The Buddy System: And Other Ways Not To Get Lost

On Learning to Love Home.

I grew up in America and like all angsty teens, left the second I had the chance. I waved goodbye to my family, lifting my arms in triumph in the TSA body scanner. Looking over my shoulder I saw my mother shaking her head, mouthing “CANCER.” I would miss them.

I had European fever and clung to the EU harder than Greece ever could. I wanted to roll a cigarette on the Seine and drink calimocho in Spain. Turns out, the only thing I can roll is myself out of bed and calimocho tastes like fizzy NyQuil. I wanted to be robbed blind by the passion of an Italian and taken home to the bedroom he shared with his mother and extended family. I wanted to crowd around the Mona Lisa and pretend to know where Estonia was. When people asked where I was from I wanted to say Canada.

America was going to be but a blurp on my birth certificate. I spent six months living out the wanderlust dream on a European diet (a flaky carb for breakfast, seventeen cigarettes for lunch) when my older brother visited in Paris. Anxious to have him see me in my new habitat, I put on my chicest thrift store finds and found him at the airport, leaning awkwardly the way tall people do.

“Gah. You look like gypsy,” he whispered.

My life was complete. I was officially an ex-pat. I used a crumpled US Dollar to wipe away a tear. My brother is America incarnate. At 6’4” he rotates between three t-shirts and keeps an Armageddon bag under his bed that contains straws that converts contaminated water into Bud Light. He generally makes other men nervous, especially the French ones. So there I was, trying to blend in in Paris with a human contraceptive. For two weeks, we trampled around, following the US formula: speak softly and carry a big baguette. When it came time for him to leave, I asked about his plans for the 4th of July, my heart longing for Mellencamp.

And just like that it snuck up on me the way only a Prius can – the romance had dwindled and I missed Target. With a hankering for amber waves of GMO, I decided to come home. If you’re too embarrassed to admit defeat to homesickness, tell people you’re running a high patriotic fever. I wanted to crowd around the bonfire and pretend to know where Idaho was. When people asked where I was from I wanted to say south of Boston.

In all the places we’ll live one is not better, one is not skinnier or fatter or chicer or smarter. One is home and one is not. And for me, home is where the Eggos are.