„They Change Their Sky but not Their Soul
Who Cross the Ocean.“
(for newcomers, for „lifers“, but most of all for Nancy Huth)
The first time I ever left my home in Texas was in the summer
of 1967 as a college junior 20 years of age. It hadn‘t been my
idea in the first place. My French professor, knowing I wanted
to teach and needed to improve, had encouraged me to apply
for an Alliance Française scholarship for a summer in France.
My strict, fearful grandmother Mary (I had another
grandmother Mary, the loving, trusting one), warned my
parents that if they let me go they‘d lose me forever. But at
that time they were happy about my scholarships and
educational opportunities. Only later, when there seemed to
be no end to it, when I was asked to stay at the university to
do a doctorate and when I‘d fallen in love with a German I‘d
met in France, did they become seriously alarmed . . . .
We did lose each other, or parts of each other, for a while:
the dependent, „be-just-like-me“ parts. I am now older than
my parents were then and have two children of my own to let
go of, one of whom is as different from me as I was from my
parents. It takes great courage and trust to have faith that
what feels like a rejecting, wounding loss will turn out to be
the living basis for new, more independent love and friendship
between parents and grown-up children.
It was quite a change of sky for me back in 1967: one day
in Houston, Texas, embedded in my family and studies,
knowing hardly anything else; the next day in Paris, living
alone in a shabby, bare, tiny garret hotel room, walking around
the Quartier Latin and over the Seine, blinking at all the
differences: incredibly decorated store windows, beautifully
dressed women wearing straight skirts and crisp-collared
blouses with scarves tucked in at the collar, parks with
landscaped flowers I‘d never seen, ancient fountains, seats that
cost money to sit on, different architecture, space, food,
language, rhythms, priorities, vegetation, climate. But what I
remember most clearly was thinking, „It‘s still just me walking
around here. How can I be the same person I always was
when everything else is so different?“
My sky had changed: the constellations were backwards.
Of course, the sky had not really changed, only my perspective
had. Changes of soul came later. I‘ve since read that the soul
is extremely slow to react to positive or negative changes. It
takes a long process of feeling and contemplating to do what
we call in German verarbeiten, or „to work it out“. Something
in France spoke to my Texan soul that had never been only
Texan. Something in me reacted to an educated young
German student different from my farming German-Texan
ancestors.
This summer my dear, oldest German friend and neighbor
gave me heck when it turned out our daughter wanted to stay
in the U.S. to do her B.A. and not come back after only a year
there. My friend accused me of not loving my daughter
because I was abetting her in having the kind of split life that
caused me so much suffering (and delight). I shouldn‘t help
her get into the university there but should clearly tell her to
stay here, where she is so dearly loved and needed. This
flabbergasted me, as it‘s been my experience that you can‘t
keep anyone by holding him or her tight. My friend said our
daughter would do what she wanted anyway but needed to
have the clear message from me: stay home.
I was confused so talked to my daughter. Isabelle said it
was too late to try to keep a split life from her. Growing up
German/American, she was already split. She knew we loved
her and wanted her around, and she was very grateful for our
support of her present goal of International Studies in the
U.S. She asked me, „Is your friend crazy, or what?“, and I felt
better. I don‘t know where my daughter will end up, but I
know that, like me, she will always come home again.
Our souls are in our people and our places. There can be
more than one. We needn‘t feel only split but in time can also
feel enriched.
I think those of us who cross the ocean, who take a „road
less travelled“, as Frost and Nancy say, do change our souls.
That is not the purpose of our journey but the result. The
German poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote in his last poem about
the difference between the doves that remain inside the
dovecote and those who return after being outside in danger,
about the difference in force between a thrown and an
unthrown ball. Rilke says that the dove or the ball that has
gone away brings an extra dimension back home with it.
By the weight of return it is more.
So perhaps our quotation should read:
They change their sky but not
their soul who cross the ocean,
but they who recross the ocean
bring a changed soul back.
Here is Rilke‘s poem, from TWENTY GERMAN POETS: A BILINGUAL COLLECTION, selected, translated and introduced by
Walter Kaufmann, Random House, New York, 1962:
Dove that remained outside, outside the dovecote,
back in its sphere and home, one with the day and night,
it knows the secrecy when the most remote
terror is fused into deeply felt flight.
Of all the doves the always most protected,
never endangered most, does not know tenderness;
richest of all hearts is the resurrected;
turning back liberates, freedom rejoices.
Over the nowhere arches the everywhere.
Oh, the ball that is thrown, that we dare,
does it not fill our hands differently than before?
By the weight of return it is more.
Taube, die draussen blieb, ausser dem Taubenschlag
wieder in Kreis und Haus, einig der Nacht, dem Tag,
weiss sie die Heimlichkeit, wenn sich der Einbezug
fremdester Schrecken schmiegt in den gefühlten Flug.
Under den Tauben, die allergeschonteste,
niemals gefährdetste, kennt nicht die Zärtlichkeit;
wiedererholtes Herz ist das bewohnteste:
freier durch Widerruf freut sich die Fähigkeit.
Über dem Nirgendssein spannt sich das Überall!
Ach der geworfene, ach der gewagte Ball,
füllt er die Hände nicht anders mit Wiederkehr:
rein um sein Heimgewicht ist er mehr.
September 1999