Glory Ho

Recently, when on the topic of buffets (I have no idea) with a couple friends, we learned that a friend of theirs had recently seen Mike Shanahan at Souper Salad. This news was disturbing. I’ll even call it disappointing.

Why is it that I cared? Why is it that I have such disdain for the all-American “buffet”? Well, let’s see. Germs and obesity are at the top of the list. I could go on. But I happened to have written a blog about buffets awhile back. And I think there’s a little connection. . .

When I was young,  a day at Southpark Mall with my Mom meant Foxmoor, Benetton and if we were feeling luxurious–a little Mark Henri. A paper-wrapped pixie from Fannie May was sugarcoated elegance and Orange Julius seemed to be the early version of a Starbucks Frappucino. Lunch was another important decision. While Chinese made me feel international and Riverside Cafe seemed intellectual beyond my years, when I was no more than ten, when I still had hair down to my butt, a trip to Bishops, the buffet, the one where blue-haired ladies with big pocketbooks bragged about the BookIt accomplishments of their grandchildren, was like attending a Broadway Show. And I guess I’ve just figured out why.

It was always dark–the clang of chatter and silverware mysteriously emerging from its shadowed maze of swiftly moving chefs and stainless steel surfaces. The neatly wrapped marshmallow salads and compact bowls of cole-slaw, each screaming “pick me!”, rested in rows before my empty tray. And the chocolate-shaving-topped-cream-pie, saran-wrapped to perfection without a smudge or smear in sight, seemed like a special delivery. At Bishops, I could see everything, inspecting for secretly inserted onions or nuts, before making a commitment. From its own pure white china plate, my gravy didn’t know how to get near my bread and my corn could never creep into my tapioca pudding.  While some of these preference speak to the early stages of my neuroticism, Bishops buffet was plainly and simply about endless variety and protection of the commitment-phobic. And especially at ten, when jello flavor was a high priority,  Bishops Buffet empowered me.

During our time in Bulgaria, right after we were asked about our favorite Bulgarian food, the subject of American food would arise. After we denied that McDonald’s hamburgers were our national dish, they wanted to know, if not fast food, what DID we eat? Well, um, usually Indian, Mexican, Thai, Japanese or Italian, which  left us with no answer at all. When we considered holiday meals, mashed potatoes came quickly to mind, but what else? Barbeque ribs seemed American, but very regional. What about hot dogs? Macaroni and cheese? We eventually decided that the beauty of America is the variety–that because of our many immigrant ingredients, you could find endless ethnic culinary possibilities on any major metropolitan avenue.

As we travel, we notice how little tolerance we have for the same song, the same shirt or the same sandwich. It’s no wonder because America is the ultimate buffet. Our nation, like so many others, still embodies centuries-old traditions. We just have so darn many of them. And if our immigrants still cook, bake and celebrate with their own native traditions from Ireland, Germany, Mexico or Italy, all the better.

Bishops is long gone from Southpark Mall, but I guess we need not worry, ‘cuz Souper Salad is all the rage now. Even for Denver’s millionaires.

We’ve been back for over four months now. Before we left, we met with Returned Peace Corps Volunteers and asked them questions about readjustment back in the States. One girl said:

“I don’t see what the big deal is. Everything here is easy and convenient. It’s a life you’ve known for years.”

Overall, she’s right. But there are a few things which surprised me.

Friends Close, Strangers Closer (so this is a long story, but its important)
On the first day of my new contracting gig, a member of my soon-to-be team was assigned to show me around. Let me say that this person is a very, very nice indivdual. I would call her both kind and sensitive. Which is why I can say with such certainty that her actions that morning were driven not from a poor decision or a personality flaw, but directly from American culture.

She asked me if I wanted to go down to the cafeteria in about an hour. I said yes. In the cafeteria, we separated, choosing our meals. When finished, I looked everywhere for her, but no luck. Eventually, I sat at one of the tables and ate by myself, assuming she’d had to run upstairs or perhaps was chatting with a friend. After about 10 minutes, she approached my table, but didn’t sit down.

She said with an apologetic smile: “Oh, I’m so sorry I lost you. You don’t have a badge to get back up.”

