I am headed back home by train that was over an hour late. The compartment is mostly empty but there is crying infant nearby. He goes off and on randomly unhappy or uncomfortable or both until too worn out from it all. Outside, the river is full to the brim. There had been a flashflood warning only a couple of days ago. The sky had cried out many tears it seems and then quit much like the infant - there had been no flooding. We all give up with the tears in the end was the thought that crossed my mind - things in nature like the child and nature itself. Earlier at work, I was trying to calm down a distraught colleague who had recently immigrated to America not entirely of her own volition and was not sure she liked it so much. She had been here on business many times over the years and is no stranger to the city she now lives in. But it refuses to become home for her and she can't fall in love with her new life.
L needs to bawl like the infant to work it through her system but she's a responsible adult and wants to act that way. She wants to make this all work out even as she loses her mind by the minute. I don't have any furniture and I miss my home - my desk and chair, she says. Knowing her for as long as I do, I don't think the desk and chair are the issue. Things refuse to fit and converge in the way she hoped they would, in a way that would make her whole immigration adventure feel worthwhile. Not much has changed. There is new scenery and a lot of settling down to do. But the overall quality of her life cannot improve until she decides that work is not equal to life. L could have made that choice back home and still can in America. Until then she will be a lot like the child in my train who bounced between unhappy and uncomfortable until exhausted. The rain will only sometimes bring deluge - mostly it will threaten consequences and go away.
Comments