expat in my native country
“I’m not from here” is a phrase I find myself repeating often. Usually it happens in passing, during small talk with cashiers or new acquaintances at a party. I left my hometown of Tempe, Arizona almost eight years ago, but somehow, it hasn’t left me.
An itinerant preacher of sorts, I did mission work on college campuses for five years in my twenties; first in Arizona at my alma mater, then in Ohio, then in New Jersey. Each place I lived, I made my own. I tacked up the world map I got for my 20th birthday next to an Ansel Adams print my dad hung in his office until he retired from teaching. My sister’s early oil paintings found a home on my bedroom walls. I placed tchotchkes and keepsakes on bookshelves: photos of my family, a hand carved golden koi fish I got from a garage sale, an aloe vera plant propagated from my mother’s garden. Every place I moved, I made new friends, got a new chiropractor, a new dentist, a new therapist. When I encountered something unfamiliar in my surroundings, my story was the same: “I’m not from here.” It’s been a safety net, in a way, and I liked that being from somewhere else made me different; special, even.
Saint Paul, Minnesota has been my home for four years now, but still I hold my allegiance to it at an arm's length. When the subject of weather comes up in conversation with strangers, as it invariably does, I make sure to let them know my place of origin.
“Can you believe this weather?”
“I know, it’s freezing!” I say through chattering teeth. “ I’m not used to it - I’m from Arizona.”
“Oh, what brings you to town?” is the response. Then I realize I have to explain myself.
“Oh, no… I’m not visiting, I live here.” I usually get a confused look.
Why do I phrase it like that? Why don’t I say “I grew up in Arizona,” which would make more sense? For some reason, I can’t let myself be “Minnesotan.” I still have my Arizona license plates, and the tags expired a year ago. In order to get them renewed, I have to pass an emissions test, which would mean bringing my car to the Arizona DMV, an impossible task. An easy fix would be to register my car in Minnesota, but I can’t bring myself to do it. I’m not sure why. I think it would signify that I have given up, or given in, and my rebellious nature won’t let me.
Every year, I resign my lease on my apartment, but a part of me falters. I was supposed to make something of my life, supposed to land somewhere, plant roots, or “ruts” as the locals pronounce it. And maybe I’ll do that here. But no matter how long I have lived in Minnesota, something leaves me unmoored. Perhaps I will always feel like a transplant, the other half of me still in the desert.
Winter in Minnesota means cold that freezes you to the bone, days on end where you don’t see the sun, heaps of snow, air so frigid it feels like a slap in the face. In sub zero temps I run outside to preheat my car, scraping ice off my windshield and cursing the cold. In the parking lot of grocery stores I see mothers wrangling children in snowsuits, with tiny boots, tiny hats, tiny gloves. Breathless parents lugging baby carriers wrapped in wool, protecting their precious bundles from the fierce elements. I can't do this, I think. If I settle down here, that is my future.
As much as I dread it, there is a magic to winter. An ethereal beauty when the snow clings to the naked branches, the shocking transformation of the landscape once green and vibrant. Brilliant blue skies contrast sharply with the ivory snow. During the winter, I cannot imagine a time where I went outside barefoot, when I drove my car with the windows down. In the summer, I cannot fathom a time where I couldn't bear to take off my gloves to fiddle my keys into the front door, or that leaving a plant on the inside of my window sill would render it frozen stiff the next day. Nothing is safe from winter’s chill.
Some months ago I left Minnesota stuck in the last soggy bits of winter and traveled home to Arizona. My older sister had her first baby, a boy, and I went to meet him. The desert was full of life: ocotillo and palo verde, Indian paintbrush and evening primrose, proud saguaro and prickly pear cactus. In my childhood backyard, my mother’s garden was bursting with beets, broccoli, arugula, swiss chard onions, carrots, tomatoes, and peppers. Hummingbirds drank from honeysuckle bushes and the citrus on the orange trees were ripe and scented. Twelve chickens - six more than city code - scratched happily in the dirt, eating all manner of grubs or leftovers from my parents’ table.
I sat with my sister on the couch while she nursed, reveling in the breeze that came through the open door. Motherhood was like springtime to her, a blooming in the desert, new life. “It’s so beautiful and surprising and new and confusing.” she said with her two week old at her breast. Her son drank happily, hungrily, like a hummingbird, while my sister and I talked.
“I don’t know where I am supposed to end up,” I told her. “I don’t think it's Minnesota, but I’m not sure it’s Arizona, either.”
Summer in Arizona means blistering hot sidewalks, asphalt that melts to liquid and sticks to your shoes. The curtains in your house remain drawn to keep out the heat. You cannot bear to turn on the stove and so you eat cold salads for dinner. Getting inside a car is like being in an oven, a hot breath that sucks you dry. You can’t stand outside for more than a few moments without oppressive heat distracting you, urging you indoors, while ribbons of sweat roll down the backs of your legs. Hurried steps take you from an air conditioned house to an air conditioned car to an air conditioned store. Temperatures soar to triple digits and can stay that way for days on end.
Back in Saint Paul after my trip, I found that spring had arrived, at long last. The seemingly dead trees shake their skeleton branches at the sky, and, in defiance, bloom. You’ve never seen such a green. Highlighter green, neon green, fluorescent green. Bright leaves sprout from oak, walnut, pine, evergreen, elm, maple. Lakes melt into liquid again, shimmering in the sun. Birds sing morning, noon and night, announcing the arrival of new life. Flowers make their debut in every shade of the rainbow. Is spring sweeter where winter exists? Would I have recognized such color were it not for the months of gray?
I eat lunch outside, finally, gratefully, and meet my neighbors again after months of hibernation. There is Ettore, from Italy, whose condo is under construction since the unit above him caught fire last year. There is Carol, from Lebanon, a professor of middle eastern studies, whose hands shook as she sipped tea in my kitchen last April. Bruce, a retired elementary school teacher with a tiny diamond earring and the bluest eyes you’ve ever seen, bluer when he cries. There is Dr. Hawkins, an elderly widower and former speech professor. He runs a museum of the Gilded Age out of his house and has the largest private collection of President Garfield memorabilia. Today, he ambles down the front steps of his 1880’s Victorian to yell at some teens parking illegally. “No, no,” he says sternly, as if disciplining a badly behaved dog. “No parking.”
I’m reminded of a line from Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. “There are no conditions to which a man cannot become used, especially if he sees that all around him are living in the same way.” Can I become used to Minnesota's cold, like my friends and neighbors have, as I became used to Arizona’s heat? Can I embrace the midwest culture, the nice-ness and the hot dishes and lack of fashion sense? What about my family? They long for me to move home, to be close to them. I’ve done the heat; could I do it again? But I’ve survived the winters here - can I face it again? Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t, they say, but I know two devils: one hot and one freezing cold.
Three elderly folks, two men and one woman, amble past me as I chew on my salad on my front porch. “Great place to eat lunch,” says one gentleman, with lemon yellow shoes. He pauses a moment and looks me in the eye. “Our father always said ‘eat fast and chew slow.’ Ponder that for a while!” We share a laugh before he strolls along, enjoying the sunshine.
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