At that moment, I realized that she never had any intention of eating lunch with me. Even though it was my first day. Taking half an hour to get to know me or answer my questions just didn’t fit into her schedule.  Even though our office is a fairly laid back place. This just isn’t what Americans do.

Gluttony
One of my primary questions to the universe upon arriving home, which I whispered at random intervals into the no one in particular, was:  “How did I find justification for the purchase of so many scarves/purses/make-up bags/flip-flops/hoodies/?” It seemed that instead of one of everything, I had seven or eight of everything. And as I’ve tipped over boxes, dismantled temporary wardrobes and discovered the importance, a little too late, of airtight garment bags, everything we’d lived without for three years, I found duplicates of so many other things too: hair gel, spoon rests, hot-roller sets, spatulas, throw pillows.

The Spices of Life (Plural)
Do you get it? Do you realize how many choices we have? That there are 29 varieties of rice to choose from in Aisle 9? That milk comes in 18 different styles? That we’re the ONLY place on earth with such options? When Boudreaux and I entered a Jamba Juice on our first day in the United States, we looked at the menu, looked at each other and walked out. It was just too overwhelming. Since then, I have felt similarly about the menu at CPK and just about every other restaurant but Jimmy John’s.

Trampoline Effect
Remember bouncing through the air on that blue-rimmed, silver-banana-curl-spring thing for a few minutes and then jumping onto the backyard grass? At that moment, your physical being is jolted to a stagnant reality, you feel electric currents zigzaging up your shins and inertia keeps your mind in motion.  We’ve been on a trampoline for three years. The whole time, a small voice kept explaining: Oh there’s a ground Monty, you just want me to think there aint no ground. But we just found the ground. It’s called America. Everything is still. Predictable. How else can I explain why it seems odd that when I come home at night, my Arizona Iced Tea bottle is exactly where I left it and my socks are still in the same drawer it was in last week?

Other Random Observations

Priceless: Sitting around chatting with tortilla chips and Coronas and effortless communication.

Annoying: The fact that I cannot buy birth control without a prescription.

Bizarre: The idea that four way stops totally work. I mean people pay attention so they have an idea when to go.

Expensive: Um, healthcare. Sugar snap peas. Almonds. Avocados. Anything at the mall!

Neurotic: All the planning Americans do.

Amazingly Comfortable: Our bed and our comforter.

On the Possibility for Change
I am changed. It’s clearer now than ever. To think I made progress in Bulgaria. Ha! To think I could have gone on in this life without the last three years of self evolution is a what I now term a close call. I might even say it was a near-death experience. I could have stayed here. Continued to find the red suede pumps I’d been looking for. Continued cursing traffic, customer service agents and checkout lines when they did not cater to me, me, me. Continued to hold grudges for lateness and inefficiences. To have been nervous about the salad I brought to the latest in-law gathering. (Shoud have I used ruby reds instead of spinach? Surely i overdid it on the vinegar.  And this inappropriate salad bowl!)

But thank God, thank the universe, thank anyone and anything, that i didn’t.

I had decided to drive home for Christmas. And once I put all those images of me stranded in a cornfield and then approached and kidnapped by Asgrow O’s Gold-logo’ed-mesh-hatted trucker in a locked drawer at the back of my head, it started to sound like the perfect idea. There would be pit-stops at interstate-side Subways with slow customer service. Cheap Caseys gas at the Mall of the Bluffs.  The home of Marion Morrison and the bridges of Madison county waving me on.  Signs for camping at Exit 25.   Country countdowns with Bob Kingsley. The icy Mississippi just a few feet over the edge of the I-80 bridge.

Some people find this drive one of the worst in America.  But I have found that while its so easy to see the snow-sprinkled poetry in the craggy peaks and canyons of the West, a place where image overcomes imagination, the Midwest calls for more work. It takes an ear for a story and a deeper life lens to sift through the wheat, corn and clapboards of the plains. This land made me who I am. It is my friend.  And I am secretly sweetened by the fact that it remains largely unchanged.

