That Feeling of In-Betweeness That Won't Go Away

A friend of ours, who was born in Brazil, but who lived most of his life in Bolivia and in the U.S. was flabbergasted when he fist saw me after I came back from my recent trip to Brazil.

"How was the trip?" he asked, all excited (and jealous, since his mom lives in Brazil and he hasn't been back there in years).

"It was OK," I responded matter-of-factly, perhaps a tad unenthusiastically, "Just four days, you know... not much."

"How can you say that?" he exclaimed indignantly, "How can you talk about your trip to Brazil like that?" And he teased me quite a bit for the remaining of that day and afterwards.

Two or three weeks later I tried to explain my reaction to him and I've been blogging these reasons in my head ever since that first conversation took place.

This was only my second time going for a few days to Brazil. K has done it literally countless times, as have his brothers. Even my two SILs who live(d) here have gone a few times. I only went in Oct-Nov 07, the day after K was laid off and now in January. I loved my first trip. I got to go out to lunch with some of my closest friends and in my favorite restaurant (the photos for one of my recent posts were taken on that day), and I spent a nice day with my parents, before getting my hair colored the next day and then going to the airport.

This time was not very different, with the exception that I wasted a whole afternoon and evening in the day I arrived waiting with my friends who went to visit a family they knew to get legal advice and we (they drove me to my parents') only arrived after midnight at my parents' house (that's when I wrote my post). I went to the hair stylist on Friday and spent Saturday and Sunday with my parents, but there were a few key differences. First, I had grading to to for the online job which took most of my day on Sunday. Second, our friends (a couple and their 18 month old daughter) brought me to my parents' house and stayed there with me. Third, I spent too much time at the hairdresser's on Friday (over 5h), doing a useless treatment after my hair had been colored (bad decision). All these factors combined (plus not seeing any of my friends other than the couple who gave me a ride and not eating at my favorite place for lack of time) made my brief -- but longer than the first one of just 2 days -- stay unsatisfactory. I left feeling it hadn't been enough.

This is what I've always feared about short trips like that and that's why I thought that K was crazy because he seemed to enjoy them so. I felt positively about my first one, but this last one just made me crave Brazil much more. And, worse yet, I felt bad for going and leaving the boys behind. Kelvin has already been asking when we're going to go to Brazil again and I just don't know what to answer! We've been going annually, but now I think we just won't be able to afford it anymore! :-(

So, I tried to convey some of these things to my friend and he kind of understood. He is planning to do such a weekend trip himself, to go, in his words "Just go hug his mother." And now I'm back to square one -- I feel like I don't want to go only for a few days ever again. I really need to stay at least 20-30 days, minimum. And see my friends, that's very important.

In the end, what I'm left with is that old, well known (to a seasoned expatriate like myself) feeling of in-betweeness that I know won't ever leave me. There are moments in which the longing, the saudade of my country is just too much, just too overwhelming to put even in words. Sometimes they don't last long, but the problem is that in the past I've been really spoiled by planning a trip almost every time that I felt the urge to go. I've gone back precisely 12 times in 12 years (not exactly yearly, though), but I want more...

It's an eerie experience, that of living life as an expatriate. Your life, yourself is split in two. Before and after. And the before is always with you. 25 years is a long time in one's life and almost every moment I am living in my head part of my life in those 25 years. I see myself walking around the university during that first year, or that crazy last year in the months that preceeded our wedding. Last week I dreamt that I was back at USP as a student and that felt pretty strange.

Mostly, though, I just feel and "see" the way the sun shone through the trees, the way the air felt in the winter. The way it could get quite chilly in the beginning of summer even. How it used to rain and be pretty cold at the beach in the middle of summer (this is the strongest difference for me, all these years later the fact that here, it NEVER gets chilly [into the 50s] during the summer, it's just stuffy hot all the time). I really wish I could capture those feelings better in words, but words fail me. And I hardly ever write about it here either. I know Aliki always encourages me to do so and I'm sure she'll be thrilled to read this post.

It's not easy to live this, though. Always divided, always split in two or more parts, because I feel for my boys... I want them to know and love Brazil too, although their experience will be very different from mine, and thinking of them I feel even more divided, fragmented in many persons -- the girl who grew up in Brazil, the student who came to the U.S., the mother that love her children and wants them to experience both cultures, the "immigrant" that I now am -- that's taking a while to sink in.

So, there you go again, more angst from me to you, now from the expatriate variety. Enjoy ;-)