Notes of an Ex-Pat 3: Are You Lonesome Tonight?

What is home, anyhow? I was lonesome for Europe for 30 years after returning to the States. Finally I am back here. Sometimes it's hard, but sometimes it's glorious. What does it matter when or where we die?
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I suppose it had to happen sooner or later. It's the end of January -- another cold, gray day in Budapest. I've been here nearly three months. I am walking down Baross utca near Kalvin ter, on my way to my new favorite kavehaz, when it hits. As I come up the steps onto the pedestrian street, a woman in a knit cap is playing an Elvis tune on the trumpet -- "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" An unlikely choice, its plaintive tones capture and tug at my heart. Suddenly I realize that yes, I am.

I am lonesome for a cup of tea and a conversation about God at Sarah's table, while she juggles Genevieve on one leg and George plays with his trains. I am lonesome for my big kitchen, the neighbors who knew me, Stephen Sondheim's music, my favorite jazz station, a Scotch with Ann, a martini with Russ, a walk down Broadway, a barbeque in Ali's back yard, and a cozy evening in front of my brick fireplace. There are no fireplaces here.

But most of my friends are in California, which I left long ago. I can keep in touch as easily here as from Massachusetts with Skype and my VoIP phone, but somehow the psychic distance seems to discourage contact. Then there is the time difference. Not to mention increasingly different lives.

A glass of good Kebfrankos would ease the pain. Or a Hungarian dinner with a fatty goose leg. I've been on a Spartan diet for a month -- no eating out, and no drinking. It limits my social life, which is just as well, financially. Money is tight, as often happens at this time of year. But I am far from home, so it's scarier now.

On top of that, I am having problems with the Hungarian Communications Authority regarding my wireless phone. They want to come and inspect. I had to call my lawyer. (I've been advised not to do anything here without a lawyer -- my friend took her lawyer with her to the post office to file a change of address card). It seems to have been straightened out for the moment, by replacing my lovely Plantronics headset with a Hungarian phone emitting a different frequency, but it shook me up. What if they took my VoIP phone away -- my lifeline to my mother, my clients and my old friends?

All the thoughts of "what if" queue up to torment me. What if I found myself alone and broke in a foreign country? What if I got sick? What if I can't make it here? What if I am just drifting, not starting a new life? Another of the lost souls I see on the street, untethered, with no anchor to the past and no direction home?

My fears are irrational, of course. I have the same friends and family I've always had. They wouldn't let me fall far before catching me. Medically, I got myself checked out before leaving the States; I'm in excellent health. I bought an emergency catastrophic plan, which would cover me if something dire befell -- even if I needed to be medevaced back. I have no real reason to be worried; but such fears, archetypal in quality, remind me that I am a stranger in a strange land.

I recognize these fears. They keep us from going too far from the home. Disneyland, OK, or maybe a cruise, but stay away from rabbit holes and emerald slippers, or you may just not be able to get back. Since I left the US, I've received numerous e-mails and comments confiding, "I wish I could do that," from folks assuming I have more money than they have. I don't. The only things that distinguish me from anyone else are faith, willingness to go the distance and an unwillingness to suffer large quantities of ennui.

I remember my first European odyssey, some 30 years ago. In those days, the only way to communicate with home was by waiting in line at the post office to mail a letter or make an international call. Homesickness could get really bad. For three months, I'd been traveling with my boyfriend through France and Spain -- living on beaches, tasting new wine. Now, it was late October, and rainy. We were going stir crazy, cooped up together in a VW van, parked along the Seine, uncertain what to do next. You can pretend you're on vacation for three months. After that, you got some 'splainin' to do -- especially to yourself. All the questions come up: What are we doing here? Where will we spend the winter? Shouldn't we be doing some thing "useful?" What about our careers? What about Thanksgiving? Lots of travelers gave up and went home. We decided to stay, and I, at least, was never the same after that. I made my first visit to Budapest that winter. Now, all these years later, here I am again.

Life is funny. One day it is so cold I don't want to go out. Then it's Groundhog Day. The sun suddenly comes out. My friend has a party. I open the door to my balcony, and golden warmth pours in. My guests read poetry and eat little Hungarian cakes. I even sip some sherry. I will return to my winter diet as surely as the groundhog will return to his hole. But for today, it is 45 degrees and I feel giddy. I waltz down Vaci ut in a light jacket and scarf. I settle into a café with heat lamps and pull the soft blanket on the chair around my shoulders. It is a joy to sit on the plaza and write. Couples stroll arm in arm. Mothers push babies in prams. Music students play Bach's Invention No. 4. I am happy once again to be here, where cafes have blankets and Bach is played on the street.

Tomorrow I shall go to the Budapest Opera, and Thursday, to a charity concert at the Finnish Embassy. I am strangely content in this foreign land with its complicated language. I am making a new life here, far from all that is familiar. Wherever that takes me, I am going the distance. I could be lonesome anywhere. In the end, aren't we all strangers in a strange land? Security is an illusion, made of lies we tell ourselves to keep us from having to acknowledge the great maw of mortality. Maybe I'll stay here forever, maybe I won't. The trumpet player reappears, as if on cue, and plays "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." I'll go there next, I think.

What is home, anyhow? I was lonesome for Europe for 30 years after returning to the States. Finally I am back here. Sometimes it's hard, but sometimes it's glorious. What does it matter when or where we die? Why try to protect ourselves from the inevitable? What matters is how we live.

I think of an early Leonard Cohen song:

Passin' through, passin' through,
Sometimes happy, sometimes blue,
Glad that I ran into you,
Tell the people that you saw me passin' through.

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