At home, however, while the soft corners of my hometown’s collage looked just like they always did–memories that aren’t meant to ever pass away–most everything else had changed. And at every counter, out every window, in every closet, I would undoubtedly find suddenly-grown children, a pasture no longer empty, drawers with items I didn’t recognize.  I needed that 12 hours to go home at my own pace. To watch the gradual shift from clear sticks of sun to a soft white haze. For the same reason walking the seventeen blocks from Christopher Street Station to Madison Square helps you understand New York City so much better than a subway ride, I needed to drive these roads myself.

So I filled up my Craig’s List Ford on the 19th, and in a 15 hour pocket between unpredictable ice storms, like a pioneer turning ’round, I drove back to my past.

Home was all I hoped it would be. This is significant. Because over the years, I have come to appreciate the longing and the anticipation of what’s to come rather than the object of my desire. As Rebecca Solnit says in the Field Guide to Getting Lost, “If you can only look across the distance without wanting to close it up, if you can own your longing in the same way that you own the beauty of that blue. . .”

Perhaps this strategy, which I learned from being away so long, eases your expectations.  When I stayed overnight in Omaha, after I met dear Betty and Owen, but before I saw Warren Buffet’s house, my friend Patrick also presented a wise gem. He said he’d learned to “accept love however people show it”. I thought that was important.

I made the return trip in just one day, perhaps needing a little less transition time as I headed back to the future or perhaps just eager to get back to my Michael. I lived in the present, marveling at the signs and communication that American infrastructure provides, admiring the cattle’s self-constructed still life, driving into the Colorado sunset and wondering what sign would appear on Ella Pierce Turner.

It was a +.

I’ve always been one of those annoying people who follow through. I call people back. I complete the course. I finish my taxes on time. In fact, discovering that the world was full of people who tended to flake was incredibly annoying. But as I learned in my business, it also meant I got credit, undeserved in my opinion, for simply doing what I said I was going to do.

When first initiated into the Peace Corps dimension, Boudreaux and I were surprised to learn that on average, 30% of all volunteers did not make it through the twenty-seven months. Peace Corps seemed like a serious commitment. It was a pledge to the United States Government. While it was nothing like the military, I think deep down, I romantically assumed that failing to finish would result in some kind of dishonorable discharge.

But at Pre Service Training, our country director told our class of 50 that 16 of us wouldn’t be here at the end. There was no promotional speech to stay the full term. No warnings against quitting. No threats. This was not a job. It was a volunteer position. If someone didn’t want to be here, they were no longer an asset to the host country or this United States government organization. Also, our pay was pro-rated. While quitting early would jip you of non-competitive status for future government jobs and exclude graduate school Peace Corps program participation, there was no tangible loss. Nothing, that is, except your honor.

Throughout our service, over cheap wine, Indian food and chocolate chip cookies, between illegally downloaded episodes of SouthPark, Lost and Grey’s Anatomy, we would gather with other volunteers to place bets about who we thought would crack. We shared news about who had officially thrown in the Bulgarian towel. But in addition to ET  (Early Termination) discussions, we spent plenty of time complaining about our host country. We knew why people wanted to leave. We even pretended that we considered leaving ourselves. But I think for most of that group, (G, M, T, T and us) it was never truly an option. We were happy enough to stay. Plus, we’d been raised to make the best of our situation, finish what we’d started and keep an eye on our resume.

So when people quit, our respect for them inevitably dropped a notch.

Sometimes it’s a brutal process to pry the lessons of childhood from my head. Too often, I need a crowbar. But at some point, we’re old enough to practice discretion. I used to finish every book I read. Just, you know, to finish it. Now I feel life is too short to read a book I don’t find delicious.

So toward the end, I began to question the value of spending a year of your life somewhere you knew you didn’t want to be.

While Boudreaux and I were fortunate enough to have a credible site placement, a comfortable apartment and each other, not everyone was.

Sometimes the hardest thing in life isn’t doing what you want but deciding what you want. So I guess I’ve changed my mind.

If a year in Peace Corps had helped someone come closer to determining their life’s path, (and they knew Bulgaria had nothing to do with it) then hey, that’s their journey. Good for them.

