You can't go home again

Where was that, exactly?

On a cold, blustery, rainy evening, I took refuge in a hygge¹ café with one of my dearest friends.

It was our first in-person rendezvous in the new year so of course we indulged in some review and forecasting. I love her because she is perceptive and articulate, and our conversations always plunge in to the deep fairly quickly.

We both spent the holidays dealing with aging parents, common enough in our demographic. But our parents are spread across three countries², and each of us lives in yet another country³. We grew up with globalization. We live it. Now it means learning about tax law, senior care provisions, inheritance law and such things in multiple countries and languages; then there’s the emotional element of never quite feeling in the right place at the right time.

As we and our partners approach the magical age of more-or-less-mandated European retirement, what’s next? How do we think about ourselves and our place in the world?

She and her husband own a house in Sweden, which they live in twice annually, and fully expect to return there full-time when they retire. This Christmas, the familiarity of being “at home” was somehow stronger and more comforting than usual. Part of getting ready to live in the house they have never lived in full-time?

Whereas this Christmas, I was plagued with feeling in the wrong place, constantly. Floating through familiar worlds and landscapes, first in Switzerland, then in southern Germany, then across Bohemia. My soul settled, briefly, during a few days in Prague. That’s still the city of my heart, the place where I first came to land hearing the voices of my ancestors in the streets.

But I found no solace, no comfort in being in our house in Switzerland. If anything, I felt myself detaching from the life we’ve built there. Closing off certain commitments, analyzing others and feeling no FOMO⁴ whatsoever, thinking about the friends I have there, thinking about goodbyes– and looking forward to somewhere else. If I only knew where that was.

She said, “Well, for you to return—the US is not a place one wants to think about going.”

I agreed that things⁵ in the US were not likely to radically change for the better in the next five years.

Then stopped.

“I can’t live there”…. we both looked at each other… “anymore.”

Oh, right, she said. You’re not a citizen.

I have no legal basis for living in the US, nor does my (German and Swiss dual) husband.

That door is closed. Firmly, permanently.

In the last two weeks, I’ve read so many accounts of US Americans wanting to leave, even preparing to leave. There also seems to be no shortage of advice available from those who have already expatriated themselves. I have nothing to say about that, no advice to give. I’m not an expat; I’m just… ex.

Am I looking for a home? Or just another place to live? Home is a place that you understand, a place that understands you. I have understood, indeed learned to understand, many places in my decades. It’s what I do. Observing, recognizing patterns, finding clues that interlink, making comparisons to what I have already discovered, explaining to myself and to others. Maybe that’s all there is for me.

1. The hygge trend has reached Lisbon, it’s true.

2. Germany, Sweden, the US.

3. Switzerland, the UK. This is why we meet up in Lisbon. Makes perfect sense.

4. “Fear of missing out.” Does this even need an explanatory footnote? I don’t know.

5. Things, like the wealth gap or the lack of attainable health care or the number of guns in circulation or the disappearance of civil public discourse or all those other bits that were already not good before the data-stealing oligarchy began playing with the levers of power.