Grass is Greener

A few months ago, I received an e-mail from a Latvian-to-English translator named Rich. We wrote back and forth about the things that only we could get nerdy about (hot young Latvian authors, native language instinct vs. writing skills in translation), and then he announced he'd be in New York soon with his wife, and would I like to meet up for a drink?

We met in a midtown pub. Rich said he always wondered why European tourists like to come to midtown. "And then I remembered: skyscrapers."

"I guess you would get excited by them if they weren't part of your everyday existence."

They talked about all the things they love about New York. I talked about all the things I love about Riga. They mentioned seeing good friends of mine around the old town. We realized that even we must have crossed paths at one point, on Andrejsala maybe. We talked about what it used to be like, the old bottle-collecting ladies in Filharmonijas Laukums, and the fixtures, like the long-haired guys playing guitar in the streets, that never went away. And, of course, I became nostalgic for my old temporary home.

"We should trade lives for a month."

They could have hamburgers, the excitement of skyscrapers. The whoosh of taxi cabs. I could have Vecriga: leaning over a balcony laden with boxes of forest-picked mushrooms and birch juice, trout brought in fresh from the countryside, listening to the sounds of the accordion and solitary heels on cobblestones zig-zagging up the street.

The grass is always greener on the other side, but there they have mossy forests of birches and pines, too.

We all wish we could trade lives, just temporarily. (Joyce: "If we were all suddenly somebody else.") I wouldn't want to wake up tomorrow to suddenly find that I've turned into Barbara Harris; I'm talking about a more subtle exchange of lives. So on their last night, I arrange to take them for soul food and jazz. And in the meantime I dream of tucking myself into a country house for week. Building bonfires. Collecting pieces of driftwood smoothed by the sea.

That'll do just fine.

© Zan McQuade. All rights reserved.