's just too hard to always miss some other place or some other opportunity. It's high time I understand that the grass will always be greener over there and that my little piece of dry grass can be watered and manicured and appreciated.

All of that means, in a roundabout way, that I'm happy to be home. And yesterday when I asked the bus driver where the next stop was, he replied, "I can drop you off wherever you want." Ah, this is Portland.