Visitors
When my mom came to visit me while I was studying abroad in Cape Town, we went on a wine tour, and I forgot to bring my ID with me. I didn't think it would really be that much of an issue--I hadn't been carded very often in Cape Town since, at 20, I was well above the drinking age of 18. But when I put on a smug face and told my mom I had forgotten my wallet an hour's drive away at my apartment, I could sense how much it hurt her to understand that I had been irresponsible in a way that seemed to have been a personal choice.
We went on the wine tour, I paired wine with chocolate, our family friend and I got drunk enough to eat wine and drink cheese, and my mom, with her kind of deadly wine allergy, was a good sport. I never got carded. Eventually, I convinced my mom to buy a case of a Pinot-Chardonnay from this winery called Leopard's Leap, and I happily drank several bottles of it in the following weeks. On the drive home from the winery that night, my mom panicked when she realized the GPS had accidentally taken us into a township full of similarly colored black people, and that both I and our family friend had already fallen asleep.
I've realized I do this thing when I get to know people well; I find things about them that make it difficult for them to get closer to me. I guess it's some kind of situation where I'm always trying to sort out my own feelings and so have no room for anyone else's. I felt bad every day that my mom was in Cape Town and I treated her like she was an intrusion to my foreign space, but really, I think I was just in my own weird way trying to get used to the fact that I truly had found a way to live in another country without her. And that led to her getting teary eyed when she saw the smug look on my face when I told her without remorse that I had forgotten to bring my ID to a wine tour where she wouldn't have been able to drink if she brought a thousand IDs.
In one of my first interactions with my cousin Joe, who I haven't seen in a few years and who is a recent transplant to California himself, I distinctly remember him describing the idea that you can't find the place where you truly belong without being willing to leave people behind. I had brushed off my tears from leaving Max and my mom at the airport only days before, so this came at a really appropriate time for me. You have to be willing to leave people behind, right?
Max was here to visit for nine consecutive days, and when people ask me how my visit was with him, I tell them that it was good, really good, but also weird, really weird. It's the same thing as with my mom in Cape Town, I mean, I've just barely set up a life here and just barely gotten used to being without him, and I think it would feel just as weird to step into a house and have it be an exact replica of my bedroom at home--it would make my heart hurt a little and my brain struggle to find solid ground, and in the end I would probably prefer to pursue a room that was completely different because my room from my house in Maryland has no business trying to be my room in California.
It hurts sometimes to think that I missed out on pumpkin picking with my mom and with Max's family, but it hurts more often to think that something about me has me desiring to be in a foreign place away from everything that's familiar despite the fact that there are people who love me and miss me at home. It hurts to see Instagram posts of girls and boys my age adopting dogs and moving in together because a little piece of me wants that life too, but the piece isn't nearly big enough to conquer my selfish desire to leave and to grow on my own. I hope I'm not the type of person who never finds a place that makes her truly happy, or who isn't able to be happy around people she loves just because of a place. You have to be willing to leave people behind, right? But you have to be willing to leave places behind too.
We went on the wine tour, I paired wine with chocolate, our family friend and I got drunk enough to eat wine and drink cheese, and my mom, with her kind of deadly wine allergy, was a good sport. I never got carded. Eventually, I convinced my mom to buy a case of a Pinot-Chardonnay from this winery called Leopard's Leap, and I happily drank several bottles of it in the following weeks. On the drive home from the winery that night, my mom panicked when she realized the GPS had accidentally taken us into a township full of similarly colored black people, and that both I and our family friend had already fallen asleep.
I've realized I do this thing when I get to know people well; I find things about them that make it difficult for them to get closer to me. I guess it's some kind of situation where I'm always trying to sort out my own feelings and so have no room for anyone else's. I felt bad every day that my mom was in Cape Town and I treated her like she was an intrusion to my foreign space, but really, I think I was just in my own weird way trying to get used to the fact that I truly had found a way to live in another country without her. And that led to her getting teary eyed when she saw the smug look on my face when I told her without remorse that I had forgotten to bring my ID to a wine tour where she wouldn't have been able to drink if she brought a thousand IDs.
In one of my first interactions with my cousin Joe, who I haven't seen in a few years and who is a recent transplant to California himself, I distinctly remember him describing the idea that you can't find the place where you truly belong without being willing to leave people behind. I had brushed off my tears from leaving Max and my mom at the airport only days before, so this came at a really appropriate time for me. You have to be willing to leave people behind, right?
Max was here to visit for nine consecutive days, and when people ask me how my visit was with him, I tell them that it was good, really good, but also weird, really weird. It's the same thing as with my mom in Cape Town, I mean, I've just barely set up a life here and just barely gotten used to being without him, and I think it would feel just as weird to step into a house and have it be an exact replica of my bedroom at home--it would make my heart hurt a little and my brain struggle to find solid ground, and in the end I would probably prefer to pursue a room that was completely different because my room from my house in Maryland has no business trying to be my room in California.
It hurts sometimes to think that I missed out on pumpkin picking with my mom and with Max's family, but it hurts more often to think that something about me has me desiring to be in a foreign place away from everything that's familiar despite the fact that there are people who love me and miss me at home. It hurts to see Instagram posts of girls and boys my age adopting dogs and moving in together because a little piece of me wants that life too, but the piece isn't nearly big enough to conquer my selfish desire to leave and to grow on my own. I hope I'm not the type of person who never finds a place that makes her truly happy, or who isn't able to be happy around people she loves just because of a place. You have to be willing to leave people behind, right? But you have to be willing to leave places behind too.
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