She’s Leaving Home, Bye-Bye Our writer ruminates on “Be it ever so troubled and unhappy, there still may be no place like home.”

“How would you feel about living in another country?”

My husband has been worrying for quite some time about—brace for the list—growing social and political instability, rising healthcare and food costs, vanishing protections (for civil rights, the environment, a free press, the arts, food safety, disaster relief, science, and education), and the increasingly atavistic attitude of many Americans. Besides, since boyhood my history-loving husband has yearned to live in a country with a slower pace of life, one that honored custom and tradition without being xenophobic. “A shame,” he used to mock-sigh, “that the Duchy of Grand Fenwick exists only in fiction.”

Now, though, Andrew is serious. And I am overwhelmed. Abandon our friends? Disassemble a house packed with books and the accumulated stuff of a lifetime? The farthest I have ever moved was a fifty-minute drive from our previous home. I am not the transient type.

And yet, in less than a week, I fall in love with the idea. Become immigrants, and hope for the sort of welcome our own country no longer provides. Wake up fresh and explore a new culture, instead of spending the next twenty years doing the same things we have always done. See who we are when we are in midair, hovering above a familiar past but cut loose from its gravitational pull.

Practical questions bubble up. How would we time this—find a new place first or wait to sell the house? Sell our bed the morning we leave? How do you open a local bank account without yet having a local address? And we would need to show FBI records! None of this sounds like us; we are not bold people. But maybe it is time to learn? Freddie Mercury did not stay in Zanzibar.

We will find a sweet little cottage somewhere, I tell myself. But what exactly is a cottage? I only know it sounds small and cozy and quaint. Window boxes instead of native grasses; roses climbing on stone instead of pokeweed jammed up against brick. A cottage is the kind of house where people who do not need everything big, new, and cookie-cutter would live.

Sure enough, a cottage is defined online as “roughly half the size of the average American house.”

The word “originated from the feudal system, where small houses on a nobleman’s land were occupied by cottagers, who provided services in return for the dwelling.”

We will have to find ourselves a nobleman.

A cottage in Bretagne (Shutterstock)

“With a Frenchman he would have known how to go about persuading him to do it without any unpleasantness. But with an American? Already he could see him: a gorilla-like brute with a fierce frown on his face, a cigar in the corner of his mouth, and probably an automatic in his hip pocket.”

~Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky

The first problem: we are late. We should have become expats years ago, back when the world thought the United States not only took the first steps but hung the moon. Now, people in other countries will worry that we are locked and loaded, ready to shoot up their kindergarten. Even after we explain that we have no guns, they will connect us with a leader who, they will plausibly assume, has set out to ruin the world economy, democracy, diplomacy, education, the arts, and the environment in one fell swoop.

Our friends say we should stay just to resist him. Moving is traitorous, inconceivable, moot. “‘You want an escape plan? To where?” Adrienne LaFrance quotes a friend asking. “If the United States of America falls, it’s the ball game.’”

Is it, though? Or is that one more iteration of American exceptionalism, the same arrogance that once believed authoritarianism could not happen here? Germany in the 1930s haunts my Jewish husband. Will we miss the signs, stay until we cannot leave? The comparison feels overdramatic, hysterical, even slightly unhinged. No soldiers are marching in these streets.

Oh, but wait. They are marching. They are rounding up undocumented immigrants for mass deportation, encouraging antisemitic hate groups, arresting judges, arresting young people for organizing legal protests. “You’ll be fine; you’re White,” friends say, “and if speaking out gets you in trouble, you have resources.”

For now. But even if we could afford the lawyers, would we want to live as the lucky ones in a country where others are in jeopardy?

We already do.

I tape a “Resist” sign to my car window, wave my homemade protest sign. But the news grows weirder and grimmer by the day. Judges attacked, people imprisoned for no reason, vaccines discouraged, attempts made to control private universities, scientific research, news outlets….

