My Crazy Ex-Country

On the worry and joy of visiting my old life in Brooklyn after a year in Paris

Well hello! I’m so glad you’re here. For reasons I share below, I’ve been reluctant to publish light tales of Paris life for several weeks. Today, I’m leaping into territory I usually avoid, which is a little scary, but here goes. (A note for you writerly readers: There’s one spot left in the non-fiction writing workshop I’m co-hosting in Paris in April; find all the details here.)

I didn’t think the United States still had a hold on my heart or even my anger. I walked away, after all. But last month, after living in Paris for a year, I visited Brooklyn, where I raised my kids and found my most beloved friends. At the time, I joked that I was returning to answer the question: Is visiting the U.S. after leaving it like having lunch with an ex who’s joined a cult?

I wrote a sweet little piece about what it was like to drop in on my old life. But it hasn’t felt right to publish it these last weeks because of the roiling avalanche of disturbing news from the United States. It felt odd to talk blithely about spending time there without acknowledging the fear and uncertainty I now hear in the voices of people I love who are there.

The trouble is, even if you move to France, you can’t avoid thinking about America’s troubles. I just saw the Bob Dylan biopic, a film set in the 1960s, a decade of progress that almost broke the U.S., and I found myself sobbing after ten minutes. It was unexpected grief for a country I’d left without hesitation. I broke down when they sang the old folk song “This Land Is Your Land.” If you went to U.S. schools, you’ll know it:

“This land is your land, this land is my land

From California to the New York island

From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters

This land was made for you and me”

And later, there’s this gorgeous bit of writing:

“I've roamed and rambled, and I followed my footsteps

To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts

And all around me, a voice was sounding

This land was made for you and me.”

The original version of the song was written by Woody Guthrie in 1940 as a retort to “God Bless America,” which he saw as cloyingly patriotic, especially during the Great Depression when millions of Americans were standing in line for food and jobs. Still, Guthrie removed a few pointed verses about inequality before releasing it, including this one:

“In the squares of the city, in the shadow of the steeple, By the relief office I seen my people; As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking Is this land made for you and me?”

That last line is, of course, an eternal and inescapable question for the U.S. It is a song about a nation gifted with endless natural bounty and promise yet hobbled by its inequities. That tension between potential and reality is why loving the U.S. can be so heartbreaking.

Take it from Bruce Springsteen, who gets at all that in this rendition of the song, which he calls the most beautiful ever written about America.

The thing is, I was never all that patriotic to begin with – always howling about some cruel and idiotic American war abroad or injustice at home, never mind the Hunger Games healthcare system. But the Dylan film reminded me of the underlying story you hear in all American music. Rock, folk, blues, bluegrass, rap, country – all are cousins, all are woven from the yearnings and heartbreak of dozens of cultures from all over the planet, but mixed in the U.S., and you can’t go anywhere on the planet without hearing it. This is America’s superpower. We make songs that can puncture iron curtains and melt cultural boundaries. And it is why hundreds of Parisians were in a theater to see a film about Bobby Zimmerman from Minnesota, whom they know as Dylaaan.

So here I am in the old world, weeping for the new one and the loss of something essential that we can’t yet name or quantify. But it surely has something to do with the ache in those 60s songs, the relentless forward motion, the hopeful dissent.

As to that original question I was writing about last month. Is visiting the U.S. after leaving like having lunch with your ex who’s joined a cult? Yeah, it kinda is. And even so, at the prospect of seeing your ex again, there’s nervousness. You wonder, will there be regret or longing? A ‘maybe I should not have run away to another continent?’ feeling.

You watch your ex do their familiar ex things, but now you see them through the dispassionate looking glass of a new life. On this visit, Brooklyn seemed more vast, and it is, compared to Paris. With 2.9 million people, that one borough of New York City is bigger than my new city.

And if you know Brooklyn, you know that moving through it is like an all-five-senses immersive video game in which anything can come at you any time. A sofa left in a crosswalk, a man with a pet rat in his pocket on the subway, a spectacular garden overflowing its fences on a desolate block. The brownstones with their lanterns and flower boxes. It’s the lovely. The scary. The fascinating. All of it every day, everywhere. I remember how that energy lit me up when I first lived there as a young mom. Now, not so much.

On this visit, I walked along the looping paths I’d trod for years between home, work, subway, park, coffee shop, kids’ schools. There was fondness, but not regret over leaving. I knew that my heart would not constrict with grief when I left. Nor was I enraged that the wait for subway trains appears to have doubled. Instead, it was a kind of liberation. Brooklyn’s problems are no longer my problems, nor are its charms a reflection of me.

The uncoupling of my identity from Brooklyn feels surprisingly bloodless, considering how much of any New Yorker’s identity is tied to their neighborhood. Changing zip codes in New York is almost as dramatic as changing countries. If I tell anyone from Gotham that I was a Park Slope, Brooklyn mom, they’ll know where I bought my bagels and recognize me for the crunchy lefty tribe that used to be mine.

Now, like the old song says, Park Slope is just someone I used to know. Brooklyn and I could even make the small talk of longtime exes. Is that yet another soulless white marble cafe on your corner? Ugh. I get it. Those things are popping up all over my town, too. We could shake our heads in agreement that worn, soft-chaired coffee shops are better. And we’d part without drama or anger. But head to the airport and I find, to my surprise, that my heart is overrun by tenderness and worry for a city and country that are no longer mine.

Writers among you! There’s just one spot remaining in the writing workshop I’m co-hosting in Paris in April. Find out how to register here: The Blue Hour

And for something a little lighter, here’s this: