My Other Country: Comet

Madeline has lived in Berlin for over a year now, but I still haven't gotten over the shock and pleasure of seeing her - suddenly, on a day's notice - standing in front of me.

I moved to Germany 3 years ago, and at first the awareness of being a continent away from my family was pretty much constant. In the US, I'd always felt that tiny invisible threads connected me to everyone I loved, no matter where we all lived. All I had to do was tug one of the threads, and that person would respond. Or the other way around. On the day my grandmother died, I was working my desk job at J. I was the receptionist; my job was to answer the phones. I answered and it was my father, calling to tell me about the accident.

Sometimes I can't find the threads at all anymore. They're still there, but they're buried under calculations of time-zones, work schedules, empty phone cards and warbling Skype connections. I have to actually hear my cell phone when it rings, which most of the time it doesn't because I'm in a theater; I have to get the message from my home machine, which most of the time I don't because I don't understand the German directions on how to re-set the damned thing; I have to read the email, which arrives when I'm sleeping and by the time I wake up what if it's too late. I worry about the threads. I imagine my father trying to track down the number at the theater, and wonder how he would communicate with the German receptionist, and how she would find me in the maze of the theater, and what if I was on my lunch break?

As I came out into the lobby after the premiere Saturday, I saw Madeline right away and walked straight over to her. She was talking to Fred in the beautiful wedding tie and Jens, back from Berlin, and Roland, spiffy in his sweater, who came straight from a job in Frankfurt. I stood behind her for a moment - she hadn't seen me yet - just long enough to hear her say, "It smells like Li.." and as she said my name she turned around, and there I was.

We had 20 hours. We had drinks. We woke up and talked about the dances, about the art gallery, about the elephants Roland is building for the circus, about Fred's eternal search for chairs for his classroom...