I am depleted. I don’t know how to address the next room or meal or shower or person or bus or price. I am tired. Of my hairy legs and bug bites and greasy hair. Of dust. Of crazy drivers. Of the children at the window. Of rearranging my backpack. Of conserving toothpaste and treating water and feeling the plastic malaria pill on my tongue. Of all these bug bites—it doesn’t matter what I wear or what I spray or how secure my mosquito net is, my body is a buffet. I am tired of the exhaustive communication. Nobody understands what I want for breakfast. Nobody brings the right thing. I just want to sit down to pee. To wear clean clothes. To have electricity every hour of the day.

When you see a brightly-clad woman with a baby on her back and a bush of plantains on her head walking down the road and it doesn’t fascinate you anymore, you know you’re done.

But our ambition is having a hard time letting go.

I mean, if you’re given your favorite kind of pie (Grandma’s cherry, in my case) and told you can’t have it again for another three years, should you take piece after piece until it makes you sick? Just because you won’t get to have it for a whole ‘nother year?

No. And so you see, it’s time to go home. No matter when we get to have cherry pie again—in two years or twenty—we have had enough.

Back in Turkey, many falafels ago, we learned that the Turkish word for “one” was “beer”. Nice and easy to remember. In fact, we learned the numbers 1-5 by inventing a bar conversation:
1.Beer?
2/Eke (yuck)
3.Ooch (ouch! don’t insult my drink)
4.Dirt (it tastes like dirt)
5.Besha (that’s bullshit)

The word for ‘beer’ in Turkish is “beer”.

When we arrived, we had plenty of misconceptions about the oppression of religion in this country. With prayers-calling five times a day and gaggles of headscarfed women, we figured most people were devout Muslims and that alcohol would be unavailable, cleavage would be kept covered and vodka ads would not resemble drunk Victoria’s Secret models (as they had in Bulgaria). The latter two turned out to be true. The former two not so much. The majority of the population in Western Turkey don’t attend mosque more than a couple times a year–your typical Christmas Easter crowd, while Efes and Tuborg are easily found at the local grocery and the average kebab restaurant.

However, here’s the rub. It’s tends to be the tourists who pop a top. When we were invited back to a flat by a couple of college kids in Eskeshihir, they served us Coke. Cool, thirty-something couchsurfing host Sezgin did not consider picking up beer or wine when we prepped for dinner. At the olive farm where we volunteered, wine was served with one dinner in 14 days.

But our night out in Antalya took the cake. When we went to an American-style bowling alley during three games (!) no (!) one (!) had (!) a (!) beer. Including us—it was brutal. At the beach park bar afterwards, the others sipped tonics while we split a conspicuous bottle.

Alcohol is simply less accepted. People were raised to get happy on nicotine and sugar instead of Schnapps.

On the ten minute drive home that night, couchsurfing host’s Fevy’s car was flagged down for a random breathalizer test. It all took about two minutes. The courteous policeman unwrapped what looked like a tampon applicator, attached it to a monitor and asked her to blow. To no one’s surprise, she blew a 0.0. I asked what would have happened if the result had been different. What was the law? What were the consequences? She didn’t know.

Luckily, we continued to find beer in the Middle East, even if our hostel occasionally outlawed it, liqour stores were well-hidden and non-transparent carrying bags were recommended.

But then we arrived in Dahab, where beer was once again in a snug koozie of celebration. Below is the minute-by-minute capturing of Michael and Stella (the Egyptian beer).

About nine months ago, I rediscovered the satisfaction of catching a ball.

We were at the final Peace Corps retreat up in the mountains. I was playing a little catch with a couple volunteers after a glorious run up the switchbacks.

My stubby fingers fit neatly inside the leather, like so many hands before me. I felt the explosive sting as the ball connected with my wedding band through the mitt. Noticed the puff of protective skin form on the upper part of my palm. Remembered the walled-stance of fielding a grounder. Caught my mistake of starting with the right foot when in fact the left foot was a better idea for my right-handed throw.

Baseball was something my Dad taught me in Toby’s field across the railroad tracks from the Mississippi River. My grandfather was a die-hard White Sox fan–perhaps the only one in our Cub-crazy Illinois county–and my grandmother knew the names of Sox fielders and basemen, including one Lou Boudreaux. Today baseball means beer, people-watching and the cones of mashed potatoes they serve outside Coors Field. But the sport, not the big league event, was what interested my Dad. It mirrored his intensity, drive and preference for silence over idle chatter.

