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What I think about most these days is how to get home; to find
a way back across the Atlantic, to confront this new war on my soil.
When I first came to Germany almost a year ago, I thought the winter
fog and fields of mud would be the hardest part. Then spring came
and the skies cleared, the ground hardened. Summer was easy, bright
and blue ‹ I forgot the dark season's depression as easily
as I had the labor pains between children. Then came September,
and like a switch, the sun was gone, the fog returned, the soil
turned soft. And I remembered, railed against what was to come.
What came was the 11th, and now when I wake to the fog I say a
prayer of thanks, hoping the layer of gray will make me invisible
to the Luftwaffe flying their ear-splitting scrambles over my roof.
Since the 11th, living on a hilltop makes me feel vulnerable. The
clay in the ground has turned to its annual goop, but this time
it doesn¹t matter: I won't be going out so often this year
for walks in the woods. I've not gone much into the city this past
month, but the few times I have, I've fretted for the first time
that maybe I really do look as American as people have said, and
I wonder if it's time to retire my backpack, trade in my jeans for
slacks, replace the loafers shodding my feet with something in clog.
I no longer try out my German on clerks in the stores. I make sure
to just get what I need and hand over my money.
Downtown seems to have changed a bit too. There aren¹t quite
as many people out shopping, and those who are seem more alert.
Long-coated Muslim women, once dotting the streets with their children
in hand, are now few and far between. I've seen police hauling away
ethnic men. I look across the fast-flowing Danube and wonder just
where it was they found that reported "cell." I gather
my bags and hurry back to my hill.
Once there, I turn on my tv ‹ CNN my only English channel
now since SkyNews went digital. Last week the news didn¹t seem
to change much from day to day, but now the allied attacks have
begun and I find it necessary to keep the TV running even when I¹m
out of the room because it's far easier to approach a screen already
in motion than face the anxiety of what could be lurking behind
a blank one. Sometimes I flip to local broadcasts, but then all
I see are the pictures, and the spate of foreign words added to
them only makes it all seem as alien as the act itself. My German
isn¹t good enough yet to follow along, but then, the vocabulary
I'd need just now wasn¹t ever part of the plan.
The hardest part has been accessing the events: I've had some news,
emails, the phone. What¹s missing is the physical person to
talk to: another American; someone to rant with and rage, someone
to hug, someone to shed the same hot tears.
I used to joke that my move abroad had turned me ex-patriot. The
11th taught me that I'm more American than I'd ever let myself know.
It seems naive to have taken so much for granted. I want to wear
my own clothes and fly my own flag without thinking of State Department
advisories. I want to speak my language; not only the words, but
all the rest that goes with it.
Some locals I know have said how lucky I am: I could have been
there. But they are greatly mistaken. For all of my soul, it's where
I already am. The President said we should get back to normal. So
I think of the ocean that seems more like a wall than infinite beads
of water, and I plan how to cross it so I can get back, because
what I want most is to be home.
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