“What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?”
Those questions belong to one of my favorite poets, Langston Hughes, and from one of his most famous poems, “Harlem,” though they are not nearly all the questions he poses in that poem. I taught the poem any chance I could over my nearly 15 year teaching career, including when we read A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, so I’m aware its meaning is not about moving to another country — at least, not in a literal sense. I’ve analyzed it with 7th-graders, 8th-graders, 10th-graders, and 11th-graders. It never fails to impact with its imagery or its meaning.
So when our departure to Switzerland was delayed, my mind associated the alliteration of delayed departure with dream deferred and noticed the several similarities. And what happened to our departure deferred?
Well, it didn’t dry up like a raisin in the sun. Nor did it fester like a sore and then run. It didn’t even stink like rotten meat! (Have I grossed you out enough to study the poem yet? It’s short and relatively simple — at face value. But. Don’t forget the title. In poetry, always come back to the title.)
Despite the fact that our visas had not come through in order for Husband to start his Swiss job April 1, nor for the family to depart in late-March as planned, we came to an agreement with the company that they would sponsor our rent from April 1 through to the departure date — now slated for late-April. With hope that the visas would soon come through, we planned a new start date for Husband’s position, May 1. A one month delay.
“Yeah, they better be fronting the bill for our rent — and any changes in the cost of our flights. We did exactly what they told us to do.” I confessed to Husband, revealing my letter of the law approach to the professional world — which I’m not always proud of.
Husband glossed over my subtle ire. “What do you think about spending that time in Europe? The time from April 1 to April 20th or so? I haven’t booked our new tickets to Zurich, so we could use that time to travel and get acclimated to a more European timezone. Maybe we could spend a week in Italy or Germany beforehand.”
“That sounds pretty awesome,” I said, “but will it mess with our visa process?”
“Okay, well, if that’s the case, what if we split the travel time.”
“What does that mean?”
“We could go to the East Coast to divide the flight into two. Go to Boston or something — “
“I love Boston!”
“I know. We could spend a few weeks there and then the travel time gets split. It’ll no longer be such a massive travel day or such a massive time change to adjust to.”
“I am all for that. I haven’t been to Boston in — gosh, twenty years.”
Back to Beantown — with its Charles River, Duck Tours, and Freedom Trail. I’d show my kids where I lived, a block from the original Cheers. And they’d want to see the show because they will have never heard of it before. It sounded great: a return to my college town, my country’s birthing pangs, then off to a European life. It’d be symbolically parallel and therefore poetic. I went to a new coast to start a new life that would lead to a new career when I was eighteen. Now that I’m (throat clear) not eighteen, I could do that much better: I’d go to a new continent to start a new life that will lead to a new career. Ahhhh, a symmetry that’s soothing.
Moving to a new country where you don’t speak the language, don’t know the customs, don’t know the history, don’t even know the system of government like you do your country of origin is not a soothing experience. Boston sounded good.
Tickets to Boston cost nearly as much as tickets to Zurich for the timeline needed to be out of our home before April 1 and in Switzerland before May 1. Without an income until Husband started his job, that seemed unwise. So, instead of returning to my college town, we returned to my first teaching town and lived a few blocks from the Pacific Ocean until we departed. Not a bad deal.
Given that I grew up in the adjacent town, the return to the stomping grounds of my educational upbringing (both as the recipient and deliverer of education) brought a stunning juxtaposition. Here, in Southern California, blocks from the beach, I knew every block. I knew which houses had been painted, where to get the best breakfasts, the shortcuts and secret parks, all without having to think about it. In Zurich — oy. How many miles — scratch that — kilometers to the ocean? What do they even eat for breakfast? Bratwurst? Isn’t that German? I don’t know what Swiss food is! Oh my goodness. I am going from completely comfortable and confident to, there’s no better way to say it, inept and idiotic. Or at least feeling that way.
No, no. Stop that. Think of it on a bigger level. As not just you, KZ, as a part of a unit. This was the place you met your family, where you met Husband (or so he says because I don’t remember it). We will launch from our starting place to a new start.
Given the means, the time, the flexibility, and the freedom, maybe that’s what happens to a dream deferred. It takes a turn and bursts onto a new tangent. The anger and the fear of the early days of deferral shadow every thought and decision early on, but that settles. We were lucky enough to have circumstances cleared relatively quickly. And a month is not that long to delay a departure, let alone to defer a dream. It’s nothing like a lifetime. Or many lifetimes.
What happened to our dream deferred? It combusted into a new starting line, in a new language, with the same old sound of the gun. It ran ’round, stepping in paces paved by the past and it built up speed to leap —
And, like most leaps into the unknown, we had a sense of where we were heading, but no idea where we were going; we knew our time of arrival, but had no idea when we’d set our feet on the ground.
We have since landed in Switzerland. The travel was both a nightmare and better than expected, the experience in customs, one I hope to forget. But we are in Zurich, living in our temporary apartment, looking for one of our own, and back in the Holy-Moly list of tasks that need completing — this time, from the other side of the world.
Once we are settled, we plan to go on semi-regular excursions — and tell you all about them. To keep track of where we go, visit the Travel Log section of this site, comment with where you think we ought to go or what you want us to tell you about when we’re there, and, of course, subscribe! .
KZ Rochelle 