Sharing home

I just now, just a few moments ago, found out that I'll be working in Salzburg next year! I don't know how this news will meet the people reading it, but I'm very, very pleased. The decision to stay another year was a hard one. I knew of the possibility of applying for an extension from the beginning, but I didn't allow myself to seriously entertain the thought until the deadline was approaching in February. I spent much of my time agonizing over how it would make my family, my friends and me feel to be abroad for a the third year out of four.

My mom arrived on the 12th to visit for a week. The thing about your mom coming to stay with you for a week is: it's your mom. Catch my drift? End of blog entry.

Naw, I'm just playin'! I've been dying to share all the great things I've got going on over here with somebody for a while, and it was great to share those things with my mother. I did my best to saturate her tourist needs by showing her landmarks and exposing her to the history I knew, but I was more concerned about showing her my home. You see, anybody can be a tourist, but seldom do we have an insider to show us the ins and outs.


Over the weekend we took a train to Eichstätt. Lately, I've been referring to it as my first love, and it's the only town I've ever lived in that I would actually lovingly or longingly refer to as my home. On our first evening, I got to introduce my mother to my best friend Hubertus. While eating dinner, she asked him where he was from. He couldn't really answer her question, seeing as he was born in one place, moved to another, moved there, and never really formed a connection the the place he was living. After a while, I decided he had understood the question differently. What question are you answering when someone asks you where you're from? Where you were born? Where you spent most of your life? Your current hometown? I usually answer the second question: Tulsa. I spent most of my life in Tulsa, and so it seems most...fair(?) to give that answer. The question seems so tightly bound to the idea of home, and so we naturally slid into the question of "home."

Speaking in English the whole time, Hubertus said "home" for him was the house in which you felt "at home." I'm a terrible son for this, but I honestly can't remember what my mom's definition was. I then explained the saying "home is where the heart is" to Hubertus. Be it cheesy or kitschy, I think our saying has it right. I offered another version to the effect of something like "home is where you put your heart." Some people put their heart in their land. Make me a farmer and for every tear, drop of sweat or blood I plant in my toil, I would plant my heart there as well. Make me a parent, and my heart will skip to school with the heart inscribed lunch sack in hand. Once I told my father about my heartbreak, and he reflected, "It's hard knowing a piece of your heart walks this earth apart from you." Time, energy, passion; everything we invest in holds a piece of us.

So no, I didn't worry about hitting all of the tourist hotspots. On my mom's first day in town, my birthday, we went to James and Lucy's house for dinner and wine. We sat there until at least one in the morning talking about "Gott und die Welt" (God and the world). James poured wine between our protesting fingers while we wrestled and laughed our way through subjects like teaching, gun violence and control, faith, and Austria. We responsibly slept there, and in the morning we woke to breakfast and the company of friends and surrounding pastures and their mountain neighbors. And so my mom got to know a fellow part of Dan's heart.

That weekend I brought her to Eichstaett: one of the few places where you can find my heart in not just friends, but in the buildings and land, as well. Both nights we were there, my good old friends from my stay there sat with my mom and me late into the night. She sang songs from "The Sound of Music." I asked for more wine. They sang songs from commercials. We cooked and ate together. I took her to the "Kneippenanlage," where I'd spent so many afternoons trudging through ice-cold water. I showed her a pond in a courtyard fed by a spring and the overhanging gutters and containing hundreds of fish. With my good friend Tanja, we sat on the bench that Julia and I had sat on just about every day as we overlooked the Altmuehl valley.

On my mother's last day in Ischl, I brought her up to one of my all-time favorite spots on Kalvarienberg. It's not all that high, so you don't even really have to break a sweat getting there. When I'm stressed, or need to get out for any reason, I often go to this bench. So many benches sit before a blockade of trees, but this one lays Ischl and it's many mountain friends before you. It's very peaceful, except for what looks to be a brewing nest of mosquitoes. We talked a little bit about these years abroad, and the unease it brings my family. You see, they're all very happy for me that I'm taking advantage of these chances and years, but they worry that I might leave my home in the U.S.

I'll tell you right up front: little of what I consider "home" has any connection to being "American". On the other hand, I wouldn't call myself "German," "Austrian," or even "Bavarian." The privilege of being my family is, they've got the biggest part of my heart! If you need something to balance out all of this cheesiness, think of them as my biggest shareholders. The food I eat, the languages I speak, the mountains I climb, and the music I listen to are all things I love, but they don't hold a candle to the people I care about. Each of them is a weighty anchor in a windy, wavy world. HOW D'YA LIKE THEM ALLITERATIVE APPLES. So you see, I don't really have the choice of keeping up this long-distance thing much longer, because the chains of those anchors pull harder the further I go adrift. If you might happen to have a home in me, know that I'm taking good care of it. I'll be treating it to spinach tonight. I hope you like them leafy greens!