Context, Part 1

A couple of years ago, I attended my high school class reunion. I had a great time, but it was a very strange experience for me. Why? Well, part of it was the normal class reunion experience of seeing people with whom you have a shared history, some of whom you haven't necessarily seen in many years. But for me, this was amplified by the unusual sensation of being surrounded by a group of people with whom I had not only a shared culture but also a personal history.

Three or four of my closest high school friends--people I still see once or twice a year--were there, but there was also the girl who was my reading partner, starting in first grade and all through elementary school. Another girl whose grandparents lived three doors down from me, with whom I spent many, many wonderful summer days playing with hula hoops and eating Pringles in her grandparents' RV parked in the back yard. Classmates who told me that they see my dad in Wal-Mart every week and remember that my ex-brother-in-law was in the Navy and know his brothers and sisters. Since he and my sister got divorced in 1986, most of my closest friends today don't even know my ex-brother-in-law's name, much less what he did for a living or anything about his family. But there I was, surrounded by people whom I hadn't seen for 10 years or more, who knew so much about my life's history. They knew my historical context.

This felt like a very strange juxtaposition to my daily life in Paris, where most of my friends knew very little about my life history. Oh, everyone knew that I was American, but their ideas of what that meant, of what my childhood and life might have been like, were based on what they'd seen on TV and in movies. Most of them would politely ask where I was from, and knowing that there was little chance that they would have heard of it, I had my stock reply of, "Minnesota, it's-in-the-center-of-the-country-on-the-border-of-Canada, where-the-Mississippi-River-starts" (sadly, that gave them a much clearer idea than it would to most Americans). Occasionally, I would be pressed for the name of my hometown, and it was always funny to see how many French people actually recognized the name "Mankato" from their years of watching La Petite maison sur la prairie as children. But there was no easy way for me to adjust their mental image of my history from that of the Ingalls family to my truth of a childhood of riding my bike to the swimming pool and eating Pringles in my friend's grandparents' RV in the backyard. Context is hard to communicate.

I think that's partly why immigrants tend to group together in a foreign country: shared cultural context is a powerful bond. It was comforting to hang out with other Americans who missed peanut butter and knew the same TV-comedy punch lines as I did. But even though we shared the same culture, a big chunk of personal history was always missing, because family and past friends were far away and rarely seen in person. And even though the other Americans probably understood about riding bike to the swimming pool in the summer, many of them seemed surprised to learn that it gets warm enough to swim in Minnesota (I couldn't believe how many of my American friends asked if I really needed to get an air conditioner for my apartment here in July)!

But even though a part of my historical context was always missing for everyone I knew in Paris, those were the people with whom I shared my day to day experiences: metro rides and strikes, office tasks and tales, dinners and movies and parties and fights and laughter and worries about loved ones thousands of miles away. They knew the name of my boss and what project I was working on that day, and when I was stressed out or happy and why. They shared my life, my present context.

Skip back to my class reunion, where I was surrounded by people who knew my history and couldn't begin to imagine my present-day life. When classmates asked where I was living, and I said, "Paris," the most frequent response was, "Wow . . . what's that like?" And I would just shrug and say, "Oh, it's really pretty normal. I mostly just go to work and plop down in front of the TV to eat my dinner at the end of the day." Which was true, except that I did it all in a context where I could buy fresh baguette and croissants and amazing cheese whenever I wanted, and see the Eiffel Tower on my way to church on Sunday morning, and wander through the courtyard of the Louvre on the way to meet a friend for a drink. A very normal daily life, in a very special context, which I somehow didn't think I'd be able to explain to my Pringles-eating playmate.

On either side of the ocean, it often feels like half of my context is missing.