Repatriating

My overseas adventure met its untimely end a few weeks ago. I slowly wound my way back to the US via Cork, Rosslare, Fishguard, Cardiff, London and Toronto, finally touching down in Minneapolis on 5 December. Now instead of being an expat, I'm a repat. This is the second time I've needed to switch the prefix of my label, and the experience is uniquely bewildering. But I'm finding it quite amusing as well, so I'll to try to describe it as best I can.

One source of bewilderment is the strange temporal shift that occurred when I arrived back home. Suddenly the period I spent away compressed so completely that it's impossible to believe I was gone for 10 months. And the time occupied by my adventures is capable of stretching and collapsing depending on how and where I think about it. When I was thinking about Minnesota before I left Ireland, I felt as though I'd been away forever. Recalling or recounting specific incidents also makes the time expand to forever proportions. But taken overall, and compared to the fairly constant continuity of home, my time abroad seems incomprehensibly brief. So brief that it's almost like I never left.

And yet the familiar also seems so alien. Streets that I used to be able to navigate automatically suddenly require a thorough scouring of my mental map. And that mental map now has blank spots. Both metaphorically, in not being able to remember how streets connect, and literally, in the case of the 35W bridge. Then once I've figured out where I'm going, I'm sometimes thrown off by my fellow vehicles and the direction in which they're moving. Single-decker buses drive with SUVs, trucks and vans that have increased wildly in size since I left (at least compared to the smart cars I'm accustomed to seeing). At stop signs, I find that I look right first, then glance left to find cars that I didn't think were there suddenly approaching from a different direction than I expected.

Everyday procedures, objects and surroundings can also be confounding. I'll have the correct change for a purchase counted out and waiting when I reach the cash register only to find that I've forgotten about sales tax and the price is actually higher than listed. There are dollar bills instead of pound/Euro coins. I need to flip light switches instead of pressing them. The accents, phrases, mild profanities and intonation of the people surrounding me are completely different than I've become accustomed to. They stand out to my brogue-acclimated ears in a way they never did when I used to live here. And rather than feeling at home in the place where I supposedly belong, I feel lost. Adrift. Alienated. I will never truly belong here again.

While this can be a bit disconcerting at times, it is also a source of pride for me. I like it when people remark on my trace of an accent, when they laugh at and correct my strange British/Irish idioms. It may seem stubborn, but I am going to keep using those idioms, and their British English spellings. Because I want so badly to retain something, some sort of evidence of an immensely meaningful part of my life. My warped sense of time already seems to have robbed it of part of its significance, and I don't want to lose any more. In a particularly desperate attempt at preservation, I've even caught myself exaggerating the bit of an Irish accent that I managed to pick up. I drop more h's when I tink certain tings tan I ever did before.

Clearly, there is a large degree of reentry shock to be dealt with. But I also take pleasure in rediscovering the luxuries I've grown accustomed to living without. While much around me may have taken on an unfamiliar familiarity, my bed will always be irrevocably mine. And it's perfect. At least compared to my London mattress, which had a deep trench in its middle, and my Dublin mattress, which featured springs that had lazily uncoiled and were given to poking me relentlessly. I've also found American water pressure amazing. It blasts shampoo out of hair rather than tentatively trickling it out. Sink faucets, too, are shining examples of ingenuity. Hot and cold water coexist in one faucet. No scalding my hands under one faucet and having to turn it off and ice the burn under the cold tap at the opposite corner of the sink.

While I'm gradually becoming more used to being home, it will take a while to re-acclimate to Minnesota and its ghastly winter climate. I don't think I ever will completely. I'll always be a repat to some extent. But I'm pleased with that. I've found that it's easier to create interesting adventures with an expat/repat/outsider mentality. I'm going to retain that, explore the Twin Cities as if I've never seen them before and wring everything I can from them. Because that's what I mean by repatriating.