Chapter 7: America is my home
When I’ll be 73 and I’ll fly again to the US for the thousandth time, I’ll still feel like the first time I arrived in my new home.
Chapter 7: America is my home
I was gliding atop some puffy clouds in a semi dozing state, eyelids lazy and the back of my head lying in the reclined seat. I was in an endless pool of light-gray cotton candy. The milky sky beyond it was streaked by a couple of vapor trails zipping in criss-cross directions, left by other passing airplanes. I had just had lunch, or a second breakfast maybe, who could keep track anymore while jumping through the hoops of the time zones. A sudden ding! sound coming from above my head woke me up from my daydream. We were about to cross a turbulent area, so the captain had turned the seatbelt sign on. I was yet on another plane, this time going home.
The dinner date with the office guy had been a pleasant interlude in my lonely new world. I had made the important discovery that I was still alive. But if the patient is alive it doesn’t mean the patient is ready to be checked out of the clinic. I still had trouble sitting still and paying attention to what I felt. I had to get busy, get infatuated, get on airplanes. I was in fight or flight mode, but mostly in flight mode.
When you’re not well, home is always the place you run to. Maybe a reflex from the childhood days when, falling off a bike and seeing your bleeding knee, or being hit by a naughty kid, the place to run to was always home. Even if at home you wouldn’t find relief. So I fastened my seatbelt, as the captain requested. That action seemed strangely comforting, to sink deep into the cushioned seat, and be tied down to it. It felt like a parent snuggling you from the back, an imagined soothing hug. Those days I would take one wherever I could get it.
The screen in front of me had one of those real time maps showing the position of the plane. When it showed we were approaching the outline of Denmark, I looked out the window to confirm the digital information. Watching the world from above was like browsing my old childhood atlas again. Countless hours spent tracing those maps of magical foreign lands and now it was taking shape before my eyes. The blues and the greens, colorful dots for houses and patches of yellow or brown for the fields. The gray skirts of the earth ending, as it sunk into the sea. I had about 7 hours left of the trip, and most of that time I would spend looking out the window at the various countries appearing below the plane, from Denmark to Iceland, Greenland and then Canada. My excitement grew by the hour and I didn’t need any coffee to stay awake as we were approaching the place I longed for on the other side of the window. The anticipation makes up half of the journey. I was flying to Chicago for the first time in my life, and yet I felt I was returning home.
I was returning to the home I had been introduced to twelve years before. My first ever transatlantic flight, at 23 years old, took me to what would become my new home. Even though Romania was the country where I was born, the US had quickly become a sanctuary for my soul. On that unforgettable summer evening back in August 2005, I had felt on my cheeks, in my heart and inside my bones what it meant to belong to a loving family. Suddenly being seen and accepted for who I was felt overwhelming. I learned, then and there, that families don’t need to be connected by blood. When I’ll be 73 and I’ll fly again to the US for the thousandth time, I’ll still feel like the first time I arrived in my new home.
Every detail of the home I was welcomed into got imprinted on my eyes, from the top-to-floor bookcase to the hand-painted china placed on a burgundy silk tablecloth on the round dining table. From the cream tiles of the kitchen walls and the black calligraphy painted on them, to the chrome pans hanging from the racks. From the double-door American-size fridge to the screened porch in the backyard, with its miniature Eiffel Tower, a silent proof of my new mother’s heritage. After that first evening I spent in the US with my new family, as I was falling asleep in a new bed I contemplated how it was all upside down, quite literally, from everything I had known until then in my life.
As I was flying to Chicago, I was not just going to visit a dear friend. I was not just going back to the land where I finished my higher education, where I had made friends with people from all five continents. As I was flying to Chicago, I was returning to the feeling of being taken care of by a loving family. A lost child walking home barefoot.
The terminal with the familiar wall-to-wall carpet sent me straight back to my first arrival, smack in the middle of the busiest airport in the United States, in Atlanta. It smelled like home. Actually, it smelled like processed plasticware mixed with KFC seasoning. It smelled of comfort, of the carefree, good life. My friend waiting for me outside felt like a déjà vu. The famous American welcome cheer was the sound of love from my adopted country.
Leaving the airport, my heart was pumping and I wished my eyes were larger, to take in more of what I saw. The green signs we were passing on the highway, announcing Milwaukee Next Right, Michigan Avenue, South Tollway to Indiana. Those square slabs of concrete and the split between them, making the car bump rhythmically over them. Pulling in the driveway. Sitting on a stool at the bar of those unmistakable American kitchens. Seeing my friend take out the gallon jug of milk and longing to taste it, even if I didn’t eat dairy anymore by then.
Like a pendulum, the more I distanced myself from the place that limited me, that brought me fear, that crushed my soul, the closer I was to the place where I felt free, where I could breathe. The gallon bottles of milk and the intricate highways were just a pretext. Practical, physical objects belonging to the place where I could be my true self.
Two days later it was my birthday. I woke up before sunrise, still jet lagged after the transatlantic trip. There was always something unique in the air the day when my birthday arrived. It was the very beginning of summer, the days were the longest, a wave of happiness typical of new beginnings overpowered me. Life pulsated through my veins stronger. Or maybe I was just paying closer attention to it.
