RETURN TO PARADISE?

I had come to Mexico as a bride of 19 and had spent over 22 years here by the time my company relocated me to the States. A famous writer once spoke of the feelings an expatriate experiences insofar as the overwhelming nostalgia for one’s homeland, and yet that with time one comes to the conclusion that you no longer have a homeland here nor there. This becomes a reality after having made periodic trips home only to realize that nothing is as you remembered it, there have been both obvious and subtle changes, maybe in the place or maybe in oneself, which make you uncomfortable in a no longer comfortable comfort zone. He concluded, therefore, that the only piece of earth you may call your own is the plot of ground under which you will one day lie.
            It was apparent to me that his words had become my reality when I returned to the country I considered home, and although I was in another city and state than where I had been born, and even though the locale where Susan and I lived  was exceptionally  beautiful, I never felt comfortable, not even with my compatriots.  As Jim Croce says in his song, “New York’s not my home”. So, when Eduardo arrived from Paris, Susan and I were on the verge of returning to Mexico and my old job.  Eduardo decided to stay in Manhattan, and for a time lived with his lifelong friend Jorge Ritter who was also living there, later on renting an apartment close to him in SoHo.  Suzy and I journeyed home to Mexico and, quite by coincidence, on the same plane as my sister-in-law and Susan’s cousins. We had quite a committee waiting at the airport when we arrived, i.e. my best friend, Margaret with whom we were to stay until our household goods would arrive in Mexico, her family, and Susan’s father and his brother who was there to greet his wife and children.

Patricia and Eduardo Sr. the day we got back to Mexico

            I’d say about a month after returning, I received a call at my office that there had been a terrible fire in Eduardo’s apartment and everything had been destroyed.  At the beginning it wasn’t clear if he had been injured and the few hours wait to confirm that he was alright were torture.
            Shortly thereafter I was offered a job with considerably more pay.  I decided to take it (huge mistake) and things went from bad to worse for a while.  Eduardo wrote that he wanted to return to Mexico and I was delighted, but he decided to stop off to see my mother on his way south and she offered to put him through university if he would live with her.  He asked me what I wanted him to do and, of course, I couldn’t let him pass up the opportunity so the delight was short lived.
            Looking back, I don’t regret sending him to Europe although it wasn’t the cure for his addiction, nor do I regret putting aside my own need for him to be moral support for Suzy and me —it would have been totally selfish— because both situations broadened his cultural horizons and life experience, but there were days, in fact years, that we didn’t have him with us and that, too, is selfish; but very sad because of the way things have turned out.

Patricia Bari Frew