Home and Aftermath

 This is what my bedroom desk looked like after I arrived home. 

I don't really recall, but I imagine I was pretty down after coming back home. Obviously if I'm taking the time to write about it 40 years later, it made a huge impact. My mom decided it was about the girl, Funda. Sure, that was a big deal at almost 17. Really, though, it was the totality of the experience. So much had been new, breathtaking and perspective-shifting.

Did the U.S. students get together again? I think a few of us gathered to look at one another's photos. Again, I don't remember too much about that. It was July, and my dad put me to work painting the two-story family home. Uncle Walt brought in a scaffold, I put my stereo speaker in the sill of my bedroom window and I went to work scraping and painting for an hourly wage. I do remember mailing a photo of me painting the west side of our house, on a ladder, to Funda with one of my airmail letters. 

In late August I turned 17, since back then school start cutoffs had been December 1st, rather than the now more common September 1. A few friends were younger than me, but not too many. Generally, senior year was not nearly as enjoyable as junior year had been. Spring semester was somewhat of a waste of time, as many of us had been accepted to colleges, yet had to finish classes that weren't technically required for graduation. My grades nosedived.

What Germany had really done is to plant the travel bug in me. Fortunately, Lisa and I see eye-to-eye on the idea of spending money on travel. Since we've been married, we have traveled to Spain, Croatia, London and Paris, Ireland, Italy, and the Dominican Republic internationally. We also took the time and money to visit three Utah national parks, took trips to Seattle, San Diego, LA and more recently San Francisco/Berkeley and Yosemite. We did make a visit to Texas when Lisa was pregnant with Anna, which she would prefer to forget because of nausea. Toss in there trips to North Carolina and Florida, and in 2019 a trip around Lake Michigan to see the Michigan beaches. We have certainly put on some miles.

There was an excellent group of travel essays in the New York Times Style Magazine. Normally I don't bother to read much in that supplement, but last week it was good, especially the essay by the transgender man who revisited the Grand Canyon with his mother's ashes. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/12/t-magazine/grand-canyon-travel-arizona.html

Revisiting my trip from forty years ago is far less dramatic, and I can't write anywhere near as well as that guy, of course. The themes, however, of what has changed and the transformation that we undergo as we age and explore our real selves. That's universal, if we can in fact be as vulnerable and honest as that author. Certainly my knees and my shoulders (lately) can attest to the fact that I'm no longer a 16 year old. Yes, I have different interests and I no longer wish I could become Mick Jagger, although his knees seem to be holding up rather well. Have the fundamentals of my personality changed? No, not really. Hopefully I'm not as selfish and, occasionally, rude and childish like back then. Both marriage and being a parent transforms us, most often, for the better and with good reason. I will find when I land in Berlin that I remember even less German than I did on my last visit twenty years ago. 

That said, I hope I can appreciate the journey more this go-around. We're lucky to go anywhere after the past two years of COVID. Speaking of that, Lisa is very concerned that we travel and remain COVID free, which will require more discipline than a normal trip abroad would. 

Before I wrap this Blog up, I do want to say a few things about my visit to Mainz five years after our exchange. That can be my last post.