coming home

once a teacher

~ agirlnamedmary ~ 1 Comment

img_20160906_085443There it was. Bright red and gleefully tucked beneath the clear folds of plastic wrap and blue ribbon, my very first “Teacher’s Apple.”

It’s an idea I have loved since I first spotted it in the soft colors of Norman Rockwell paintings kept in a book beneath our living room coffee table. Giving the teacher an apple. How classically, iconically American.

Needless to say, it wasn’t really something I experienced in the Czech Republic. Oh, I was begifted with plenty of little treasures, but apples were never a thing there as far as I could tell.

So beginning at my new little school this year, ten minutes away from where I grew up, has been…Well, it’s been a long time in coming.

My tumultuous year away from my Czech students in Prague was reaching an excruciating peak in March when I was contacted by this little school to see if I was interested in a teaching position.

I wasn’t.

Already, I was mapping out a survival plan for my remaining three years of college education here in San Diego and teaching part time at a tiny Christian school was just not in the cards. It wouldn’t be Prague, you know? And I would be too busy.

But I have trouble saying, “No” to people, so the next thing I knew, I was in the middle of a phone call with a board member and then in the middle of an interview with the entire school board and then negotiating hours.

None of it held any large office space in my mind. I was in the middle of several meltdowns in April and May, mostly involving finals and anxiety about my trip back to Prague in the summer for some final goodbyes and a little closure.

And all the while, I assumed I would turn the job down eventually. Something wouldn’t work out. Because how could it? This school wasn’t mine. It wasn’t Prague, remember?

And yet an insatiable curiosity kept pulling me along. This was no longer an inability to be an adult and say, “No, thank you, but I just can’t.”

There was a turning point, I remember.

During the full-board interview, after being sufficiently and terrifyingly grilled on my values, virtues and skill sets (most of which I may have slightly oversold), the Chairman leaned back, pointed his sharp eyes on me and said in his gruff voice, “Is there anything you’d like to ask us?”

I thought for a moment, whispers of my little Czech students still echoing in my ears all these months later, and said, “Tell me about the kids.”

All heads turned to the Chairman, who had been to this point the most intimidating figure in the room. He softened. He smiled. He said, “Let me tell you about them.”

I don’t remember what he said, but I remember how he said it. He said it with the same tenderness I have felt for my own little okurky. He said spoke about them with affection and hope, as though he could vividly see all the promises held in their futures lined out like golden stepping stones and he wanted more than anything to help them jump from one to the next.

And I knew that feeling so well.

So I took the job.

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Harvey, the fake owl that sits on my candy bowl. He is a dear friend.

I rearranged my school and work schedules. I found minutes in the day I didn’t know existed until I had all the time I needed to make everything fit. I read text books. I made lesson plans. I drafted a friend into decorating my classroom for me.

And on the first day of school, I found myself on the receiving end of an apple. The girl was quick about it. She placed it in my hand and then dashed away.

For three and a half hours, I made my way through high school level English and Spanish. Then I packed my things, locked my classroom and dashed off to campus to begin a round of back to back college lectures.

All week, I was in and out so quickly, I barely noticed the flurry of paperwork and signatures and beginners ‘how to’s’ I still needed to walk through. I did notice the other teachers graciously asking, “How’s it going? Are you doing okay?”

And I was, surprisingly.

After teaching several hundred students of all grades in a different language in the Czech Republic, a room of six high schoolers who all understand English seemed too easy. It was like training for a marathon and then running a mile.

On top of this, it was good to be back in the classroom. Indoctrinating a new generation of children on the importance of adverbs and explaining complex grammatical concepts with shoddily drawn stick figures. Having a little room with a little desk to sit behind (or on, as is more often my case). Having tiny people just bursting to ask questions, push buttons and grow into themselves.

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It wasn’t until Friday, the end of the first week, that I felt it. A realization. A revelation. A homecoming.

As my new students waltzed out of the room, practically singing, “See you on Monday!”, tripping over themselves to get to lunch, I felt a little tug on the cords of my heart. The same tug I always felt when school let out in Prague. It would be a whole weekend before I saw my students again.

My new school isn’t my old one. I knew that going in. I am very aware of it now. And I know that nothing will replace what Prague was to me.

