Blogabroad
by Mary Pinckney Waters
February 15 , 2006 - Hard to imagine
I always yell at those freshmen who load up their Civics
with dirty laundry and high mileage every weekend to go home.
Why are they at college? To earn a degree? OK, yes. But ask
most college grads what they learned in college, and I’ll
bet it wasn’t learned in a classroom.
I am a proponent of sticking around a new place, despite
initial discomfort. Quashing those pansy urges to run back
to familiarity. What’s the point in playing tag if
you stay on home base the whole time? Get out in the game
and then return to safety when you need to catch your breath.
If you can, that is.
I have been in Germany for five months now. Five months
in a student dorm. Five months with no weekend trips back
home to my high school bedroom, my family’s parakeet
BooBoo or my mother’s cooking. (Little inside joke
for you, Mom. Wanna go to Outback?)
All in all, a long freaking time without those intimate
quirks of a real home. A warm house with rooms bigger than
closets. Neighbors who, instead of blasting Usher’s “Yeah!” until
4 a.m., hit the sack early after senior-citizen bingo. Or
my personal favorite: the dinner table surrounded by the
whole family enjoying a Bloomin’ Onion and decorative
boomerangs.
I still plan on yelling at home-trekking freshmen for being
mother-loving wussies when I return to USC, but after this
exchange, maybe I’ll tone it down a little. Missing
home isn’t that abominable.
 This weekend I went home with my friend Thomas Uhlen to
Melle, Niedersachsen. It was the first residence I’d
been in since my time in Bamberg that wasn’t an apartment,
dorm or youth hostel. And it was the first sheep farm I’d
ever been to in my life.
The Uhlens have been shepherds for hundreds of years, passing
on the torch through the generations. Thomas’ grandfather
has left his duties to his two sons, all three of whom live
together in a large farmhouse with Thomas’ mom, two
sisters and a backyard to the horizon. His family welcomed
me warmly, telling me immediately to call them “du,” the
informal “you,” and to make myself feel “zu
Hause,” at home. Even the sheep were friendly and spoke
to me whenever I saw them.
This was Thomas’ first return home after one semester
at college. We went out and met his high school friends,
and I watched as they screamed each other’s names three
times back and forth before giving the pat-on-the-back man-hug.
Then they commenced a marathon of embarrassing stories, and
I struggled more with understanding the context of narratives
or inside jokes than the German language.
When it was time for me to head back to Bamberg, his mother
asked me twice if I wanted her to pack me a sandwich to eat
for the train ride, his sister thanked me for helping her
with her English homework and his grandfather called me “eine
süße Puppe” (a sweet gal).
Today I checked Facebook, as any good 20-something does,
and saw a new wall post from a good friend back in Columbia,
Patrick Augustine: “You. You come back and be fun with
me. Seriously. Why aren't you on a plane back from Germany
this instant? Skyline misses us.”
Sometimes this is hard.
Mary Pinckney Waters welcomes your
comments and feedback: marypwaters@yahoo.com |
