I’m not an expat anymore.
For the first time I’m experiencing the peace that comes with moving to
a once-familiar place I actually want to live in, rather than choosing a job
and making the best of the new destination that goes with it. I’ve been longing
to live all four seasons in these hills for years now. I thought repatriation
would be a cinch.
Doha was a challenge, to which I had to rise or let it crush
me. I did, with plenty of hard work and good company, and it didn’t. I miss it
hard. Not in that freshly wrenched way of the first couple of months, all raw
and halfway still there in my head, but with an ache that knows I’m probably
never going back and probably never going to see most of those people ever
again in real life. Social media keeps us connected but nothing replaces random
encounters and regular adventures around the city, tea and
world-problem-solving in each other’s kitchens, shared hilarity and
despair.
I dress like anyone else and drive an old Subaru Forester. I
can pass for a Vermonter at first glance and probably even second, but locals know
I’m new to town and ask where did I move from? They expect me to say Tinmouth
or Pittsford or maybe something more exotic like Massachusetts or even Virginia
but then I say Qatar and the conversation has been efficiently and effectively killed.
I stopped offering it up, but word has
probably gotten around the village by now anyway. I know my way around, but
I’ve been too long gone to quite remember how I’m supposed to behave and where
I’m welcome.
I love where we’ve landed. It’s the green and hills I’ve
been missing for years. I love seeing the clear light of New England fall and
eating fresh macs for the first time in ten years. It’s just tricky to work on
feeling at home and making it home at the same time and I’m lonely for
easygoing company. Cold dark weather
looms. I’m envious of my youngest who started at her new school last week and is
already planning who will be at her birthday party at the end of the month. I
wish we could all be thrown into first grade again upon arrival in a new home.
By the second day on the playground who cares where we’ve lived for the past
three years, we just need to figure out how to do the most scary trick together
on the big swing without getting hurt.