But I think God knew I needed to be back in a classroom. I think maybe he’s been wanting me here and I was too stubborn to go on my own, so he just kind of pushed me into one.

When the Chairman bustles into my classroom with his gravelly voice and his broad smile and asks, “How are you doing?” – I tell him I’m doing well, that I like it here, that it feels like a good fit.

But the truth is, it’s more than that. It feels like home.

Six Stages of Reverse Culture Shock

~ agirlnamedmary ~ Leave a comment

The very idea of reverse culture shock sounds laughable. Frankly, it sounds a little like something a traveling yuppie would make up as an excuse for not having their life together when they return home from wandering abroad. I may have read a total of two articles about the topic before coming back to San Diego after two years in Prague. I don’t think a journal-full would have prepared me for the arduous process of taking the person you’ve become and assimilating them back into the place belonging to the person you once were.

But I’m getting there and, more importantly, others have gotten there already, which gives me hope. It took me the whole summer and several weeks into a new semester, with multiple trips around the USA, to figure this all out. Honestly, my Kimmy Schmidt-esque stories of rediscovering a culture I left for 24 months could fill several blog posts, but I’ve gotten lazy so we’re condensing this into six basic stages of reverse culture shock.

Here goes.

1. HAZE

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a plane home.

Jet-lagged, weary and inexplicably hungry (if you’re me, you’re always hungry), you stumble out of the airport in a blur of vaguely familiar sights and sounds. Some things stick out like finely stenciled pictures – the palm trees you never noticed, the size of the masts looming out of the shipyard, the feel of the new seat covers in the family car. Others play out before you like a foggy, black-and-white film. The bend in the road you’ve driven over a million times or the creak of the back gate leading into a softly lit patio. Home.

People and faces, voices, sounds and space all take on a new life and in your travel-tired stupor, they seem like strangers.

I remember the first night back in my own bed. It didn’t feel like mine. It was uncomfortable and unfamiliar and I missed my bed tucked away beneath a slanted wood roof somewhere in Prague. Homecoming is not what you expect it to be.

2. LOSS

Life in Zbraslav 2013
a walk through a Czech forest.

If going to sleep on a strange bed in your old home is hard, waking up to your childhood room is heart-wrenching. Immediately, two kinds of loss sink deeply into the conscious layer of your beating heart: what you missed and what you’ve left behind. It’s not like you expected life to stand still while you were away, but you hadn’t really intended for it to take off without you either. It did. And instead of being able to take comfort in the things around your room, suddenly you feel out of place. Your thoughts will drift to safe spots in your other ‘place’ and you will think of what you’ve just left behind. Forest paths to your home in the village, friends to drink coffee with, quilted blankets and familiar sunrises.

As the haze begins to disappear and the days turn into weeks, you’ll feel more acutely the loss of the world you left behind and catch glimpses and shadows of the life you missed.

That first morning, staring at the blue walls covered in papers and posters my youngest sister had put up in my absence, I swear I felt my heart ripping in two pieces as it tried desperately to be wholly in Prague and wholly here, at home. And, of course, it couldn’t.

3. DISCOVERY

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a skyscraper in New York City with a very good friend.

Expect to be surprised every day by something completely ordinary. Expect to have a thousand questions about things that have changed in the months or years since you’ve been gone. What is Uber? Who the heck is Ariana Grande? Exactly how long have fleeked up eyebrows been a thing, and what does “fleek” mean anyway?

Some of this will be rediscovery. Yes, water is free in restaurants. No, you don’t have to take your shoes off every time you walk inside. Being able to drive yourself places will be liberating, having to buy your own gas again will feel like a death sentence. Pandora? Netflix? Hulu? Little Caesars? Real Mexican food? Heaven.  

The radio hasn’t lost its magic yet. I’ve been home for four months and every song on the radio still sounds new to me. I’ve been getting down to Uptown Funk like nobody’s business. It’s a brave new world.

4. INDIGNATION

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a sunset in Dallas with my long-lost brother.

