Das Heimatland
posted by Helen
My father wants to go back to Switzerland. Frustrated by failing health, eyesight, hearing, he longs to be a young man at the technical school in Bern.
He wants to go out carousing all night with school chums long gone, to swim in the swift river. To build an impromptu wall across a quiet street using brick a careless workman left lying by the roadside.
He is a mischievous young man with short brown hair and smiling eyes. A cousin, younger than him by half at the time, once told me that he seemed so American, this young Swiss born in the Philippines. He chewed gum. He clipped photographs from precious "Life" magazines and pinned them on the wall in his room.
As he once longed for America, now he longs for Switzerland. He has always loved the country of his youth, considered it his true homeland, even while living an abundant American life. America is distasteful to him now, a spoiled child grown to an ugly adulthood, the home of his old age and decline. He wants to leave it behind and see the alps again.
I can't help him. I offer to go with him for a visit, two weeks, maybe a month although I know I can't afford that much time. No. Not good enough. It must be for a year, an impossible amount of time. He says infuriating things for a well-meaning American to hear. I hold my tongue, my breath. It is pointless to argue; it would give neither of us any pleasure and would only damage the certain yet oddly delicate love I feel for him.
A friend asks how my parents are and I tell her what I think I know. She speculates that he wants to go to Switzerland to die, but I know better. He wants to go to Switzerland to live.
He wants to go out carousing all night with school chums long gone, to swim in the swift river. To build an impromptu wall across a quiet street using brick a careless workman left lying by the roadside.
He is a mischievous young man with short brown hair and smiling eyes. A cousin, younger than him by half at the time, once told me that he seemed so American, this young Swiss born in the Philippines. He chewed gum. He clipped photographs from precious "Life" magazines and pinned them on the wall in his room.
As he once longed for America, now he longs for Switzerland. He has always loved the country of his youth, considered it his true homeland, even while living an abundant American life. America is distasteful to him now, a spoiled child grown to an ugly adulthood, the home of his old age and decline. He wants to leave it behind and see the alps again.
I can't help him. I offer to go with him for a visit, two weeks, maybe a month although I know I can't afford that much time. No. Not good enough. It must be for a year, an impossible amount of time. He says infuriating things for a well-meaning American to hear. I hold my tongue, my breath. It is pointless to argue; it would give neither of us any pleasure and would only damage the certain yet oddly delicate love I feel for him.
A friend asks how my parents are and I tell her what I think I know. She speculates that he wants to go to Switzerland to die, but I know better. He wants to go to Switzerland to live.
Posted at 2:25 PM
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