This Labor Day, my family sat around a pool and fantasized ourselves back to Europe, where my parents may grow old without the fear of medical bankruptcy, where Carey and I may legally marry, and also live in our pre-existing bodies without the same fear of loss.
Croatia is affordable. France seems perfect, even though we're English and reserve a special dark corner of our hearts for the French. At least we'd be Ex-Pats.
My English mother, who loved moving to the US, but has become increasingly disenchanted with the socio-political situation, waved the ideas away with her trademark "We must be practical." To which I responded, "Mum, what's practical about living in a country where you become increasingly targeted just as you reach your most vulnerable stage of life?" She frowned.
We resolved to look into a holiday in Croatia, just to see.
Yesterday I hung around at the 7 Stages office, catching up on work and family in my artistic home. The janitor arrived for his weekly work. At some point, I heard him speak Spanish, so I chatted him up: Hello, how are you, isn't it a lovely day, where are you from...
Cuba. Yo soy de Cuba.
And then the torrent began.
He spoke for five uninterrupted minutes, about how he is an electrical engineer, but speaks no English; about how he became a political prisoner in Cuba for the crime of communicating with his cousin in Chicago; he lost 14 years of his life to the prison before he escaped and rode a dinghy to Miami. He has all of his papers, though, and on January 27, he became an official applicant for asylum in the US.
He only paused to see if I understood what he was saying. I modified my facial expression to convey shock over noncomprehension. I haven't been spoken to like this...well, really, ever. He told me no one has spoken to him, really talked, in two weeks. The Spanish. The janitor's shirt. The white hair.
He told me what he thinks about communism and socialism, and how no system can call itself perfect which gives two bags of beans to a family every week, even if they do have medicine and education as well: In a utopia, nobody starves.
I asked for his name, which he explained is actually Italian. And then, off I went:
"How far back is your Italian heritage?"
"I am third generation Cuban."
"Did you know that if you have Italian heritage even five generations back, you can get an EU passport? You could live in Italy!"
I told him this like it would be the answer to an unasked prayer: why would anyone want to live here? He is elderly, like my parents, he could face...the horror of medical bankruptcy!
And then he looked at me, you know that look? The one full of incredulity at just how far you've strayed from the point? His whole monologue the side of a barn, my arrow lodged in a sapling at least a thousand yards away.
I don't want to move to Italy. I love it here.
Right.
I love getting perspective, even if I bash my head on it, walking so confidently through the dark of my own experience.
