It’s wonderful to meet loved ones in a foreign land.
I dropped my son off at the airport for his final quarter at the University of Washington and laughed with glee. “See you in Paris!”
He grinned back. “Right.”
His graduation gift was a trip to Paris and London with a side outing to the beaches of Normandy. We had a terrific time.
Joy at the normal in the foreign
One of the moments I savored the most, however, was standing in the dusty shadows of a Paris pensione to watch my child negotiate with a taxi driver, in French, about the charge from Charles de Gaulle airport.
We flew in the day before Stargazer arrived and he had traveled halfway around the planet alone.
Standing there that evening, I saw him in flashes: a little boy, a grown man, my child, my son, chatting as a world traveler in a foreign tongue.
I loved it.
I wrote last time about the joy of finding my relatives on a bus in Columbia, but I’ve had other fun meetings in foreign lands.
Last summer I traveled to Romania to attend my godson’s wedding party.
As Bucharest sounded too dangerous a place to arrive alone, I organized my trip to rendezvous with the groom’s parents at London’s Heathrow airport and travel east with them.
I hadn’t seen my friends in over a year, and I approached the gate with anticipation.
Bob caught sight of me thirty feet away and nodded with a big smile on his face. He pointed and the woman in front of me turned around.
I’d walked right behind Mary and didn’t recognize her! We flung our arms around each other and laughed. She looks good in Europe.
During college, I spent a summer with Swiss relatives and learned what it meant to be part of a European family.
I wilted beneath the rigidity of a Swiss dentist and the sharp pronouncements of a Sicilian businessman. They were tired of me, too.
When my own first cousin turned up wearing a backpack, we all fell upon him with shouts of joy.
When my cousin and I had a moment alone, we surveyed each other. “How’s it going?” he asked.
“I’m ready to go home.”
He laughed. “I’ll bet.”
Just seeing him made me feel better; so immersed in the family drama, I’d almost forgotten there was a normal life outside of the Swiss alps.
My child in a familiar place to him, foreign to me
I thought about all this recently when I visited Stargazer, now in grad school, and spent the day following him around.
He lives far from our family and I wanted to observe him in his current environment.
That meant I took him grocery shopping, we visited his favorite bookstore, I used the computer at his apartment and, best of all, I sat in on a class he taught.
Oh, my. My baby was the teacher of all these college students. I tried to see him through their eyes–Stargazer as an authority figure.
I’d seen him in that role in the past when he led the boy scouts or bossed his sister around, but these were people paying money for information he had to teach them. Fascinating.
He returned tests, discussed grades, set up experiments, and answered questions, just like a real Teaching Assistant.
I don’t recall now if they called him by his first name or not, but I did notice he never took off his ballcap.
A little boy wearing a hat, a student speaking French, a young man explaining science ideas using his rotating hand. I saw all those images as I watched him in a setting unusual for the two of us together.
I loved it. I’m proud of him. He’s a good teacher, even if I do say so myself.
How do you set yourself apart to be objective about people you love? Do you gain insight into loved ones when you see them in foreign spots?
🙂
Thoughts? Reactions? Lurker?