The boys came running up the stairs from the basement. The girls, cracking an inside joke, lifted themselves off the sofa in the living room. Both TVs were left on, and the strangely compatible soundtracks to NBA 2K12 and Project Runway: All-Stars echoed in the kitchen.
Outside snow was starting to fall on the cold Wisconsin ground. It was the middle of December and I had just arrived from Thailand, meeting my girlfriend’s family at their house, where we were to stay for two weeks before seeing my family in Indiana. It was the first stop of a whirlwind visit to America, a one-month layover before we would leave again, this time flying to South America.
My girlfriend’s mother, MomO, had ordered a couple of pizzas from Domino’s. It wasn’t anything special; just a way to unite the family—three teenaged girls, two boys, 8 and 11, and a 15 year-old exchange student from Spain who, having lived in the house for 5 months, was by this time part of the gang. This was my first meal with them, my first meal with the family. And it was a short one.
The kids circled the boxes of pizza like a pack of hyenas ready to pounce on a wounded antelope. In no time at all, they had each grabbed and swallowed two slices and returned to whatever they had been doing before dinner. My girlfriend, still fighting the effects of jetlag, excused herself soon after and went to bed at 7:10 in the evening. Exhausted, but far from tired, I sat and talked with MomO, trying to answer questions that had no answer: How did it feel being away for so long? What is Christmas like with your family? How would you get dinner in Thailand? We talked for almost two hours, setting in motion the protracted experiment of understanding one another.
All around us life went on as it always did. Continue reading
Erased and Rewritten 