This is the kind of dystopian, no longer farfetched scenario that galvanized Andrew. But though he was the first to suggest moving, he is the most loath to leave. He loves our shabby old house and our life here; his strong preference, if the country would only cooperate, is to stay.

I, however, have flipflopped, and now it is the thought of staying that overwhelms me—even if you subtract the political craziness. I am tired of routine, tired of driving long distances, tired of pulling weeds and repainting wrought iron roughened by a century of rust. I mustered a sustained burst of energy for my middle years, but at the core, I am a lazy soul, and I intend to revert to form.

Also—a secret motive, one it takes me a while to recognize—I want to be with people who are joyous. A lilt in their voice, a wide smile of greeting, a sense that the world is right-side-up. A willingness to laugh together, even if we are strangers. These moments lift me, and here, they are growing rarer. The general mood has turned wary. No matter what we blame or trust, we all know community is precarious.

Stick around, friends say; like the weather, this will change. But even when the economy was solid and politics was civil, public American celebrations meant loud rock, greasy or sugary concessions, hawked merchandise, and vomit on the sidewalk. I look longingly at the processions and fiestas in other cultures, people of all ages singing and dancing in the streets. Here, the festivals I love happen when another culture takes over—the Greek festival, say, or Dios de los Muertos. But a common civic celebration? That would be the Fourth of July, when people get drunk and shoot off firecrackers that scare the dogs. We live in what the philosopher Michel Serres calls “the society of the spectacle,” with oohs and aahs standing in for participatory joy.

“‘It’s strange,’ he said with a deprecatory smile, ‘how, ever since I discovered that my passport was gone, I’ve felt only half alive. But it’s a very depressing thing in a place like this to have no proof of who you are.’”

~Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky

Experts warn of identity loss and confusion after emigration. This, I shrug off. It would be thrilling to feel I was on my way to being French, or Welsh, or an islander. Identity of any sort happens on a continuum, and I will never make it all the way to a new one, but being a U.S. citizen is now something I would rather hide than celebrate.

Still, it makes me nervous to feel so flat, so detached from the place where I have lived and learned and loved for more than sixty years.

But is it really that surprising, asks that blunt little voice in my head. This country is about the shiny new, and you like soft wear and patina.

This country also loves busyness and business, the aggressive free-market sort, profit at any cost, speed and efficiency and unlimited growth. Goals I find more dangerous than desirable. Success here often hinges on mobility, but until now I have preferred to stay put, winding roots into the soil so those I love can always reach me. Our technological innovations are fascinating, but like the gadgets on late-night infomercials, they usually disappoint. Art rarely disappoints, but we only encourage that sort of creativity if it will prove profitable, and the good stuff rarely does.

In every country we consider, the expats rave about the slower pace, the leisurely meals, the simpler fun. A culture that does not chase money and stuff, speed through pleasure, drive-through meals, and auto-pay, auto-renew, automate. I start to think the United States is exceptional—not in the way American exceptionalism intends, but in forgetting how to live calmly.

Funny, too, how every one of these places has more affordable health care and better public transport. And when I think about living somewhere that Amazon does not deliver, a shiver of joy—admittedly, undercut by panic—runs through me. All that stuff. How many conversations with other women have snapped, as though magnetized, onto excited reports of great deals, purchases, coupons, and sales? When we are not comparing brands (what does Wirecutter say?) we are sharing tips for self-improvement. The questions I have googled! The lists of household tips and helpful exercises I keep! The other day I clicked on an article that suggested I might be drinking water the wrong way.

What if I just stopped trying to always have, and do, the best thing? What if I severed myself from this nation’s iconography—would my identity float away? Baseball is nice, but I prefer what only we call soccer. Hate apple pie, love crème brulée. Chevrolet? My Mini was made in Oxford.

Announcing these international preferences sounds snobbish—and I wonder why. The glory of this country should be its mix of influences, its ability to draw the whole world to its shores. The polyglot swirl of every possible ethnicity, cuisine, and music—it is that I would miss. But we want to send away the people who made it possible.

