America the Beautiful

     

Sitting in the lobby of a Holiday Inn Express somewhere in Montana under the shadow of the Rocky Mountains, I was given time to reflect upon my return visit to the States. It’s not that I hadn’t had time in the 20 days I’d been back, just that the inspiration to jot down my reflections finally struck me after quite a few months of proverbial silence. The challenge now, of course, is to organize that which has collected in mind over the past weeks.Have you ever really listened to the lyrics of Rod Stewart’s “Forever Young”?

The words aren’t the same without the melody behind them, but here are some of them just for reference.

May the good lord be with you
Down every road you roam,
And may sunshine and happiness
surround you when you’re far from home.
And may you grow to be proud
Dignified and true,And do unto others
As you’d have done to you.
Be courageous and be brave
And in my heart you’ll always stay
Forever Young…

And when you finally fly away
I’ll be hoping that I served you well
For all the wisdom of a lifetime
No one can ever tell.

But whatever road you choose
I’m right behind you, win or lose
Forever Young…

This is the song that the crew of American Airlines flight 1805 decided to play as we landed in Los Angeles from Miami (and before than Santo Domingo, for me). After the fatigue from upwards of fifteen hours of travel and the overwrought emotions inevitable to a Peace Corps Volunteer touching American soil after almost a year and half of not having done so, the song struck a chord, so to speak, and tugged on a couple heartstrings. I have roamed my fair share of roads. God knows I’ve been far from home. I don’t know if I’ve been courageous or brave, or even if I’ve finally flown away – but I know that I heard my mother’s and my father’s voices in every word that drifted down to me from the long aisle of the craft that bore me home. And when the music fell into the rhythm of another song, I still felt the warmth of tears in the space between my cheeks and eyelids.

So I thought, in that moment, that maybe I do all that I do in the hope that one day I might be able to sing these words to my own little one with a truth grown from the life I’ve lead.
I leave often, yes. And those I love have been accustomed to long periods of my absence, maybe even longer periods of silence. But when I find it in me to return to them, I am greeted only with open arms, even if there are unspoken sorrows hidden in their smiles.

Why do I mention this? Perhaps I’m just trying to reconcile within myself why I can’t seem to be satisfied in just one place. Why I continuously look forward to the next city, the next country. Perhaps its simple wanderlust and I can’t get enough of that high when see how much diversity the world still holds despite the infiltration of chain corporations and cultural distillation. Perhaps I’m an escapist and like the idea of starting anew. But, though I know I learn something from every new place I visit, though I do start with new friends and coworkers and communities, though I feel myself growing into the person I hope one day to be, I also know that every time I come home and visit the people that have loved me since before I set foot out of my home town that I’ll always be their daughter, their sister, their cousin, their niece – I’ll always be me.











I believe that my return visit to developed western society has been as eye opening to me as my initial months in the DR were. It was not that I was suddenly taken by the marvels of flushing toilets or constant electricity, I wasn’t even incredibly surprised at how the grand majority of people adhere to traffic laws, but I did notice something that runs a lot deeper. I felt it in myself, and I saw it grow the longer I stayed. Does it have a name? We’ll call it physical self awareness for now, a sense of how warn or tattered your clothes are, how much weight you’ve gained, the dead inch and half of hair that hasn’t been cut in more than a year. All of these things became blaringly present in my life where I hadn’t given them a second thought in the 15 months I’d been gone.

It seems somewhat ironic, since we were told in the good old days of training that the Dominicans are apt to judge a person by their appearance, possibly more so than the average American. But I’ve seen that once they’ve accepted you as the Peace Corps volunteer that you are, they really don’t care what you wear. And they praise you if you’ve gained weight. I still haven’t figured that one out – but I’m going with it. It’s true. So what. I’ll start exercising again, I’ll return to where I was, but that comes from a personal desire to want to be at my equilibrium. I don’t feel the anxiety of social pressure here that I do in the States.

In fact, the only pressure I every feel while I’m in country is my own drive to accomplish my own goals. There are, or course, down sides to living in a society that lives without stringency, but on a personal level it does wonders for individual satisfaction and self-worth. At least for me it has.

Now, don’t read too much into this. I don’t plan on staying here past my term. But I do plan on being a lot more careful with letting myself fall into “it” wherever it is I end up later.