Overweight Suitcases

Chubby men in paint-splattered uniforms, scratched plastic goggles, and thick black ear muffs have been drilling the same piece of brick since I returned to work on Tuesday. On Thursday, a coworker likened their electric screwdrivers to the dental instrument that sucks out saliva and gum-flavored toothpaste. On Friday, the loan counselor resorted to popping pills for her headache and, yesterday, called in sick. Over the weekend, our new financial consultant lost her mother to kidney failure, and then the Financial Aid Coordinator decorated her office with pink and purple orchids. Today, our computer technician very likely burst a vein when glass chips pierced through her office window, while, a few steps away, my boss stares intensely at twenty-two colourful manouevering dots on a verdant expanse - otherwise known as the World Cup. This monotonous drill could be soothing if it were more rhythmically regular like the beeping of a reversing truck. But it is not. And now, it is drowning out the wavering voices of anxious parents who have resorted to selling the family cow to pay for an obligatory meal plan. In a twisted ironic sort of way, I've missed Student Financial Services, office of complaints and petitions, sore backs and flabby buttocks, frightened students and pissed-off parents. It's good to be back.

Leaving France is now a semi-opaque blur, summed up in two words: overweight suitcases. I was neither sad to bid farewell nor reluctant to do so. My last few weeks were spent drooling as I napped among roses and peonies at the Pavillon Vendome, and competing with naked old ladies in a 7-euro turquoise bikini, blue as the Mediterranean Sea. I suppose I added new meaning to the term "skinny-dipping" after devouring mile-long baguettes and herb-embellished goat cheese, baked salmon and grilled beef, and ancient wine and bubbly champagne for a glorious six months. I found redemption for awkward conversations with a question whose answer lay on the other side of the Atlantic: what are you going to miss most about France? It was a question that I myself struggled to answer, not because there was too much to miss but because there was too much I would not miss: the cigarettes between every forefinger and middle finger; the pizza delivery guy on his roaring motorcyle; the "ni hao!"s and blatant racial ignorance ("don't they still smoke opium in China?"); the literature class of pederasty, cursed cities, blasphemous depictions of Christ, suicidal writers, and film directors run over fifty times by a vehicle; the wannabe-popstar neighbours singing to Lady Gaga at 2AM before heading to the Wohoo for a drink or two, and the spiritual Sahara of religious cynicism, political secularism and a severely misunderstood Catholic church, weathered by decades of worldly politics and tainted by human sin.

As I settle into a full-time job on this side of the Atlantic, the things I miss about France are becoming painfully apparent. Instead of pain-aux-chocolats and croissants for breakfast, I'm living on Kellogg's and soggy carrots. Instead of the daily market buzz under my apartment, I wake up to the groan of a bright orange lawnmower driven by yet another chubby man with plastic goggles and ear muffs; the patterns he weaves across the field are, at best, pretty. Instead of fish and shrimp stalls under quaint ferries at the old port of Marseille and the Algerian in his long African gown selling wooden rabbits and African masks, I find myself pushing a metal trolley around Roche Bros, bumping into angry old men with tubes in their noses, refraining from spitting out the cubes of free American cheese, and avoiding pale minced beef.

At social gatherings, the first thing intellectuals often ask me after noticing a discord between my epicanthic folds, accent and residency status is: where's home? After six months of early retirement and an uncouth awakening to the "real world," this question doesn't get any easier to answer. No, France is not home, at least not for me. England isn't either. Boston could come close. Some even say that home is simply where the heart is. Well, I say that life is a jaunt. I am a nomad, and my home is in Heaven.

Would you care to join me?