Seneca said we each dwell in two communities: the place of our birth, and the community that “is truly great and truly common, in which we look neither to this corner nor to that, but measure the boundaries of our nation by the sun.” I would far rather be a citizen of the world than, by accident of birth, an American.

I feel disloyal writing this.

What does one owe one’s country? Uncle Sam appears before me, tophat askew, and points a long, knobby finger. J.F. Kennedy’s still-handsome ghost urges service. We would be abdicating instead, leaving all the problems behind. Oh, we would render unto Caesar, mailing in our taxes and cringing when they were spent on weaponry or the absurd and insupportable deficit. Technically, that is the only debt we owe. Yet we have lived safely in this country for more than six decades, free to speak and write whatever came into our minds and pursue whatever beliefs, whatever definition of happiness, we chose. How do you acknowledge that debt, when the country is already moving away from the guarantees that made it possible?

Before writing any of this, I had intended to read heavily in the philosophy of patriotism, so I could compare Richard Rorty’s hot defense with Kwame Anthony Appiah’s cosmopolitanism. But do I care? In the end, where you live is deeply personal, and I have never been a political creature anyway. Is that a casualty of individualism? Would I feel differently in a tighter community or continue to stand aloof? Are you supposed to match your life’s backdrop?

I have felt at home in many parts of the world, but always fully an American. This new cynicism has cut me adrift. The United States could have kept shining from John Winthrop’s hill, had greed and the lust for power not forced so many lies and fights.

As it is, I feel less welcome here every day. But what a childish pout—maybe I am just a sore loser. How dare I think about bailing instead of rolling up my sleeves?

I dare because half the country is voluntarily, eagerly headed away from the values I hold dear. Even with a change of administration, we will be perched on a seesaw forever.

“‘Women always think of what is finished instead of what is beginning. Here we say that life is a cliff, and you must never turn around and look back when you’re climbing. It makes you sick.’”

~Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky

As we try to gauge the effort of pulling up stakes, I begin to notice just how easy everything is here. My driving is a relaxed choreography of glides and smooth loops, because I know the way. Paying bills and filling out forms is a brisk game, because I know how it all works. Compared with the unknown, my life seems instantly easier and sweeter. Hanging out with friends, I savor every fleeting minute. On the same-old, boring dog walk, I pay delighted attention: I have history with these trees and buildings.

The sense of reprieve that fills me at these moments is somehow familiar. Finally the reason comes to me: this is how I used to feel when I broke up with a particularly maddening boyfriend, then took his apologetic self back. Again, that glowing relief to find myself safely attached again, back in the old rhythm. Again, the tensions creeping back, building to another crescendo.

This country is as much a rogue as he was, arrogant and incorrigible. It used to be sexy, too; now it leaves me cold. Still, there are things I would miss. The breezy, casual, road-trip ease. The varied scenery, a bit of every kind of beauty. The founding ideals we never quite managed to achieve. And closer to home, the tender specifics. Kids trick-or-treating. Forest Park, on one of those rare perfect days every spring and fall. Midwestern thunderstorms and snowstorms. Crown Candy—except I heard a terrible rumor it might close?

So many favorite restaurants and shops have closed. My beloved Zoo is now so crowded with commerce, there is barely room for the animals. Our thunderstorms are turning violent. Change is inevitable, I sigh. So is this a fool’s errand, this resistance? Politically, we are disgusted, but I also feel a lingering, sad-sweet disappointment of passing time, the kind of nostalgia I used to despise. Maybe the diminishments have simply become too painful, and this is the real reason I am angling to start fresh somewhere else. Can I bear to stay here and watch friends get sick and die, beloved places close or crumble, old pleasures evaporate? The losses would land more softly in a faraway place.

Hearing myself say that, I do feel like a quitter. How sneaky, to muddle the personal with the political. (But we all do.) I should transcend my own feelings and ask only how I can help my country. Yet I suspect those in charge of my country would also prefer that I leave.

