Sometimes…

I really miss living in Europe.

 

Oh, don’t get me wrong. I love the United States. I’m quite proud of my country and all it’s accomplished in the last century or so. I’m proud to be part of a culture that isn’t defined by blood or territory but by something entirely new on planet Earth — an ideology. An idea. A belief that all men were created equal and endowed by their Creator (whether you believe that to be a deity or random chance) by certain inalienable rights. A belief in rule of law over rule of man. A belief that it doesn’t matter what color your skin is, what kind of accent you have, what God you worship — or if you worship a God at all — how much money you have, what kind of job you hold…that you are equal before the law to everyone else. A belief that men are best left to govern themselves without some ruler standing over them dictating their lives to them. And, a belief that so long as you hold that to be true, you are American whether you speak with an accent or worship Christ or Shiva. You don’t have to be born here to be one of us. Immigrants who just recently gave their oaths to the United States and the Constitution are just as American as I am though my ancestors came over during the 1700 and 1800s.

 

Not to say that we hold perfectly to those ideals all the time — we don’t. Not to say that Americans have never done anything wrong or horrific in our short history. We have. But I am proud to have been born of mixed blood in a country where we welcome everyone who dreams of living free and working hard to our shores.

 

Still, there are times I really miss living in Europe.

 

I don’t fetishize Europe or anything. I don’t think that Europe is the future that America will “grow up” to become. America and Americans descend from people who, by and large, thought that Europe with its royalties, its monarchs, its caste system, its iniquitous rule of men over law sucked. America is the “un-Europe.” But, Europe still is a very special place to me.

 

Europe has a history, a depth, a permanence that is both alien and comforting to me, a perpetual outsider on that continent. I could have stayed in France, spoken nothing but French, converted back to Roman Catholicism, sewn the tri-color flag to my undergarments, and eaten all the cheese I could stomach and I would never have been French. My French ex-husband could pack up tomorrow, get on a plane, fly to the United States, and, after a few years, he’d be just as American as I am. Even if I were to go to the United Kingdom where most of my ancestors hailed from, even if I were to give my oath to Queen and Country, serve tea and crumpets every afternoon, pick up the local accent as best I could, and proudly flown the Union flag while burning Guy Fawkes in effigy every November 5, I wouldn’t be “British.”

 

But still…even with all of that, there are times I wish I could go back and live there again. I’d probably choose to live in the UK, though, even if my French isn’t too terrible considering I’m largely self-taught. Europe has this mystique to it. It’s old (and I like old things). It’s got this wonderfully great depth of history to it. Europe (well, Western Europe, really) doesn’t sweat the small stuff. Even if the air there felt oppressive to me on occasion, as if it were weighted down by its very history, as if it were more a museum than a living, breathing, vibrant set of nations…it still had a magic about it that I haven’t found in the United States at all.

 

Now, I do like living closer to Mini-me — especially since I know that she’ll be part of my life from here on out. I love talking to her on the phone and hearing her tell me how much she likes the things I like. Mini-me adores me (I don’t know why) and, when I go back to Mississippi to visit, she doesn’t seem to want to let me out of her sight. When I was there for Christmas and had a migraine, she wound up coming with me back to my bedroom and laying down on the bed with me while I laid a cold cloth across my forehead and waited for that last dose of Excedrin to kick in. She curled up against my back and fell asleep. Later, we watched Doctor Who and she still talks about the episodes she watched with me. The plastic people, the Nestene Consciousness, the blue girl, the flat girl, the flying grammy, the “Trabeen” (Siltheen), the piggy astronaut, “victory should be naked!” and, of course, the Targis (TARDIS). She loves her ol’ Aunt Kelly even if Aunt Kelly can’t quite figure out why. But still, all things being equal, I’d love to go back to Europe for a while.

 

I think that Mini-me would like Europe, too. I could see her visiting me there and going to see the castles and palaces, listening to all the different languages, eating at a sidewalk café in Paris. Having greasy, vinegary fish-and-chips in London. Walking along Hadrian’s wall near the Scottish border. Yes, she and I would always be étrangers, auslanders, foreigners in Europe. But I think that she would feel the same magic about that place that I do.

 

I miss the mass transit — even if it was unreliable sometimes due to strikes. I miss the flowers decorating the streets. I miss the smell of the boulangeries, seeing the meat on display at the boutcheries, the fromageries, the little shops along the rues, the grocery stores where you could get just about any kind of meat (except venison). I miss the pubs and taverns where you could see older men sitting back and having a pint or two. I miss the slower pace of life where vacations were important.

 

Yes, Europe had its bits that drove me crazy. The strikes in France. The high taxes. The elites’ tendency to condescend to the lower classes. The belief that people there knew more about my country, its history, its government, and its politics than I did (and, to this day, though I lived in France for nearly a decade, you will never hear me claim to be an expert on French government, let alone other European governments). The riots in the immigrant quarters because the immigrants know they’ll never be “European” no matter how many generations they live there and because they are treated rather poorly. The constant nagging question in my mind as to what it is that actually makes one “French” or “German” or “British” or “Italian.” The way that a lot of people looked down on me for my accented French. The way that, though I loved the place and its history, I never quite fit in.

 

Still, I’d go back tomorrow if I could. There’s something about living in an old country — even if there were days I swore I could smell death and decay from old age on the air — and living among an old people — even if I sometimes wondered why they didn’t move forward more instead of looking back — that is magic.

 

There are times I really miss living in Europe where the ancient sits cheek-by-jowl with the modern and is considered normal.

 

–G.K.