Homecoming: It's Always Something

Jackie Smith, author of TravelnWrite, in a 13th century church on Greece's Mani Peninsula when I visited her in 2019.

There’s a splendid, dizzying moment, known to every expat and many travelers, when you arrive back in your home country and see it with fresh eyes. You become a bedazzled stranger in your own neighborhood, an intrepid explorer in your own backyard. Stepping across your familiar threshold, you feel like Neil Armstrong setting the first human footprint on a dusty spacescape.
 
And sometimes, as my expat amiga Jackie discovered, you find your old life has been waiting around the corner to throw a metaphorical custard pie in your face.

via GIPHY

In September, Jackie and her husband Joel left their charming stone cottage in a small Greek fishing village to make their annual month-long visit to Washington State. A few glasses of wine with old friends, some quality time with family, a couple of simple home repairs, and they’d be back on a plane to their beloved Ελλάδα.
 
But as I always say, America is something you have to stay in practice for, and you don’t want to lose your touch. Every time I return, I find there are jokes I don’t get, cultural references that go right over my head, and fresh hazards to navigate. In Jackie’s case, the hazard was the self-appointed “Concerned Neighbor” who roamed their gated development with camera and notebook, ready to report any infraction of the ever-changing Homeowners Association (HOA) regulations.

This is not Jackie's actual Concerned Neighbor but a similar character that fans of the old TV show Bewitched will recognize as the nosy parker Gladys Kravitz, played by Alice Pearce.

Jackie knew exactly how long her garage door could stay open, what shrubs she was allowed to plant, and when outdoor Christmas lights had to be turned off at night. But she had no idea solid-coverage stain — the finish that had always been on her 200-foot cedar fence — had become taboo, or that transparent stain had been decreed mandatory. As the solid stain went on, the Concerned Neighbor rushed to notify the HOA that Something Had To Be Done.
 
There was a tremendous fuss, which Jackie dubbed “the HOA Hell-abaloo.” In the end, the solid stain had to be stripped off and transparent stain applied, taking the job from a three-day project to a three-week nightmare at double the cost.
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“As we watched the painters starting the second week of our three-day fence-painting project,” Jackie wrote on her entertaining blog, TravelnWrite, “one of my favorite neighbors asked, 'Will you ever live here full time?'” I picture Jackie rolling her eyes and gritting her teeth before replying, “This probably isn't the best time to ask that question.”

"Any outing for anything other than 'the fence' was considered a mental health break," said Jackie.

 
Checking in with expat amigos, I’ve learned everyone has a different timetable for visiting their home country. Friends from Europe can hop back for a weekend, and often do. For long-haul Americans, a month is typical, two visits a year is not uncommon (especially for those with grown kids and/or aging parents), and some, like me, spend six months in each location. A few, after a bit of finger counting, calculated their last visit home was in 2016, or possibly 2015. Mad Men and Game of Thrones were both on TV, if that helped…
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Technology lets us stay in touch in ways that were unimaginable when Rich and I moved to Seville 20 years ago. Back then we had computers but not Wifi; email was sent and retrieved from (how quaint this seems now) internet cafés. Today, of course, we stream all the latest entertainment, absorb as much news as we can stomach, and keep in regular contact with our bankers, creditors, family, and friends (not necessarily in that order).

Despite the constant flow of data across my screen, I’m still gobsmacked every time I step off the plane and find myself on US soil. “Live abroad, if you can,” advised Tom Freston, who started MTV. “Understand cultures other than your own. As your understanding of other cultures increases, your understanding of yourself and your own culture will increase exponentially.” He’s right. My home state has changed a lot over the years, and so has the way I look at it.

San Francisco is always under attack. If it's not Godzilla, space aliens, or giant squids from the movie industry, it's naysayers insisting "The city is so over." Don't believe a word of it. Graphic: Etsy

​Last spring, as I prepared to return to California after six months in Spain, I was taken aback by the gloomy public perception of San Francisco; everyone seemed to think it was in a horrifying “doom loop” of non-stop crime and hopelessness. Was it really? Or was this just media hype and political hot air?
 
As my regular readers know, I decided to find out. I took 20 day trips into the city, and what I discovered during those long rambles made it clear San Francisco is alive and kicking and still — if you know where to go — remarkably cheap and cheerful. It hasn't lost its quirky charm, freewheeling spirit, or ability to surprise the socks off of you. Far from being on life support, it's rocketing toward the future.
 
Apparently these facts are not generally known. I decided to gather my findings in a book, including all the flourishes and anecdotal material I couldn’t fit into my blog posts, and start spreading the word. My San Francisco will be out next month. Watch this blog for details.

This book is my small way of pushing back against the rising tide of misinformation that’s flooding our lives.

“The older I get,” said beloved TV host Fred Rogers, “the more convinced I am that the space between people who are trying their best to understand each other is hallowed ground.” To me, that’s what this blog and my books are all about. Travel teaches us that at heart, we are more alike than we are different. Sometimes it’s harder to remember that at home than abroad, but it’s no less true.
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I'm trying to let go of any impulses to do Concerned Neighbor-style finger-pointing and instead do my best to find the common, hallowed ground of understanding. San Francisco poet Maya Angelou once said, "I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself." And sometimes that starts with wiping life's custard pie out of our eyes so we can take a clearer look at the places we call home.

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THE AMIGOS PROJECT
This post is part of my ongoing exploration of how living and traveling abroad — with occasional trips back to the Old Country — can enrich our lives and help us avoid the isolation that's become a global epidemic.
See all my Amigos Project posts here.

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