Sometime in January my sister is going to have a baby and this impending event has made me seriously consider visiting my family. If I do so, not only will it be the first time in nearly four years that I have seen my family, it will also be the first time that I have set foot on U.S. soil since I moved to Germany.
I seldom get homesick for America, but the prospect of seeing my family and friends again is quite appealing and even though my sister and I have never been very close, I would like to be there on such a momentous occasion in her life.
Besides, I know that I would enjoy seeing the rest of my family, particularly my niece. When I left she was barely two years old and just learning to talk. Now she is almost six, has started kindergarten, and is eagerly awaiting her baby brother. She isn’t a baby anymore, she is a person and I feel that by being away for so long I am missing the opportunity to get to know her.
However, as much as I would like to see my family, I must admit that the idea of visiting America after all this time does have me a little anxious. In fact, ironically enough, of all things that a visit to America makes me consider, it is the language that I think about the most. During the time that I have spent in Germany I have gone from wistfully daydreaming about returning to a place where everyone understands me and I understand them to fearing a sensory overload when I am confronted with my native language everywhere I go.
Though German no longer really sounds or looks like a foreign language to me, the fact of the matter is that it is a foreign language and always will be. It is true that I have finally learned enough German to understand most of what is happening around me, but it has been a long time since I was able to flawlessly understand everything and as a result, I find it surprisingly easy to filter things out. Of course, this sporadic language oblivion has been known to cause problems, like when I happen to miss the most mundane of announcements because I wasn’t properly paying attention, but in general I am satisfied if I understand 65% of what I see and/or hear.
Now you might wonder what the big deal is about my ability to tune German out. After all, people do that in their native languages all the time: There is so much random information floating around at anytime that one must have the ability to filter information in order to cope with daily life. And I would wholeheartedly agree with that point.
However, I have discovered that while living in Germany, I have developed some sort of “English antenna” that has turned picking up an English conversation or spotting an English-language newspaper or book from an interesting anomaly into something of an obsession for me. As soon as I spot someone speaking or reading English, I am completely absorbed by it: It doesn’t matter if they are talking about what they had for breakfast or reading the sports page of USA Today, I just have to eavesdrop.
I don’t know why either. It would be different if I was starved for English, but thanks to the Internet and the fact that A. and I speak English together, I simply have no excuse for this peculiarity. Out of politeness I try to ignore English when I see or hear it, but for some unknown reason I just can’t seem to pull myself away from it.
Therefore, I hope that upon returning to America I can remember how to filter out things in English that I technically have no interest in. If I can’t, I fear that I might go mad!
That is how many French knots the Lavender Fairy calls for… and she is only 3 inches wide by five inches tall! I know that number would scare a lot of stitchers away from this pattern, but not me! To tell the truth, I have absolutely no problem with French knots and I actually enjoy making them!