As the shimmery layer of sparkle wears off your newly rediscovered home, you begin to see things you hadn’t noticed before. Things like the entitled attitude your friends or neighbors have about things like owning cars or getting an education. The narrow views and set ways of family members regarding political issues will drive you up a wall. And when you walk past your fourth unused drinking fountain in a day, covered in spider webs and gunk, you want to shout out, “you have to pay for this stuff in Europe! Free, clean drinking water right here, folks! They’ll walk all day to find water in Africa and here it comes out of a spout!”

But no one will listen, because no one has been where you’ve been or seen what you’ve seen. You’ll be lumped in with every other traveling yuppie who has ever come home and said, “they do it better over there.”

Two weeks after I got home, I was people watching at the food court in the mall and it struck me how confidently Americans take their seats. They walk and talk and sit and stand like they own whatever ground they’re touching. And while they occupy that plastic chair, it is their throne. Europeans do not come close to exuding this air of confidence and control. I think that’s when I realized how hard it would be to ‘come home’ all the way because I no longer identified with my own people. Folks were going to think I was nuts. Who would ever understand the mental battle I was fighting every day just to make sense of the home I used to know? Just to keep things together.

5. ISOLATION

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a piece of my heart in San Francisco.

This may be the worst part, and honestly, it may not come in this order. You may feel alone the day you arrive home or a month later when you finally realize why things aren’t clicking the way they used to. But eventually, the frustration you feel at your own culture for their blindness to their faults and the welling sense of loss toward wherever it is you’ve left will isolate you. It’s like a breakdown in communication. Because people around you can look at the same situation and not see it the way you now do. You will feel disconnected and alone.

It’s discouraging to be back around family and friends who should know you better than anyone, but suddenly they can’t seem to grasp why you feel strongly about water fountains or why you sometimes have to stop in the middle of what you’re doing to process a painful memory.

I came home right before our family reunion. I got to hold my nephew for the first time ever. I went out for a night on the town with my brother. I got ice-cream with an assortment of siblings in an illegal takeover of an abandoned baseball field. But the people who made me feel most at home were the random friends who would come up to me out of the blue and ask, “how is it being back? What can I do? Want to get coffee and talk about it?” They were the ones who’ve been there and back. They’ve all had a ‘place’ and left it to come home again. They knew. And they reached out with human connection and empathy, and it helped me move on to Stage Six.

6. ADJUSTMENT

a new friend.
a new friend.

At some point, you have to accept that life is moving quickly and you need to jump on the train or get left behind again. Working back into crazy American eating patterns (so much grease, so much store-bought food, sooooo late at night) or re-learning how to drive a car (which I was never very good at to begin with) will come with time. Eventually, you’ll stop waking up every morning wondering what the weather is like in your ‘place’ and the hole left by the friends you miss so dearly will begin to fill with new people.

And the scariest part about the adjustment phase is the thought of losing your experience. So let me be clear. Moving on does not mean forgetting the past. It does not mean abandoning your friendships, erasing your memories or sinking back into old ways you’ve grown out of. It just means adopting this new person you’ve become and making a space for her in your old world. Both you and it have changed and the fit may not be perfect yet. But that’s how you’ll continue to grow. You’ll be challenged. You’ll be tested. You may be lost for a little while. But, believe it or not, that’s the road we’re all on, culture shock or not.

Congratulations. You’ve caught up to the rest of us. Now, onward and upward.

Star-gazing and Zombies

~ agirlnamedmary ~ 1 Comment

“Come back here!” cooed Hosanna in the most aggressively affectionate tone I’ve literally ever heard.

“No,” spat back Sophia with a laugh. “I’m taking these to the car.”

She didn’t get far. Her cheery face and black hair disappeared behind Hosanna’s sweater as the big sister devoured the younger one in an octopus hug. There was a struggle.

My own sister and I watched the tousle a safe, respectful distance from the tangled wrestlers and from each other.

“I feel like we should hug or something,” I said making tentative eye-contact with her.

“No,” said Sarah flatly.

Sisters were part of the reason I came home. Both the ones I’m related to by blood and the ones who’ve adopted me over the course of many, many years. They’re part of what made coming home worthwhile. Even the unaffectionate ones.

Life at home 2015-2016

“Shotgun!” I called, dragging blankets and thermoses of tea out to the truck. Sophia and Sarah piled into the back, begrudgingly giving me command of the iPod as Hosanna took the wheel.

