Rambling around the world

I marveled at the infanticide prevention placard on the New Hope-Lambertville Bridge, embossed to perfection with the silhouette of a baby. I pondered a poorly grammar-checked homage to a dearly missed loved one posted in the local Ralph Stover State Park. And these travel-induced jaw-droppers didn’t just end at the macabre. From the “Obama voters, aren’t you sorry yet?” bumper stickers to the commercials of congressmen claiming to levy taxes on the gas frackers of Pennsylvania if elected, the wonders of the Americana lifestyle are intriguing and yet hard-to-swallow all the same. Even if it is your native culture that you’re trying to gulp.

After five years of globe trekking, I came home, temporarily I hoped, to my small town PA home, expecting the excitements of foreign travel to vanish upon arrival at the Philadelphia airport. Soon the realization dawned on me that it wasn’t just the new townhouses that had sprouted up or the bizarre diet foods my mom had stuffed in the fridge that had transformed; there was something larger than the material in the air.

Had I so typically underestimated the United States, or maybe just the pace at which our cultures are changing across the globe—I was just in awe of the new “selfie” and “hashtag” terminology and of what the natives were watching on TV (the barbaric interest in Game of Thrones, how medieval!) as I had been of the exotic abroad. Soon I was venturing, camera in tow, out on the streets of a once familiar North Eastern town to gawk and gape at my own cultural oddities.

Sure, one does oft misunderstand the good ole’ US of A, but what of the hometown girl turning picture-taker? Though maybe expecting the most expectable lent me to one last, unexpected hurrah—a journey in my hometown, a developed country escapade during which I awaited the days to fade in to normalcy. The tic-toc continued. Who was it that had changed in the first place?

Once I had peeked behind the veil of other cultures, my own also become shrouded in self-aware mysteries and particularities. Culture is not innate, after all, and rediscovering my own was not just another trip overseas. It was more like seeing an old friend who changes with time but with whom you still feel an enduring bond. Maybe this sense of wonder will melt into complacency at some point, but for now I’ll treat getting reacquainted with my old friend America like a new beginning, with wide eyes and camera ready.