A SENSE OF PLACE

 We were in New York City from 21st to 29th May, and although I wrote a couple of snatches not only did I not have time to post them, but my sense was they were incomplete. So, along with you I will revisit them now and more than likely, revise along the way.

26 May 2015

We’re in New York. Day 5. A freighter sits lumpen on the Hudson waiting to be tugged. I know how it feels, although I am one step ahead. I feel the tug already, my heart heavy with the sadness of soon saying goodbye to our family, when we return to Tuscany on Friday.

For all my adult life I have felt the tug between people and place. Living in America for four plus decades in order to love and be loved by husbands and children and all the while longing to go “home” to England. The feelings of guilt and loneliness that accompanied me are impossible to explain to anyone who hasn’t lived outside the country in which they grew up. The guilt being that one should be where one is; that place doesn’t matter, that you are where you are. All of this frequently told to me by friends and family and therapists, none of whom had ever been in such a situation and yet spoke with such conviction as to impart a judgment upon my feelings.

I’m glad to say that several years before we moved to Tuscany I came to terms with living in America; felt gratitude for all that it had given me: family, friends, sobriety, a college degree and a wonderful husband. But I never felt at home here. And of course, eventually, in spite of annual returns to England, I came to no longer feel at home there either. As the saying goes: ‘You can’t step into the same river twice.’ The things I held dear about my culture, clung to even, gradually got whittled away until the England of my childhood became barely visible beneath its progressive veneer of materialism and vulgarity.

We say home is where the heart is and we usually interpret that as having to do with love. But the heart is a many-chambered thing. Love of people, love of place, love of work; they are separate categories and therefore outside the realm of comparison. In our youth we hunger to have all three, but with age comes the understanding that a full house is rare, and fleeting at that. The cards we are dealt, even if from the same deck, are infinitely changing and we play them as best we can.

So now, in my life, the tables have turned. Now I am finally at “home” on a simple Tuscan farm. But the chamber of my heart that once housed children echoes in their absence, even while it resounds with abiding love.

27th May 2015

I’ve had a few hours to myself this morning and am feeling a sense of well-being and gratitude that until now had, for the last 5 days, been inaccessible. To spend an entire year on a Tuscan farm and then land in New York is, trite as it sounds, a shock to the senses; all five of them. By Day 2 I felt as though my nervous system and been shredded. The filter system one develops in order to navigate living in a big city no longer exists for me. By day 3 I felt somewhat unsafe, as if my body literally couldn’t read the space. Crossing a street became a feat of second-guessing; sidewalk cracks and potholes seemed to multiply and the push and shove of rushing people exhausted me.

SIGHT:  The sheer amount of visual stimulation made me dizzy. Without that particular filter I found myself trying to read and interpret everything and veered between appreciating the mesmerizing diversity of the masses to feeling appalled at what I judged to be a pathetic and racist poster in the subway compartment we were riding to 42nd Street.

First of all there’s the sad but real fact that there are parents who need to be told that talking to their child is essential. Then, dismay that this message appeared to be directed only at the black population. And then the absurdity that whomever came up with this “educational” campaign would think that the poor, disenfranchised, uneducated person it was aimed at would a) actually read it and b) act upon it. Later, our kids and their mates informed me that this was a city-wide campaign directed at all ethnicities. As they all seemed to think it was a good thing, I let it be. But really, if it was directed at all “minorities”, shouldn’t they all have been represented in side-by-side posters so that “outsiders” like myself could read the whole intention? As it was, I came up from the underground and saw this:

SOUND: Maybe John Cage would hear it as music, but to my now countrified ears it was just non-stop noise: cars, horns, planes, subway trains, sirens, road drills, yelling, music blaring everywhere, a cacophony of air conditioners, the shrill whistles of taxi-hailing doormen, dogs, and the babble of cell phone chatter….

SMELL: I’ll be brief. We were trapped between stations in a subway car that reeked of urine.

TASTE: Lacking for the most part, organic or no, hip restaurant or not, food in America borders on bland compared to the produce in Italy.

TOUCH: Ah, the feel of concrete beneath one’s feet.

Yesterday we picnicked in Central Park with our children and granddaughter.

A sweet dreamy day spent under the shady trees, tossing a Frisbee once in a while and, much like being on a crowded beach, watched the world at play. Watched some play better than others. Looked at our hard won family and felt incredible relief and joy and pride that we have travelled the distance with each other, have accepted our own and each other’s flaws and now, with nothing left to prove can just be. And so, for the rest of our time in New York all 5 senses were in harmony.

REVISION:

Sight: the faces of our loves ones

Sound: the music of laughter, family and strangers alike

Smell: the briny smell of the Hudson

Taste: the best BBQ’d pork tenderloin ever, courtesy of our son-in-law, David.

Touch: the breeze beneath the trees in Central Park and every hug given and received.