The Transition Artist

After 8 fairly sleepless hours on the plane, the cabin lights clicked on and I realized they were serving breakfast. It felt like I had barely blinked since the weird chicken in some sort of creamy sauce had been served, and suddenly an unidentifiable pastry was being placed before me. I checked the time on my phone, it was 12:30 am Houston time, which meant we would soon be arriving. 

I opened the shade on my window to the beginnings of the sunrise. Winter’s most beautiful gift, that perfect orange and pink glow on an otherwise dark horizon. Flushed as the sunrise, I quickly threw open the shade of the other window next to me so the passengers in the middle of the plane could see the sun kissed horizon catch fire. 

We began our descent and the captain announced an arrival time of 8:55 am. “Actuellement à Paris il fait un temps brumeux, avec une température de zéro degrés,” he announced. I giggled a little at the thought of the foggy, freezing morning, so typical of Paris I could hardly feel disappointed, and I began internally bracing myself. The sun continued to rise over the skyline, slowly turning the sky to a lighter blue. We hadn’t yet dipped below the blanket of clouds that hung over Paris, blocking the view of the city except for a tiny hole through which city lights were visible. Though excited to come back home, I wasn’t ready to break through the clouds yet. I wanted to hang in this beautiful space where the sun rises between my two homes a little bit longer. I wanted to dream of each and be simultaneously in neither for a few more minutes.

I cried a little as the plane taxied in Houston. My trip felt like it had gone by too fast, though it reinvigorated me in a way I can’t explain. I somehow always forget how much easier it is to be entirely myself when I’m surrounded by people who understand me and my points of reference so easily. I often conveniently forget how simple it is to express myself in my mother tongue. I never remember how easily light jokes and teasing comments come to me in English, or how much can be implied by simple questions asked by southerners; “So things are pretty serious then?” 

I forget how, despite being complete opposites, my brother makes me feel much more myself than most people. I began choking back tears as I thought about not making stupid jokes, getting his chilled out perspective, or listening to bad music in his too-big pick up truck. One rolled as I thought about not getting back scratches and hugs from my parents, a need so simple yet so hard to fulfill from a distance. One fell as I thought about my tight-knit extended family, and the goodbye-see-you-soons I said without knowing when I’d be back again. 

But as we began our descent, breaking through the clouds layer by hazy layer, shifting from the sky into the fog of Paris, I sucked in a few quick breaths, suddenly anxious because nothing but a whitish gray haze surrounded the plane. We rode the clouds all the way down to the ground, shrouded in white until touchdown. When the wheels finally met the runway for the second time that day, my nostalgia melted a little. Home, I breathed, and I smiled to myself as I thought about the sleeping boyfriend I would wake up in a few hours when I returned to my apartment. Despite the freezing temperatures outside, I warmed at the thought of seeing my friends and starting a new job soon.

Every time I go home to visit my family, I get filled up a little; my batteries recharge and I feel more me than usual. Then, without fail, I take off again carrying a bittersweet nostalgia for all that I leave behind when I board the plane that takes me back to France again. But I have so much to look forward to when I come back to this place. Here, I carry not only the love of my faraway family, but my ambition and aspirations to rise to the challenge of making it in another culture, in another language. Here, I have love, and a different kind of family that I’ve built myself. Here, I am whole and I am as at home as in Houston, but with an entirely different sense of belonging. Here, I dream a little bigger. 

Now back on the ground again, here, in one of the many places I call home, I can still feel the stillness of hovering between two, longing at once for each, but relishing the beauty between them. While my head and my feet are planted firmly on French soil, my heart continues to live in between; loving in turns, faithful as the rise and fall of the sun, in two time zones.