An apartment in Gijon, Spain (Shutterstock)

“But what do they think of me? Probably nothing. Would one of them help me if I were to have an accident?”

~Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky

Look at all the literary expats, lifelong outsiders who felt more comfortable at a remove from what they were pondering. I fancy myself Alice B. Toklas abroad, surrounded by brilliance and listening happily. She and Gertrude had such a good time. F. Scott Fitzgerald, not so much, but his problems were booze and Zelda, not expatriation. And at least he had enough talent and restless energy to become part of the scene. I am too old for a scene. I would just be Alice, looking for people I could eavesdrop on.

Why try, when I could stay here, cherish existing friends, and guard endangered pockets of culture? Likeminded people overseas might be too placid to take an interest, or they might not cotton to me. Here, I know the shallow tricks that work, the dropped references that brighten a stranger’s eyes with sudden interest. There, I would be uncategorizable. Would that feel freeing or disorienting?

Either way, I would miss our friends desperately. People scatter anyway at this age, I remind myself, moving to be near kids (we have none) or avoid weather. Separation is inevitable. Missing is just another form of love.

In a new country, we would be forced to rely, like Blanche Dubois, on the kindness of strangers. No doubt we would find it. But there would be an awkward indebtedness, with none of the comfort you feel when you are bailed out by someone who already loves you. And would our marriage be strained if we were not near friends we could turn to for whatever we cannot get from each other?

Would we feel closer than ever, us against the world, or stifled, with only each other for solace and amusement?

Unanswerable questions, all.

“‘If you mean this colorless mess here that calls itself a town, yes. But I’d still a damned sight rather be here than back in the United States.’”

~Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky

The urgency fades, the country feels a tad more rational again, I stop nervously reading every news article—so I poke and prod, testing myself. Yep. I still want to leave. No matter what happens, the undercurrents will swirl for decades; U.S. citizens no longer even share a common vision of democracy.

Besides, the list of practical reasons has grown long and persuasive. Every decision is selfish at the core, no matter how noble its inspiration. I have no desire to spend my golden years clomping up and down two flights of steep old stairs with a dust mop in one hand. And if we stayed, where would we move? I want a real change, not a new address in a place I have already lived. Andrew’s myasthenia gravis flares with extreme or wildly fluctuating weather (e.g., here), and we would both like a break from sneezing and gulping phlegm. Age has turned us into those people I once despised, the “snowbirds” intolerant of any challenge from the skies. One mocks others until one understands them.

It does feel trivial, though, to fantasize about uprooting ourselves just because of the weather, which grows weird everywhere. Or because of the politics, which can darken anywhere. Or the mainstream values we never embraced anyway. Nowhere we could move would have everything we want: peace, quiet, nature, history, architectural charm, affordability, safety, good health care, art, culture, public transport, eager new friends, hospitality, joy, and a social and political climate that does not set our teeth on edge. So what would we trade off?

Time for an examination of conscience, a discernment of real pleasure versus the trappings. That sounds easy but requires raw honesty. I love, for example, the idea of attending lectures, plays, concerts, book signings. But when am I really happy? Tromping through the woods with our dog. I want to be the kind of person who cooks elaborate, interesting meals with the finest foods, but what really satisfies me? A hunk of bread, cheese, a glass of everyday wine with no discernible minerality, and some chocolate.

“A gray scorpion, on its way along the earthen floor of her cell, discovered an unexpected and welcome warmth in one corner, and took refuge there. When Yamina stirred in her sleep, the inevitable occurred. The sting entered the nape of the neck; she never recovered consciousness.”

~Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky

Figuring that the likeliest destinations will involve Spanish, we start Duolingo. Nosotros aprendemos español. Uruguay sounds socially and politically congenial, but it is awfully far. Boquete, in the highlands of Panama, is cool and largely mosquito-free, and the library gets books in English. There are tons of American expats there—is that a plus or a minus? It feels a little Mizzou-frathouse in tone, people partying their last years away with cheap expenses and money to burn. But hey, it would do us good to party a little.

