Camouflage

What I Did on My Summer Vacation

Photo by James Wainscoat on Unsplash

Trepidation. I hadn’t been back for two years and the news reports are not good. Would I still recognize my own country?

It started off fine. I flew into a small airport in the next state, stayed in a hotel close by, where I met a friend, and we caught up. Everyone was friendly and the service impeccable.

The next day, I drove home. Still in a Southern state, but the look on people’s faces is grimmer. You can see what’s going on in their minds:

“It’s okay for you, but I’m not okay. And how do I even know whose side you’re on?”

They’re right. You don’t know.

My stomach is still on Paris time, and finding food when you’re suddenly ravenous isn’t as easy as it used to be. A local supermarket is gone, with its memorable salad bar. The nationwide sandwich chain I stopped at on the day I arrived didn’t even have wholewheat bread, and the tuna salad left my first bagel in ages a sloppy disappointment.

What do you do when you come to the US? You shop, if you’re lucky enough to have the funds. I snapped up several middle-of-the-road items, the likes of which are hard to find in Paris, where it’s all high-end or low-end, and one of the things was a camouflage print tee shirt. Just because. In Europe, they’re chic. What do they signify? I’m not entirely sure, but at worst, probably solidarity with Ukraine. Not what I found when I walked into a local barbecue joint.

A couple of good ol’ boys were propping up the counter in front of the gun rack, discussing how allergies were caused by vaccines. “When we were growing up we didn’t have all those vaccines,” one said.

I ordered my sandwich and rolled my eyes so hard they almost ricocheted: “You must be about my age, so that means you only had polio, measles, mumps, rubella, smallpox, and probably diphtheria, whooping cough, and tetanus vaccines,” I didn’t say. Why cause trouble in front of a gun rack?

Sitting down at a table and feeling shaky I looked across into the next room, where hunting and fishing gear were displayed, including camo wear.

Oh man, they think I’m one of them! Good thing? Bad thing? Suddenly, I’m feeling far from chic, but relatively safe for the duration of my barbecue sandwich.

And then it got interesting. The new owner was talking about his grandfather’s restaurant, which I used to go to as a kid. A wooden marlin on the wall was the giveaway that this was the same family. I used to go to school and church with a girl who is probably his mother or aunt. This was something new: Connection. Belonging.

I’ve lived almost my entire adult life abroad, never having that common history, those connections to people and places around me. It’s only on trips back home that I’ve felt accepted as a local, as being from someplace.

And then the country was divided. How do I reconnect when I have something in common while being fundamentally different?

The camouflage took on a sinister symbolism.

I’ve been back in France for a couple of weeks now, a country also divided and taking to the streets over gaping inequalities. I joke about how I had been relieved to live here, but the way things look, France may not be far behind. My neighbors pull down their camo veil and refrain from commenting.

But somebody is demonstrating.