Sarah and Sophia are a lot alike. Very stable. Very practical. Very capable. Very void of touch-feely.

Hosanna and I are a lot alike. Adventuresome, soul-searching sojourners who need a little Practical in our lives from time to time.

And that’s what this evening was. The sister reunion, the reconnection of yin and yang, the defragmenting session we all needed.

Nine o’clock hung over us like a cape, flapping in the wind, driving us onward into the far side of San Diego County. The sticks. The boondocks. Pine Valley.

The drive was about forty-five minutes, but between the power struggle over the song selection and my solo performance of Hakuna Matata, it went quickly.

“I think that’s it,” Sophia said, several minutes after passing the last house-light in the valley and crossing over a cow gate. She pointed to a spit of dirt just off the road and Hosanna followed her finger, steering the big, black truck into the narrow space.

We tumbled out of the car, taking our blankets, tea and a box of animal crackers with us. In the dark, we arranged everything neatly in the bed of the truck before piling in on top of the cushy mess.

“We didn’t pick a great night for star-gazing,” I said, noting the full moon smiling above us.

“Yeah, but at least it’s not freezing cold like last time,” quipped Sarah.

Our last trip was a mid-December disaster in which we spent twenty minutes shivering in the back of the truck before heading home to sleep in warm beds. This time we brought blankets.

“That was a terrifying experience,” said Hosanna, patting down the folds of a silky sleeping bag. “I don’t think I could do this again in pitch darkness like that.”

“I think you should all just be grateful that I got us out here at all,” said Sophia with insistence, cashing in on her initiative in organizing the night. “You’re welcome.”

“Thank you, Sophia,” we all chimed in, various levels of obligation flaring up in our pitch.

Life at home 2015-20162

We spent a lot of time tossing and turning. Shift weight or stretch, we all ended up uncomfortable for most of the evening.

“Next time we’re bringing pillows,” I said as Hosanna distributed the tea. “And more snacks.”

“We have animal crackers and carrots,” said Sarah with a distinct crunch. “What more could you need?”

“Yeah, whenever you feel bad about the animal crackers, just eat a carrot,” said Hosanna. “It’s a balanced diet.”

“What’s the ratio?” I asked. “One carrot to every two crackers?”

“It’s whatever your conscience tells you,” Sarah affirmed, giving the cracker box a motherly pat.

Our voices lowered and the steady munching joined the chorus of the universe above us – a universe which, on this particular night, in this particular part of the world, consisted of about four stars and a very visible moon.

“At least we have that helicopter,” said Sophia, snapping a lion cracker in half with her front teeth.

I hugged my camera to make sure it was still there and then settled deep into the folds of a sleeping bag as Sarah began questioning Hosanna about her summer.

Hosanna left for Europe a few weeks before I came home from it. I needed her here this summer. I needed her positivity and encouragement. Mostly I just needed to know she was there, that I had someone to come home to. But I also knew she needed this trip. Just like I’ve needed mine. We are wanderers.

Hosanna’s face lit up, making the moon look modest and unassuming in comparison. I had heard most of her adventures before, but Hosanna knows how to string a yarn and I found myself thoroughly roped in and we followed the sound of her voice across the farmlands of France, through the streets of Berlin and into the heart of the Netherlands.

It’s been a long time since the four of us were all together. Eightteen months, give or take. However long ago the wedding was, when the four of us were standing in the hotel lounge. Sarah and Hosanna were halfway into several glasses of wine they had found abandoned at a table and Sophia and I were wringing the water out of our dresses by the fire, having led the charge into the hotel pool, post-reception.

Eightteen months is a long time. To me, it seems like another lifetime ago. But being in the back of this truck was helping me readjust again.

Life at home 2015-20161

Conversation and jest flitted from one topic to the next and I noticed that it in no way resembled our muddled, giggly gatherings from high school. For starters, the hypothetical questions have decreased substantially. We also just seem to care more about what’s happening with everyone else.

The one thing I will say for age – the longer you live, the more struggles you will face. The more your struggles, the more you approach people with empathy. And empathy makes better listeners of us all.

