The Two-Year Itch

I’ve been wondering for some months about what would inspire me to the milestone of my hundredth blog post…and it turned out to be the most mundane, yet sublime, convergence of events.

Today was a relaxing day at school; attendance was light due to a student play, a movie had to be finished, and I had enough time at lunch to tackle the Friday crossword in the NYTimes (via the Herald Trib, which is graciously put out in the staff room by our librarian each day).

After school, teachers began preparing for our annual cheese party, at which our respective countries are pitted against each other, table by table, in a friendly competition. Dutch kaas was displayed in a wooden clog, homemade Czech sýr was laid out next to salty strands of Slovakian string cheese, Belgian truffles accompanied a wide selection of fromage and beers, the American table featured lovely Carolina pumpkin bread, and the English brought a sandwich iron to make their Marmite toasties.

My contribution was Gudbrandsdalsost, brown cheese from the Valley of the Sword of the Gods in Norway. At the end of a pleasant two hours of tasting and talking, the winners in the various categories (texture, flavor, smelliness, etc.) were awarded, and to my surprise, the Norwegian brown won for best color.

After choosing a set of cheese knives as my prize, I walked to the Tube with my Mauritian colleague, who understands the beauty of brown cheese because she happens to be married to a Norwegian. At the station, I heard that Finsbury Park was closed, so I decided to get off at Arsenal and find a new way home...

When Anette and I met in 2002, we spent long hours wandering the streets of Seville, and she told me that her favorite thing to do in a new city was to get lost, then find her way home again. This evening I got lost in London, and it reminded me of those first few months together, when we managed to lose ourselves in places like Lisbon, Marrakech, Krakow, Prague, and Berlin.

As I followed the train tracks that run north from Emirates Stadium to Finsbury Park, admiring graffiti-covered walls illuminated by the late slant of sun, I was filled with the singular satisfaction of the traveler, and mightily pleased that I had found the shortest route back home. Abruptly, and within sight of my familiar station, my happiness was met by a 20-foot high padlocked steel gate preventing me from exiting onto the street.

Feeling decidedly less clever, I started back along the tracks when I saw another man walking towards me. I greeted him and explained that the path was a dead end, so we continued walking back towards Arsenal together and struck up a friendly chat about our mutual neighborhood. At a jog in the path we spied an opportunity to make it out to the street, and so followed each other over an eminently scalable 8-foot high fence.

Having now shared this little act of daring, our conversation grew more personal, turning to our countries of origin. Upon finding out that he was German, I proudly told him that I was a Klo-ze, and he nodded approvingly: “Like the striker?” “Yes, like the striker.” When we reached Finsbury Park, I put out my hand and said, “Alexander, by the way,” to which he replied with a smile, “Alexander, by the way.”

We then shared a moment of pure amazement, each of us struck by the synchronicity of a German Alexander meeting a German-American Alexander along a little-used footpath in north London because of a Tube shutdown.

Our meeting immediately got me thinking about all the possibilities, known and unknown, in this metropolis that I’ve called home for the past two years. Here I was, coming home from an international cheese party with dynamic colleagues from around the world, in a city that is undoubtedly the world’s most cosmopolitan, where I could hear dozens of languages on any street corner and sample the food and music of hundreds of cultures: sub-, hybrid and otherwise.

I’m beginning to understand England, British English and the Brits (although London is something else entirely) and I’m beginning to make good friends. I’m singing in a Gilbert & Sullivan opera in a few short weeks, and I’m hoping to attend Wimbledon in late June. And then, just like in Tanzania and California, it will be time to go - the two-year itch, brought on by a combination of new dreams, necessities and the inexorable momentum of life.

It’s not easy, because it always feels like this; like things are just starting to get really good just as we’re leaving. But we also know that each of these places has become an important part of us, and if we’re lucky, we’ll be able to come back some day and get lost again in the places that we once called home.