I got ready quickly, eager to start on a day I had filled with plans, wanting to squeeze every second out of it. My friend had lent me her bike and I set off to cycle all the way to downtown Chicago, for about 10 kilometers. When you do things alone, sometimes it’s lonely and depressing, other times it makes you feel in total control of your life. Awake, aware of your surroundings, enjoying your own company. That’s how I set off, on that early June morning, cycling through an American suburban neighborhood, the US flags flapping from every second porch, white picket fences surrounding red brick houses.
I cycled down towards Lake Michigan and then along it, passing through spotless greenery, stopping at Diversey Harbor for a photo op. The view changed several times during my trip downtown, from the leafy residential district, to the quiet port, through Lincoln Park, dotted with jumping dogs and kids, and then along a white-sand lakefront beach that would rival any Caribbean resort. The skyscrapers were getting taller and taller in front of me, giants standing up throwing a shadow over the tiny humans approaching them. My heart was beating increasingly faster. The more I cycled towards downtown Chicago, the more alive I felt. With every push of the pedals and every inch of the road conquered, I felt in control of my life. It wouldn’t own me, but I would own it. The ride gave me hope that I could direct my own life just as I was directing that bike.
I swerved right towards Michigan Avenue, cutting through the city’s historic part, during a bustling weekday morning where everyone else seemed to rush to get to the office. I felt as much invisible, in my own private universe, as part of a bustling metropolis which sucked me into its sky-touching belly. Nobody knew me in the city. Nobody looked at me. Feeling invisible made me confident that I could reinvent my life into exactly what I was craving it to be. But pain has a way of knowing how to cling to you, even when you are invisible.
I stopped at Grant Park, near the Planetarium, dropping my bike on the grass next to me, watching the Chicago skyline across the turquoise water. A vantage point where I could take a postcard picture of the city. That view reminded me to take a panoramic look at my past year as well.
Lately, my birthdays had become occasions to reflect on the previous 365 days lived. Two years before, my 33rd birthday had been such a turning point-moment in my life. I was sitting on another beachfront in front of another water - the Mediterranean sea at the time. I was surrounded by a bunch of friends yet I felt all alone. They all spoke to one another but nobody seemed to see me. I saw myself zooming out of the scene, watching them all from afar. It was the first time when I realized I was on the wrong path, surrounded by the wrong people and I needed to change course, to find my tribe. Now, at my 35th milestone, worlds apart compared to two years before, I was starting to walk the walk. But nobody had told me changing lanes would be so challenging. All the unknown to face, all the adjustments the mind had to make, all the fears to tame.
I tried to reason my way into happiness. I made a list of all the people and things I should be thankful for. But my brain wasn’t listening to my heart. There was something corroding my soul, like a spittlebug chewing its way into the flesh of a strawberry. Some imperceptible bug, preventing me from being fully happy. I had stuffed down my pain with a trip across the Atlantic ocean, and now it was pushing its head out stubbornly from underneath.
But I was determined to have a good day. I brushed off that nagging feeling, squashed the spittlebug out of my soul, stood up and went for the next adventure. I was on a quest to find one of the restaurants of the Panera Bread chain for lunch.
Panera Bread had been my favorite little chain café years before. When I entered one, it threw me right back to when I was 23 and newly arrived across the Atlantic. My host mom had taken me there one weekday for lunch, both of us, student and teacher, skipping out of the university campus for an hour. Panera Bread served hot soups and sandwiches in a variety of multi-grain breads. Panera Bread served a blanket for my soul. When I stepped into one, Panera Bread smelled like that moment in time when I felt completely taken care of. Panera Bread was the hug-in-a-cup I needed that day, when I was determined to have a good day. Sitting down to eat my chosen hot soup and sandwich, I ate with the ghosts of the sweet past next to me.
That evening, my friend who took me in during my trip to Chicago, threw me a birthday party. She gathered her own friends and put together a nice, all-American barbecue evening. This was quite a different scene from two years prior, on that Mediterranean beach. I was surrounded by people whom I had just met, and yet I felt more in the right place than ever. I always had a thing for celebrating my birthdays with friends around, a wish to feel in the center of attention at least one day in the year. But was it my friends who didn’t see me, or was it myself? I was starting to understand it might be the latter.
I didn’t see myself much throughout the year, I ran away from my age, I felt lonely. And for my birthday, I thought it was about my friends celebrating me, but actually, by spending quality time with myself, I was the one truly seeing myself, pulling myself out of my loneliness.
I also wanted to celebrate that beautiful round age, but this was a harder pill to swallow. I ended up putting just the candle shaped as a 5 on the chocolate birthday cake, leaving out the 3 that should have gone in front of it. I was more comfortable just with the 5 and the questions and jokes it sparked that night. Lately, I’d been made aware so much about my age: the photos from that photoshoot back at my job, the age difference with my office crush, now the candles demanding center spot. I’d had enough of those hard-look-in-the-mirror moments.
I went to bed closer to the next sunrise, content that I had squeezed every drop of my birthday, that I had lived my day to the full.
The trip to Chicago was like a big gulp of fresh air before I dove right back into the dark ocean of unhealed pain and uncertainty for the future. But that would be something to worry about another day.
Read next: Chapter 8 - Stuck in the city
