between worlds: remembering and forgetting

At the beginning of the summer, not long after I arrived in VT, I wrote this:

I’d forgotten what it’s like to be cold, how green the plants are, how soft grass can be on my bare feet, the beauty of sun streaming across the green hills and fields and lighting up a dark thunderhead. So much color.

I’m remembering what it feels like to walk on the street in shorts and tank top, skin exposed to sun and breeze. Seeing my arms from shoulder to fingertip, my legs from mid-thigh down to my toes reminds me how strong they are, how much they can lift and how far they can carry me.

I’m feeling between worlds: the joy of being in the US when they make marriage legal for everyone, the horror that someone would go blow people up while they are praying in Kuwait, shoot people while they’re on vacation in Tunisia, while here I am taking advantage of a few hours of childcare to organize shelves of food and get stuff done. In Doha I can stop, read the news, have time to think about it and I have a very international community- Tunisian neighbors, friends who have lived in Kuwait. Here I am in my happiest place surrounded by green and hills but I miss my people of Doha. I just admitted for the first time that I would be sad if I heard that we weren’t returning after the summer, no matter how much I hate the traffic and the construction and the social system there, no matter that the sadness would come with relief.

And at the same time I wrote this, which I now realize applies to both Vermont home and Doha home,  especially these first days after returning:

It is so strange every time to be somewhere utterly familiar and totally foreign at the same time. These first days back in a previous home are so hard and so illuminating.

And then today, a week after arriving back in Doha to start our third and final year here, I wrote this:

I’m remembering again how it feels to be shut up inside on our life support of AC because outside the sun is trying to kill us. I’m remembering how covering up isn’t simply out of respect for my hosts, it’s also just good sense in this climate. I’m remembering that there are other colors for the sky than blue- dimmer, dustier colors.  Soon enough I’ll forget that clouds and hills can be normal too and how you have to think ahead about dew if you don’t want your shoes and cuffs all soggy for the rest of the morning. I’m already forgetting about what it feels like to have a constant stream of company in my kitchen, people who thank me for my work and offer to wash dishes. I’m remembering the peace and quiet of my house, cooking for five instead of forty, with the view out the window of my daughter in capris and a t-shirt sitting on the curb with girls in abaya and hijab.

I've realized that there is more about Doha that I liked than I realized.  I worked so hard at Doha this year. The summer before this one I went to Vermont with such relief to be away for a couple of months- I needed a full-on Doha-detox and I got it, so much so that I had a very difficult time returning. This past summer I missed it. The places that are the most challenging become important to us in their own way. Two years ago, after I’d only been there a month or so I posted this on Facebook: 

I still hate malls, traffic,  and indoor life in Qatar but there are also, surprisingly, plenty of things that I like, projects I’ve started and to which I looked forward to returning.

They’re impossible to compare, my Doha life and my Vermont life, but each one makes me appreciate aspects of the other, especially at these points when I haven't quite shed the one I was just in or fully rejoined the one to which I've returned.