We plan a trip to Boquete at the height of the long rainy season, figuring that will be a good test. Then, formal research done, we start watching expat videos. Every last one mentions something we had not heard of: the sixteen species of scorpions, two of them deadly, that have also come to live in Boquete. You tuck your sheets around you tightly at night—me, who sleeps like a windmill—and put a sticky trap under your bed, and in the morning you have to shake out your undies and clothes before you put them on….

No.

“There were scorpions all over in Guatemala,” volunteers my brave friend Jen, a travel writer. “I got really good at killing them with my shoe.”

No.

While we build a file on scorpion-free northwest Spain, I send a list of questions to friends who retired in Bretagne. They report pure delight and describe the place as coolish, peaceful, lovely. Will Duolingo let us switch the app to French? And what if we will land in Wales?

All this switching around feels flighty, as though we will amuse ourselves with straw destinations for the next twenty years and dream our lives away. But this is the research stage, I remind myself. We are dating around, keeping our options open. Or we are incapable of commitment. Only time will tell.

The uncertainty, hovering above a wild number of possibilities, does make me nervous. And I only feel worse as we rule out one destination after another. “I’m afraid we’ll never find the right place,” I tell Jen.

“Of course you will. You have the whole world!”

But do we? Huge chunks of it are far less stable and congenial than the United States. The place we would most love to live, Canada, does not want us. I post an apology on a Canadian website, saying not all of us agree with our president, and posts slam back asking who let the slimy American onto their page.

We need to narrow our search to places where people do not hate the United States.

And where would that be?

“Gracious! Aren’t we ever picturesque!”

~Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky

When I was single, I lived in the city’s Central West End. Then I married a man who loves small, quiet towns, so we compromised—by moving to South St. Louis city. Periodically, Andrew would grumble about the tightly packed gingerbread houses and narrow streets with impossible parallel parking, and I would inform him, in a patronizing mommy voice, that moving would not make life calmer, that you only bring yourself with you.

I was wrong. Thirteen crowded, traffic-jammed years later, Andrew landed a job with the State of Illinois, and we had to move to a small, quiet town across the river. We both relaxed. No more sirens wailing in the middle of the night, no more double-bolted doors. I felt like I could breathe.

Temperament and experiences form the skeleton that keeps us upright as we move through the world. But different places do raise or lower tension, magnify or diminish traits, encourage or discourage certain interests and habits and ways of being. In Boquete, I would have worn bright colors, partied, maybe learned to stitch patterned cotton molas. In Lehon, Bretagne, that medieval stone abbey might return me to my childhood religion. In Wales, rainy and full of poetry, I would immerse myself in literature, bookshops, book festivals. We contain multitudes; it is only a matter of bringing a few traits to the foreground and kicking others aside.

So, who do I want to be at this stage of life? What about a complete change? I could call myself Anne, my middle name, and make up a colorful past, adopt a provocative personality. The alchemy is fun to think about, but I am, like Popeye, who I am. Too much is bred in the bone, the rest engraved by history. How do I want to live, that is the question. I would have never wanted to be single in the family-friendly small town where we live now, and I would hate to go back to the cramped, chic city apartment of my single days now. At the time, it was romantic: I loved the traffic noise, the trips to the next building to do laundry and flirt; the bookstore, pubs, and park a block away. The city tasted like freedom. Now, we have freedom. And we are well acquainted with our limits. In a new country, Andrew would need to steel himself for a dizzying amount of change. I would have to bite down hard on my tendency to choose the picturesque over the practical, the village that reminds me of a favorite novel rather than the place we can be comfortable.

For now, the research continues. And as I scroll through our careful comparisons and stats, I realize I have been here before. Every major life decision—except falling in love—was the same: I read and researched, made a rational, practical list of pros and cons, and did the calculus. Then I somehow stumbled toward what I really wanted, returned to that list, and rejiggered the calculus until it affirmed my choice.