I hadn’t played catch, let alone been at bat in several years. Now, the sun was in my eyes. I was sweating. The gnats were swarming. Our triangle would reform slightly every time I missed. I was spinning in a self-inflicted trap of competition with myself. I ran after the ball, crawled in the bushes, desperate to continue the flow. I was alarmed, as I always have been (by a frisbee or football or an orange) every time the ball approached my face with growing speed. A moment of complete fear and panic before I gained the confidence to position my glove for a catch, then surprise myself with the force and fervor of my sometimes-on-target return throw. But I wanted to do well. High-flys. Line-drives. Grounders. Bouncers. Unexpected angles. I. Must. Catch. That. Ball.

The thing is, my partners David and Greg were two of the calmest people I knew. I could tell that they enjoyed the hypnotic and metronomic cadence of this whole thing. Throw and catch. Throw and catch. Throw and catch. They practically glowed with effortless concentration, their pitches forming two straight lines across the grass. Like my Dad, they were content to let the baseball do the talking.

Like my Dad, they didn’t mind when I missed.

But this was about more than just baseball. It was one summer after an anxious day of learning to water-ski that my Dad had pulled me aside for a talk along those same railroad tracks and said: You know, Andrea, you’re good at lots of things. You don’t have to be good at this. He knew that like he sometimes did, I was putting too much pressure on myself.

Over the years, I’ve accepted my lack of traditional, team sport athleticism and found alternatives in running and yoga.  Yet perhaps my Dad–as well as the dissipation of those self-loathing white caps within my own waves–are why I’m still up for a game of catch and ready to slog it out so I can do. . .not half bad.

But that day in Bulgaria, in case of an unexpected tsunami, and since my Dad was half the world away, the universe had arranged for two Buddhist angels of baseball to break down the bleachers of judges I had invented around me. I didn’t relax or anything. But I knew I had the option. And that, believe it or not, feels like a home run.

Happy Father’s Day, Dad.

Without warning, we had walked through our own front door.

In Tel Aviv especially, there were leashes on dogs, work out clothes on women, and bikes with clip-attached pedals. Service was suddenly worthy of a 20% tip. People were in a hurry. Shiny hard foliage and bougainvilleas wrapped streets of stucco structure like display window gifts. Not a blonde in sight. People of all sizes. It was like a city full of New Yorkers had been dropped in Los Angeles.

Except it was a very secure LA. In Lebanon, the tanks and soldiers were outside banks, embassies and ministries. In Israel, plain-clothed guards sat on stools outside grocery stores, bus stations and restaurants, any place where groups of Jews gathered. Girls with hot pants and pistols was a regular sight. Amidst all of that, off-duty soldiers were everywhere in their olive uniforms punctuated by ponytails, mobile phone bling and Ipods with machine guns slung ever-so-casually across their chest.

For the first time in many months, we blended in. No, the Israelis didn’t take much interest in what looked like just another couple of American-born Jewish people checking out the homeland. In fact, almost everyone assumed we knew Hebrew, one of the few symbols keeping Israel from Americanization.

It was definitely a taste of home. But.

While internet, sushi bars and hot water was plentiful, they were outrageously expensive. Damn the dollar. Although a bus system was in place, with fewer riders, it wasn’t forced to run buses every hour. Roads were well-maintained, but the signs were designed for drivers, not walkers. Perhaps most startling was the accommodation. The place we stayed was well organized with responsible staff. We’d come from hostels where we helped cook and now we needed a pre-paid ticket just to get dinner.

I couldn’t believe it. I had always been a person who was fond of rules and certainty. I liked guarantees. But after five months in the Middle East, I was no longer concerned with what I didn’t get or what I paid for or why she got the better room. Because I now trusted the universe to deliver, I actually preferred bendable rules and a bit of chaos. It just makes so much more sense. Especially when the world wasn’t black and white to begin with.

In Israel, for the first time in a long time, I was hesitant to ask for help. We’d gone from endless invitations to a straight-faced hotel clerks and it was a jolt. How could two cultures living side by side be so different? But Jewish people hailed mainly from Eastern Europe and New York, two places I’d lived and survived. I shouldn’t have been surprised when the Jews failed to extend their arms for a hug.

