Coming Home

by emptypockets

When I arrived at the Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, I saw an enormous placard reminding travelers of basic precautions to take if visiting a country "touchée par la grippe avion," for example to eat poultry only if it has been thoroughly cooked and to avoid handling birds. It was a simple public health measure that would probably cost a few hundred dollars to put in place nationally. Back at JFK, the closest thing I could find was a small flyer in the baggage claim area that read, "KEEP HOOF AND MOUTH DISEASE OUT OF THE US!" with no other instructions except, cryptically, a clip-art icon of an SUV.

Passing through the airport in Brussels, I saw a piece of artwork depicting the New York Times masthead at the top, some luggage claims with JFK written on them, airline ticket stubs, and postmarks reading "Sept. 11 2001." My uneasy feeling dissolved a minute later when I realized why the piece had bothered me: No humongous flag. No yellow ribbons. No jets, no towers, no symbols of American pre-eminence, resilience, perspicacity at all. Just documentary evidence of a day when time stopped.

Do you know what the slowest part of getting through the security screening at a European airport is? Kissing all the guards on both cheeks. By contrast, when I reached the American Airlines wing of the terminal, I was shunted by a round-about route along a walkway where I had to double-back and wait in a confusing series of lines to reach an additional security checkpoint. There, they asked me in what towns I had stayed; in what town I had last packed my bags; if it was at a hotel or a private home; how many bags was I carrying; how many had I checked; may we see your claim tickets please; what electronic devices are you carrying; what electronic devices have you checked; do you have anything that could be used as a weapon; who were you visiting here; where will you be staying in the U.S.; what is the name of a contact person in the U.S.; what is his phone number? All of which, undoubtedly, will go into a large government database to profile my travel habits and personal associations. Perhaps it will also be sold to a commercial firm to help me receive valuable offers of pre-approved credit cards and discount car insurance. Ultimately I suppose it will be leaked to some nefarious individual who will steal my identity and ruin my credit record.

There is a moment when you return to someplace special, your hometown, your parents' house, an old stomping grounds. It is a moment when the intervening years and the troubles of the day shrink in perspective and you are transported, a little bit, to an earlier version of yourself. Things just fit. Voices have the right timbre, the right inflection. Buildings and trees are the right sizes, the right shapes. Time beats to your rhythm. It's a moment when you know you are home, when you know where you stand and what's coming next. Like it or hate it, you fit.

There's a lot wrong with America. Our public health system is wasteful and inefficient. Our national pride has become shallow and jingoistic. Our security systems are as likely to endanger us as to protect us. And there have been plenty of times lately when I've thought about moving abroad. But having been gone even briefly, there is little question in my mind now of leaving for good. Because there's a lot that's right with this country too, and I found that despite all my problems with it, when I returned to its ugliness, its sprawl, its bureaucratic inefficiency, that I still experienced one of those moments -- that feeling of coming home.

Comments

[Ardant]

ew - I wrote a Welcome Home to you the other day. When I wrote those words it made me wince a little. I was hoping the emotion I felt typing would come through. As usual, your eloquence is beautiful. This is your home, my home, all of ours. It deserves to be protected, honored, respected and treated with kindness and care. Thanks for your words.

[Sue]

I am not impressed. Not that anyone really cares. ::grin::

[emptypockets]

ardant: 'pockets not 'wheel but thanks all the same!
sue: writing rarely to impress, mostly to express -- and if someone cares, then hooray!

[Ardant]

Sorry ' pockets. VERY well done!

[John Casper]

Hi, emptypockets, Off Topic,
I remembered your very fine, "The Right Not to Die Uselessly" recently when I read a good WaPo article about coyotes in DC and surrounding suburbs. I couldn't get a link to the actual article in case you missed it, but this link takes you to the WaPo's online chat, if you are interested.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2006/04/13/DI2006041300940.html

[emptypockets]

John Casper, thanks for that link -- great article, and I'd missed it. I did find the whole piece online here but it took a little creative googling. The problem of living with wild animals is only going to grow as our suburbs sprawl further, and coyotes and other "native Americans" are squeezed out of their habitats into tinier undeveloped spaces. It is encouraging that even the pro-kill side seems to respect the animals' lives and not to be killing them thoughtlessly. As one trapper is quoted in the article, "The Canadian government has done a lot of tests -- so traps are more humane than they used to be... But my job is to go out and trap an animal and kill it, so how is that humane? How is death humane?"

In light of that, and the fact that this is just the beginning of a major decision we'll need to make over the next 50 - 100 years about how we preserve native species in the country, that program in Vancouver is especially encouraging. There are really only two possibilities -- segregation (confining humans to cities or, more likely, animals to preserves or zoos) or integration. That the integration program has been so cheap, simple, and effective is really inspiring. There was a dust-up here in NYC last year over some wild red-tail hawks that have been living on the side of a (premiere) apartment building for over a decade, and that was ultimately also resolved in a way where humans could live more comfortably with the animals, and all the wildlife-lovers can continue to enjoy a little nature in their backyards (or on the web at palemale.com).

To bring it back around to the post above, there was one town I visited that apparently receives a small plague of locusts ("les cigales") every summer. These seem to be nasty enormous cockroach-looking things that make loud "tcheetchee" noises that would drive me nuts. But the damn things are on every piece of souvenir artsy-craft you can buy in the village, from dresses to pottery to refrigerator magnets and plush animals. They have been totally embraced by the town. (It is as if NYC's logo were a huge rat.) I guess the line between pest and mascot is really up to us.