“It amused him to watch her building her pathetic little fortress of Western culture in the middle of the wilderness.”

~Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky

One can be too practical. But if one is to arrive in another country with just a couple of suitcases, one must be practical. We can ship a bit, but it is pricey. My mind scans room by room: what really matters to me? What holds so much meaning or delight, I would miss it terribly?

Not much, it seems.

Andrew’s list would be so long, I am scared to ask. But for me? The antique hotel bell. The little sheep painting. Our trusty hot water bottle; they are hard to find. My mother’s elegant Steuben champagne glasses—four of them, because we are bound to make at least two friends, right? Horsie, the stuffed animal our dog runs to find and carries through the house, head high, whenever he is happy. My beloved sauté pan, best I have ever found. Art supplies. Photo albums.

Proud to live so lightly, I turn to the next question: what am I likeliest to miss?

Answers rush in, nearly knock me down. The fat, bright red kettle. Our sturdy, handpainted kitchen table. The Christmas ornaments. The Riverside Shakespeare. My husband’s grandmother’s carved Chinese desk with the secret compartment and tiny drawers. His great-grandfather’s rocker, its arms wide and flat, smoothed by time. The mirror a friend from Azerbaijan carved for us from a single lustrous piece of cherrywood, surprising us with an intricate C at the top.

You can’t take it with you, as they say. These things are too heavy or silly to ship overseas. But my hand knows the feel of them, and they soften my gaze. Sartre warned that past choices and deceptions add weight to our life, limiting our freedom. Today we call that “baggage.” Its literal analog can be just as burdensome; the more you own, the more work you have to do to keep it clean, keep it in order, keep it safe.

But not everything weighs you down. Some things anchor you.

A house in Boquete (Shutterstock)

“We’ve never managed, either one of us, to get all the way into life. We’re hanging on to the outside for all we’re worth, convinced we’re going to fall off at the next bump.”

~Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky

We have different dreams, Andrew and I. He wants, above all, peace and quiet. He wants to get up in the morning, sit outside with a cup of coffee and gaze at something beautiful, whether it is a harbor, a dormant volcano, or just a cobbled winding street in lieu of a spit and drywall suburban development.

I want an adventure. A new language to fumble into gradual, proud fluency. New places to explore, new people to get to know. I do not want to spend my last years on this planet doing the same old things I have done for sixty years. The rhythms are too easy. And I would love to find a place where I felt…consonant. At home, congruent with the surrounding values, proud of the culture. Here, I am always a bit at odds, a bit discontent. But is it too late to belong somewhere else? Does my problem live inside me, ready to be carried to the next place of alienation?

Such self-indulgent questions. For more than a century, people who were surgeons or physicists have come here and cleaned toilets while they learned a new country’s language, its overt rules, its tacit rules. Now people who were forced to flee war-torn countries, often by foot, with a child’s small damp hand clutching theirs, are being rounded up and ejected from safety.

And I am worried about finding a cottage with a fireplace.

Even with luck and comfort, though, moving overseas would be disorienting. So much I have learned here, drip by drip over the years, would be rendered useless. So many memories would stay here, trapped in physical places that I would no longer pass with a misty smile. No running into old friends serendipitously; no comparing notes. Worst of all, I would be leaving my beloved dead. My mother, the friends who died young—they still haunt the places we frequented together. Abroad, could I summon them?

On the other hand, would I still wince at my failure to keep the house clean if I lived someplace my mother’s ghost could not swim to?

Other people define us, Sartre warned. They limit our freedom. So what happens if we break free? A set of strangers would be trying to figure out who I am, just when I have finally stopped worrying what others think of me. Either the old self-consciousness would slam back, or I would become the village eccentric.

Most likely, we will stick it out here, live with the devils we know. Moving is scary. But, whispers the small voice, what an adventure it would be. Or what a colossal mistake. We could not know which until it was too late, and that is its thrill and its terror.