I am so sorry to have not blogged in so long. It is not because I have had nothing to say, but rather that I have been truly overwhelmed by both work and domestic life this past year back in America. Call it “culture shock,” but life here is much busier than it was in Europe or the Middle East! And parenting is way more intense (“Where is the wine bar?” we continue to ask, a standard feature in London schools at most parent’s nights, and “Why so many sports so far away?” I wonder as I drive through darkness on a Monday night). What’s more, neither Daniel nor I had worked in the States since the late eighties (gone is my seven-hour time zone advantage when on deadline) and so we were used to being in America for vacation, not work—doing puzzles, not power points at my parent’s lovely home.
Which brings me to our “living” situation.” It could be the basis of a hilarious sitcom titled, “Three-generations, One Roof.” That is to say that we continue to live, one year on, with my parents and my older brother in my folks house in what is best described as a modern version of “The Waltons” (though we are all snoring too loudly to yell “good night” out loud to one another.) We have big plans to change our housing and get out of my parent’s basement (we now call it the “lower level”), but I will not announce anything yet for fear of jinxing it.
The biggest change perhaps--beyond living a twelve-hour plane ride away from relatives and now living only footsteps away-- is that before moving home, I had quite solitary days. Whether in London, Paris, Brussels, or Cairo, the moment the kids were parked at school and Daniel went to work, my world was my own. I would write a while, walk the dog a while, and then write again. My social life was confined to sight-seeing and evening outings with friends so my days were quite productive.
Now, I have twenty-years of casual conversation with my mom to catch up on over coffee each morning. Then, there is the plethora of grocery shopping at places where the choice of products continues to overwhelm me (I used to pick up a chicken, a piece of fish, and a few vegetables daily at the corner or outdoor market, now I spend long afternoons lost at Costco looking for a box of oatmeal). My father, then meanders in around 4 pm from work, pulling out cheese and crackers and chilled bottles of wine for a positively Victorian cocktail hour that begins at 5 pm sharp. Most evenings include dinner for eight to ten, as my sister, or one of my cousin’s stops by. I have become very good and make army-sized quantities of food to feed everyone each night.
Somehow I have still managed to get some work done, despite these distractions. Actually, quite a bit and now I have two monthly columns to write. One on teens for the NYT and one on travel for the IHT (International Herald Tribune.)
But while I have been relishing this time back with my family, I now feel my “repatriation period” is finally over and I am ready to leave the nest a bit more, for at least a few days a week, and branch out on my own into new territory.
Anyone who has been spending time with me this year is tired of my talking so much about Detroit, but I found in the Motor City my new spiritual home. Through the luxury of reporting a few stories for the paper, I have discovered a place that speaks to me on so many levels, though I barely knew it growing up--except through my parent’s stories of shopping at Hudson’s or lunching at the Detroit Athletic Club.
Like many people in my hometown of Ann Arbor, I did not venture out of the safe, leafy zone of this university town very often, except to head north for the summers. Detroit was not even on my radar beyond the occasional meal in Greek Town, or hitting a jazz club back in the early eighties with college friends.
But I did write a travel article on Detroit for the NYT back in 2004 when I happened to be home visiting, and that is what led seven years later to my touring Detroit again. I decided it was time to update that story for the paper last February, which led me to find other stories in the Big D I wanted to report.
Now, I hope to get an apartment there, so I can spend more time continuing to get to know the people who have worked so hard to keep Detroit going against many odds, and hope through publicizing their work to help the city make its way back to the future, which I truly believe will be a very bright one.
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