Home for the Holidays

Well, I'm back.

I wasn't sure what to expect from myself when I arrived back in the United States for the first time since moving to China.  Would I freak out at how different it felt?  Kiss the ground?  Start sobbing wildly?

But as always, arriving in New York felt like slipping into a comfortable, battered jacket.  The only real difference between my usual trip between the airport and my aunt's apartment and this one is that I babbled incessantly at my cab driver, ecstatic to be able to communicate with him in words more complicated than "Straight ahead!" or "Right at the traffic light."  (Fortunately, he was happy to be babbled at:  "Yo, you live in CHINA?  That's crazy!  Hey, how much is your rent?")

Of course, there were things in New York that I've missed.  I ate egg and cheeses on hard rolls as if I were starving, I sucked down a few eggnog lattes, and I sort of lost my mind in more than one bookstore.  I was able to spend time -- a lot, but still not enough -- with some of my favorite people in the world.

And at one eternal, beautiful moment at a Christmas party, I danced and sang to Mariah Carey with three of my best friends from college, and I thought:  I am happy.  And this is my normal.

I had the same feeling yesterday.  It was Christmas Eve, so the family was listening to the King's College Choir Lessons and Carols service.  My aunt, my sister and my mother were in the kitchen talking, and my father and I were sitting in the living room as "O Come All Ye Faithful" played on the radio and cats frolicked under the newly-decorated tree.

I want to paint this scene better and I don't know if I can.  Here's trying:

To start with, our tree is a hilarious monster, as usual.  We wait until almost the last possible day to pick it out, and are left with a collection of misfit trees -- too sparse, too crooked, too short, too tall.  Last year, our tree had scoliosis and had to be tied to the doorknob.  This year, it looks like a creature from a Miyazaki movie -- its belly swells out obtrusively into the living room and it leans tipsily to one side.

Crawford trees have character.

There's a fire in the fireplace, of course.  My sister builds it and stokes it, and my father reminds her how.  Stockings hang above it, another misfit collection from over the years.  The tree rests against a wall of windows, and on the other side of those windows some desultory snowflakes swirl into the creek, muddy and high from the thaw two days ago.

The room is a collection of my parents' travels, and the travels of their parents and their parents' parents.  There are vases from my great-grandfather's life in China next to replicas of the Lewis chessmen.  On the walls hang a beautiful tapestry of zebras from Zambia, a pen-and-ink drawing of the Place des Quatres Dauphins in Aix, and an ancient watercolor of the Ring of Brodgar on the Isle of Orkney.  Somehow, it all matches.

It matches, and it doesn't feel cluttered -- just full.  And it's this moment, when my father is staring at the floor listening to the choir peal into their descant and I hear my mother's laughter from the kitchen, that everything feels correct, that I begin to feel that my life in China is unreal, absurd -- that this room, here, is reality.  This is where things matter.  This is where I belong.

I felt that for a moment.  (Let's be honest; I still feel it.)  But here is this one other thing:

My flight from Beijing to Newark was on United, and it was about three quarters full of Chinese people, many of whom didn't speak English.  As we began to board, I became aware of the fact that the majority of the flight crew were American.  When I walked down the ramp, I ran into an elderly Chinese woman holding a baby, wandering the other way and looking lost.

"Are you going to Newark?" I asked stupidly, in English.

"Bu zhi dao..." she responded hopelessly.

And in that moment, something shifted.  Even though we were still in China, we were on American turf.  I was the expert, she the foreigner.  This was the type of old lady who usually looked at me in Beijing with a mixture of scorn, tolerance, and condescension.

I wanted to wrap her in my arms and protect her from Newark, New Jersey.

When my neighbors on the flight needed my help to fill out their customs forms, I wished my Chinese was better so that I could find out where they were going, explain that they'd need to buy two tickets at the Air Train: one for the Air Train itself and one for their final destination.  I wanted to stand in between them and any impatient New Yorkers who might roll their eyes and huff about their lack of English.

Because obviously, their experience in New York is my experience in Beijing.  And more difficult, for even as few Chinese people speak English, fewer Americans speak Chinese (though New York is probably a better bet than many places). 

So that's it.  That's why I'm in China right now.  It makes me alert.  It opens me to new places and new ideas and new people.  And most importantly, it's honing my empathy, in ways I never even imagined. 

Still, in this moment?  It's good to be home.

Merry Christmas, everyone.