While Arabs would sit hospitably without conversation with you for hours, smiling shyly and providing tray after tray of tea while you winced at the opportunity cost, Israelis were high on intellectual conversations, private space and polite etiquette. Like us, they placed a high value on time.

Like us. Hmmm. I t wasn’t long before I saw that I’d been slapped in the face by my own culture, more or less. While regional differences made me a friendlier person, I was much more like the Israelis than the Arabs.

But that will have to wait to be resolved. Because the moment we set foot back into Jordan, I was comforted by the confusion. Even as we sat on a bus for an hour waiting for it to fill, as we went through checkpoints which outraged a man in a long robe, as we listened to him rant to the sky in Arabic for at least twenty minutes, as we drove through the desert shacks and eventually stayed at that same bus driver’s fifteen-member family home because the hotel was too expensive and we’d missed the bus to Petra, I really didn’t mind.

When my parents arrived at our Peace Corps apartment in Bulgaria last spring, I warned them about the door. Covered in a somewhat convincing wood-grain peel with a massive gold knob, it had no less than six bolts–four in the middle, one in the ceiling and one which shot into the floor. Seeing this door causes two potential reactions: 1) Wow, Sofia must be a dangerous city or 2) Wow, someone’s paranoid.

But it’s tough to say if the reason we never had a theft was because Sofia doesn’t have a lot of crime or because we had a very secure door.

Kurdistan was crawling with security. Perhaps that’s why it was so safe.

***********************************

It was dark, but the stars and the moon across the twelve to fifteen white, armored Suburbans we passed allowed me to read the logo and tagline across their doors. On the left, a skull and crossbones in black. On the right, this cryptic tagline: “Saves Lives. Builds Futures.”

We walked, six of us abreast, our passports tucked away in the pocket of some guard’s fatigues after a signing in at the high security entrance. Me, Michael, an American-Turkish political science professor, a Anglo-Australian wandering traveler and some British guy named Neil. It was 10:00 but it felt much later. We’d been at the University of Kurdistan’s International Women’s Day Celebration this afternoon, a disorganized, but A-for-effort debacle of dance, drama, purple ribbons, visiting dignitaries, detailed Power Point slides and disrespectful audience participation. We’d then taxied to a happy hour at Café de Paris, where we’d been drinking until now. After a particularly long line at the checkpoint, our taxi had just had a minor scuffle with a drunk driver. Another eventful evening in Northern Iraq.

Now we were headed to Andy’s house inside what our friends call “New City” or “The Compound” a place which houses contractors who had jobs with Blackwater, DinaCorps USAID, UN and other acronyms. People there to support Western influence, whatever that might be.

Andy was Scottish. He was the kind of guy who understood the importance of candles at a party, wore a blazer with ease and kept his bathroom clean. Even after Michael’s bottle of MGD somehow cracked his sink basin, he still let us try on his bulletproof vest and hold his Glock while we took photos of each other looking mean.

He even kissed our feet when we told him we were tourists.

Andy was a PSD. Private Security Detail. One of many beefy, goatee-sporting, beer-bottle-holding men who were paid obscene amounts of money plus benefits, accommodation and flights back home so they would work in Iraq and protect others. Some were drivers, guards, secret service. Others helped de-mine fields.

In Andy’s backyard was the Edge, the only bar in the compound, a twenty by twenty hole with forty men and four women which blasted Shakira and Fity Cent. He ’d even built a ladder which escorted friends across his back wall and into the bar and pool next door. We talked to a lot of people who went to Baghdad once a month in armored vehicles but were not allowed to get groceries outside the compound gates in Erbil, Kurdistan. When we expressed surprise, they said without disdain: Well, you just never know.

But we did know. We’d researched Kurdish Iraq. We’d read websites and blogs. We watched then news as often as the devout Muslims prayed. We’d been hanging out with University teachers, contractors who had lived here for up to two years with no armed guards and no issues besides unreliable electricity.

But maybe when all you see in your community are guns, tanks, armored cars and security forces, maybe you start to fear the outside world. Without this fear, job justification might be weaker. You might feel guilty about the danger pay deposited into your bank account every month. You might find it difficult to stay trapped here another day if it didn’t all make some kind of sense.

What do you think?