Bordeaux and Palmiers

I was reading a blog entry over at Le Blagueur à Paris , and I started thinking about something that probably doesn’t bother me nearly as much as it bothers every other American I know.

I left the States officially almost a year ago, but really I’ve been France-bound since I was 14, when I first went to the North. I have no idea why people can’t understand that I don’t have any real intention of coming back to the States.

I’ve gotten several e-mails in the past few weeks from friends and even from people I had forgotten about, or had at least stopped talking to for several years, asking me if I would be back in “my hometown” of New York City this summer. The answer is “no.”

I was born in New York, but it’s no longer my home. Simple as that. I still have a bed in my parents’ house and several suitcases of clothes that didn’t make “the cut” on the way to this side of the Atlantic, but my home (forgive me) is my backpack and whatever bed I’m renting/crashing in/borrowing for the night. I can’t commit to one place. I don’t see why people can’t understand that about me after nearly seven years of being like this.

But, like most expatriates, when asked “when are you coming home?” I always say “someday.” I think it helps the people I left behind to sleep at night. Maybe they need to know that they made the right choice in choosing to stay where they were “supposed to” stay and doing what they were “supposed to” do instead of being like me, gallavanting off to Europe and living everybody else’s dream.

Here are the facts, in writing, that I am too scared to say to your face: I love Europe just as much as I thought I would. I have no intention of ever moving back to the US, and if I do, I will be moving to a ski shack in Vermont or a fishing town on the Northeastern seaboard. I would not be happy doing whatever it is you are doing or whatever it is you think I should be doing. I will continue to tell you that I will be back “someday,” but only because I know that if I tell you the truth, you will try to convince me I will change my mind, and also because I know that it makes you uncomfortable that I am no longer an American. I have no idea why you need that reassurance, but I’m going to give it to you anyway.