A few months ago, life was normal. The future was uncertain, but I slept better than I do now. My husband Olivier and I were enjoying our first year of living in England. After ten years in France, it was a welcome and exciting change. We often had conversations about what the next big leap might be. Maybe back home to the States, depending on the election. Or, maybe elsewhere in the U.K., depending on how the whole Brexit thing goes. The threat of Brexit cast a shadow over everything, but it didn't feel menacing. Hell, it probably wouldn't actually happen. That'd be crazy.Then came the morning that we woke up and found ourselves living in fucking crazytown.My husband, a European working in England, had to go to work immediately afterward, all the while wondering if everyone he looked at had just voted for him to leave. Luckily, working in an office with a colorful international mix softened the blow....
My grandfather gave me the dollhouse right about the time my brain began to form lasting memories. He'd built the entire thing himself, with his own two hands. My mother, the oldest of four children, was the first to give her parents a grandchild, so I was a big deal. My grandparents spoiled me in the usual ways, but the dollhouse held the most meaning. Within each piece of tiny furniture there existed a universe of adoration. Every small human figure and carefully cut piece of fabric, another echo of love from my grandfather to me.A few years later, my mother and I moved halfway across the country. I could only take with me a few things that would fit in the car. The dollhouse, with most of our other possessions, remained in my grandparents' garage."We'll come back for that stuff later," my mother said. "We'll rent a U-haul and move it all into our new house when we find...
It all started with laughter and a longing to be somewhere else.I don't miss my hometown. I moved out of Longmont, Colorado in 1994, and never wanted to move back. For me, crossing that town line is like stepping into a dark parallel universe of bad memories. It's a time machine that only goes back to traumatic events; to people who only knew me as the juvenile delinquent offspring of a narcissistic, alcoholic mother. People who said I'd end up as nothing, popping out kids, smoking crack and ending up dead in a ditch. It's the town where a loser who nearly killed me is still frequently seen walking around on the street.I still have some very awesome friends living in Longmont, and while I almost envy their loving view of the place, I simply do not share it.My home life was not as bad or as good as it could have been, but it was difficult. It had a...
When I got my first and last gun, I was in the morning kindergarten class. The bus dropped me off after school and I'd watch TV in the living room while eating my lunch. Old reruns of some of the best shows were on in the afternoon: Batman. The Lone Ranger and The Adventures of Superman. I ate my sandwich with Adam West, George Reeves or Clayton Moore, then I'd run off to read my comic books, or play outside. I had no siblings, so I usually played make believe by myself. Sometimes I suited up in my Wonder Woman gear to save the world. Other times, I became Supergirl, flying around by fastening some sort of cape around my neck and hanging from my swing set. And when I had my little cap gun, I was just as brave and heroic as the Lone Ranger.In my mind, it wasn't symbolic in any way of a thing that hurt people. It...
"No vacation goes unpunished." ~Karl Hakkarainen"No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow." ~Lin Yutang"The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one's own country as a foreign land." ~G.K. Chesterton * * *When the guy across the aisle from us began discussing stabbings & which mixture of drugs enabled him to best endure such an incident, I knew that I had had enough of fucking Greyhound.We arrived at the Greyhound station in Denver after our brief stop in Amarillo. We had 2 hours to stand in a line in front of the door where the bus would arrive. Sucking down our mediocre & over-priced nachos, Olivier & I observed that while the bus station in Denver was larger & cleaner than what we'd grown accustomed to, being forced to watch Fox News on...
“There are things you just can't do in life. You can't beat the phone company, you can't make a waiter see you until he's ready to see you, and you can't go home again.” -Bill Bryson "You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood ... back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame ... back home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time — back home to the escapes of Time and Memory." -Thomas Wolfe, You Can't Go Home Again "America is my country and Paris is my hometown." -Gertrude Stein ◊ There is something that happens to someone when they live abroad. It doesn't matter where they live, or for how long; spending an extended period of time living in a country that is not your own will affect anyone who tries it. If you've...
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