Eleven o’clock inched closer and the truck had quieted down to a mere ripple of conversation. For a while, and I’m not sure how long, I slept.

I woke up to the hushed and hurried whispers of the girls as they slid out of view of the road beneath the lip of the truck. They buried their faces into the blankets, shushing each other and dimming the lights from their phones.

Without moving, I listened to the grumbling of gravel come closer. Headlights swept over us and the girls shushed each other again.

“What would we even have done if someone had stopped to check the truck?” Sophia whispered when the lights were gone.

“They wouldn’t have checked,” said Hosanna with an air of insider info.

“Are you kidding?” said Sarah, still reeling from the close-call but beginning to peep her head above the lip of the truck. “We could be dead bodies back here for all they know. I totally would have checked!”

At that moment, the headlights reappeared, this time coming from the road behind us. The girls dove once more and I felt someone’s elbow dig into my leg.

“Sarah,” Hosanna whispered over the gravely approach, “No one is going to check the back of a truck that’s pulled up along a dirt road. Haven’t you ever listened to country songs?”

As realization washed over Sarah, the headlights washed over us before disappearing one last time down the road.

We waited in silence for a moment and then the girls straightened back up to their sitting positions. Sarah was the only one brave enough to allow her head to peek out over the edge of the truck bed (“Someone has to keep a look out!”).

“What was it we were so scared of last time?” asked Hosanna, checking her watch. We had far outdone our last trip’s record. “Remember we were out here for a little while and then we went straight home?”

“Mountain lions,” said Sophia.

“Indecent gentlemen?” I suggested.

“Zombies,” Sarah said. “It was definitely zombies. And guys, if they come, I’m still the only one keeping watch!”

“Forget it, Sarah,” Hosanna said from her nest of blankets in the corner of the trunk. “I’m nice and warm here. I’m not moving.”

“Neither am I,” I muttered from my half-comatose state.

“Well, you are all going to die when they do come.”

“I wouldn’t last the zombie apocalypse very long anyway,” I said sadly.

“We need to stop talking about zombies,” said Sophia. “It’s making me nervous.”

She and I giggled mostly to disguise how certain we actually were that the night might end in bloodshed and I clutched my camera. If the zombies do come, I’m definitely getting it on film.

“Wait,” said Hosanna, sucking in her breath, ears pricking up and eyes flashing. “Do you hear gr-”

Sarah, Sophia and I jumped up – “WHAT?”

“Gravel?” she said again.

We relaxed.

“Am I the only one who thought she said ‘growling’?” asked Sophia. “Like, seriously?”

“Yeah, I did too,” I said.

“Maybe it’s time to head home before we scare ourselves out of ever coming back,” said Hosanna.

We all know that will never happen. The scare is half the fun. I think it’s the scare we’ve been waiting for before heading home again. And when we’re ready for another one, we’ll troop back out.

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The girls pulled the blankets out of the back and stuffed them into the spaces between our seats. I reached for my camera. Might as well get some of these stars. We don’t have many, but gosh darn it, why not? They are ours, after all.

On the most sensitive settings, I was surprised to find, many more stars appear in the sky than we can see with just our eyes. I jiggled around a bit with the ISO and the aperture, getting different results. The girls eventually knocked on the windows and I got inside the truck.

The ride home was quiet. No one complained when I played “Geronimo” twice in a row. These songs that are old news to everyone else are all new to me still.

Sarah and I helped the girls bring our gear back into the house before saying our ‘goodbyes.’ At some point, and for reasons unknown, Hosanna tackled Sofia in another person-enveloping hug.

“Don’t even think about it,” Sarah told me with a smirk.

She loves me.

I’m still adjusting to life back home. I’m still discovering people who’ve changed and it reminds me how much I’ve changed. I suppose that will be true for the rest of life. Our little spot on the side of the road may still be there, but we won’t be the same people we were the last time we visited.

And at some point, that call for adventure or purpose or a good scare will beckon me away from my sisters out onto a path lit only by the knowledge that God made it mine.

But even in this transition from girl to slightly-older girl to whatever-comes-next, animal crackers are still good, zombies are still scary and there’s no one I’d rather star-gaze with than you.