moving on

In one of the episodes of the Sopranos I watched last night, the character Furio returned to Italy for his father's funeral. After, when he came back to New Jersey, he commented on how strange it was to be in Naples, the city where he had lived almost all of his life. He strangely found himself an outsider....friends and family had moved on with their lives. He also lamented that as an immigrant, he was an outsider in the United States and always would be. It was interesting for me to hear this because it is a sentiment I have felt many times, and it has been one of the most difficult for me to accept. The last time I was in the US, I was sitting in Logan airport awaiting my flight to Philadelphia when the woman next to me began speaking to me. At first, she didn't realize I was American, I suppose because of my mixed-up US/British accent. When I drive the highways near the town where I grew up I get lost because so many new roads have been added, my landmarks torn down and replaced with new shopping malls. Walking the streets of Philadelphia, the city no longer feels like my home. New restaurants, stores, coffee shops....I am now just a visitor. I stop in at all my old regular spots, but most of the new casts of characters I no longer recognize. The world has moved on. And as exciting as a "new life" elsewhere can be, I believe we all mourn bits of the lives we left behind, the relationships that are forever changed....some are strengthened, whereas some drift apart. Even the external triggers that remind us that life continues have been replaced. For me, there is no longer the first blast of cold fresh autumn air, no crunching through the yellow and crimson fallen leaves, no more geese heading south for the winter. I now look forward to olive wood burning in the fire and the return of green to the mountainside with the fall rain. In the end, for many complicated reasons, Furio returned to Italy. I don't see a similar homecoming anywhere in my near future; my new life and new family have begun to grow stronger roots on this side of the Atlantic. I knew when I first met Big Jim that our lives would be more complicated than most....that I would always find myself missing someone and someplace, and that one of us would always be an outsider wherever we chose to make a home. And although we too move on, we never forget we would never be here had it not been for that which we have left behind. hasta pronto, mylifeinspain