Would You Like Some Cheese with Your Whine?

How to Cope with Ambiguous Loss

Photo by Eli Bensimon on Unsplash

I am back in the U.S. attending to some family issues that needed my attention and to be honest I’ve been struggling a bit… actually, that is being too gracious with myself, I’ve been struggling… a lot… or to be perfectly honest, I’ve been whining.

I’m beginning to appreciate old people who complain all the time. This might be tolerable or even endearing if I was thirty years older, wrinkled and had a New York accent:

“Oy George*, can you believe the price of milk? $7.34 a gallon? At that price I should save some money and put gasoline on my cereal.”

“Oy George, why doesn’t this country use roundabouts? I have to stop my car ten times just to get out of my neighbourhood. I’m losing a year of my life at four way stops for christ sakes.”

“Oy George, why doesn’t anyone say hello or good morning anymore. Would a little Ola and Bom Dia kill them once in a while?”

As it is I’m just annoying my kids and most likely my friends as I whine daily about common place “life in America.” I’m surprised that none of them haven’t straight up said “Hey, quit your complaining and go back to Portugal.”

I realise that none of my reentry woes are new or unanticipated. After all I’ve only been gone for two years. Still I feel like the proverbial frog thrown into boiling water that is acutely aware of the temperature.

Photo by Ladd Greene on Unsplash

It doesn’t help that I really shouldn’t have anything to complain about. I’m in a fairly nice suburb of Portland. The weather is fine. The neighbours are fine. I haven’t been shot at. It’s all fine.

I’m guessing I won’t get hired by the local tourism promotion board: “Come to Lake Oswego - It’s Fine.”

It isn’t that Portugal was perfect - far from it - there are even Facebook groups dedicated to “Everything that sucks about Portugal.”

A guess the difference for me is that while the lows were at times low there (hence the everything that sucks) the highs were also high - seriously - moments that take your breath away. Even the boring days had a better ring to them. Try it:

“It’s raining out and I have nothing to do… in Portugal.”

“I’m still having a hard time finding work… in Portugal.”

See - infinitely cooler.

Here - back in my home country - not so much. It just sounds a little pathetic.

This is my fourth time re-entering the US and each time I’ve found the returning to be harder for me than the moving abroad. I used to puzzle over why this is but I think I’ve finally figured it out.

When you move overseas you have a group of people to identify with and hold space for the “less than perfect” - the missing of family; the holidays at home that don’t get celebrated abroad; the weird frustrating idiosyncrasies of another country that don’t make sense… other expats get it - they can laugh and cry and kvetch with you. You’re not alone.

When you return - no one really understands what you’ve lost. You may walk around looking like a normal person but inside you are missing your cliffside walks; and hedgehog encounters; morning swims and evening skies and the colours everywhere - but no one knows and if they did they wouldn’t really understand…. there is no support group for this kind of ambiguous loss.

Maybe that’s how older people feel and why they seem a little crazy. It must be hard to walk around in a world of younger people who can’t understand what’s been lost.

I guess I’m getting practice for what’s to come. In thirty years I should be a master complainer. I’m sure things will be “fine” but “these kids today they don’t know what they’re missing, do they George?”

Oy, pass me the cheese, please.

* I do not know anyone named George and I am not from New York nor do I have a New York accent - didn’t Seinfeld give us all a collective permission to channel our inner New Yorker?