Keep buying home appliances

There is little excuse for being silent on your blog, so I won’t venture into that territory. But I do want to use the tried and tested trick of letting someone else write when you can’t do it. A few weeks ago Elena left a very thoughtful comment to this post. I wanted to make it more visible earlier, but I kept forgetting.

Here it is (lightly edited). Finally.

Fabulously well put, I should say!

Thank you, for writing! It’s good to know that u are not alone, and somebody else is experiencing the same sort of feeling as you.

After reading your posts I dare say you enjoyed your time in the States to the max. Even more than me, I should say for reasons it is not worth spending the time to explain right here. However, it’s interesting to see how you went ahead and bought home appliances. I did almost the same stuff. I bought bedroom furniture a week after my return to Bucharest, right before buying Christmas presents…

And this was out of a need to own something after switching apartments and houses (3 in 3 years), buying and discarding Goodwill furniture, let alone hand-me-down sort of type vacuum cleaners, irons and things of that sort… Basically, after almost 6 months since my return home, I cannot really define Bucharest as home, although it’s been my home since I was born. Funny huh, how 3 years of one’s life (spent in the States) can define you better than the many more years that basically represent your life…

What’s even funnier is that people are listening to your stories, and seem to understand, or at least they make efforts to relate. Only there is nothing to relate to for them. When you try to explain this to a co-national who’s never been away from home, or even worse to a friend who spent years abroad (be it in the States or Europe) but who never ceased to identify his home with Bucharest/Romania, it is like having a monologue. That is the sad, honest truth.

It’s sort of like the same thing of trying to explain to an American, that is making him/er understand why exactly “super” is “too pretentious a designation for the Romanian equivalent” to quote your exact words. For an American to understand the exact meaning of your statement, would be impossible unless he or she has lived or met or seen the Romanian super….

I am equally amazed and pleasantly surprised to see that you are going through the same process and experiencing your return home in the same way I am. Although you fit right in in the US, and you felt so at home and all, you are having a hard time thinking of your present home as “home”.

Keep up the good work though. Keep buying home appliances, furniture or whatever you might need. It works. With time your apt will definitely look like home and will give you that permanence feeling you long for…

I am still buying home appliances. My next target is a lamp to make reading in bed more plausible.

2 Responses to “Keep buying home appliances”

  1. Thanks, Cristi!
    Keep up the good work!

  2. Romer!can Says:

    An interesting point of view, to be sure. Being a curmudgeon, I might find room to nitpick the idea that “super” is a regional concept, in and of itself. There’s an unbelievably large number of us (dare I say a clear supermajority, no pun intended) who’ve never directly experienced such an individual.

    Meanwhile, I regret missing the GB concert.

Leave a Reply