Re-Entry

Yesterday, after clearing customs, I entered the Charlotte, North Carolina airport with the manic joy that always characterizes my first hours of return to the United States. Luckily, everyone was playing their part: the kid in front of me at customs squeaked, as the officer stamped his passport, “I’m sure glad to be back home!” All that was missing was a “Gee!” and a laugh track.

Beaming an unhinged smile, I fought the urge to hug everyone. My people! I am surprised, each time I return to the States, that there is ACTUALLY A COUNTRY where EVERYONE ELSE IS ALSO AMERICAN. Rationally, I know that I would not be American if this were not true. In fact, I’ve lived in this mystical country, as a child and as an adult, for many years. But when your daily reality occurs across the ocean, it has the effect of erasing where you come from, to the point that the US seems to exist purely in movies and TV. But there I was, breathing in American air, understanding what everyone was saying.

“You cut your hair!” the guy at security exclaimed, looking at my passport. “Now why’d you go and do that?” I laughed obligingly and continued on my way, feeling like I was at the beginning of a feel-good movie. Near my gate, for the connecting flight to Lynchburg, Virginia, a janitor was belting out “My Girl” like he was on Star Search in 1988. I took a seat and a long sip of my soy latte, which is nice and sweet in the US, just like I like it.

Across from me, two women were reliving their recent cruise ship hijinks, in heavy Southern accents:

We did all right until last night.

Yeah, we were good until then.

What got into us?

Well, we each had 15 drinks apiece.

And then they wouldn’t serve us anymore!

We had been drinkin since 10am.

Lord, did you hear them talkin about us this mornin?

Uh unh, what did they say?

And so on.

My residency, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, is perched on a hill not far from Jerry Fallwell’s prized institution, Liberty College, as my taxi driver informed me last night. Today I’m calmer, sobered by a morning of false starts in my writing studio and by the weather, which is plunging in temperature by the minute. For some reason, in my bedroom, I’ve got Angela Merkel’s book Mein Weg on my bookshelf, along with A Southerner Discovers the South (not written by Merkel). They both seem like they could potentially be read as self-help books, if it comes to that.