Stranger in a Strange Kitchen, or How I Overcame Childhood Xenophobia

strang·er  (strnjr) n. 1. One who is neither a friend nor an acquaintance. 2. A foreigner, newcomer, or outsider. 3. One who is unaccustomed to or unacquainted with something specified; a novice: a stranger to our language; no stranger to hardship. 4. A visitor or guest.

Having been one and met many, I wonder how all of us can feel so differently about the concept.  How a community or culture reacts to one, I think owes a lot to how often those within that community have allowed themselves to be seen as such, and how, in that moment, they felt.  And further, what they did about it.

I come from a family of travelers.  Not the pseudo-Roma types in the American southeast that collect down payments for un-asphalted driveways.  Rather, those that wander.  Or wonder.  Then wander.  There was a desk at my father's parents' house that I would pass as a child whenever we visited.  Stuffed as it was with yellowed grocery lists, receipts, catalogs, and filleted correspondence, it stood as an ongoing exhibit of their lives in process.  What caught the eye of a curious grandson, and many admiring visitors was the corkboard above it.  Pinned to every inch were thousands of photos, thick as fish scales.  Curling like sloughed bark, they were a record of an entire life spent in the service of, and as, strangers.  On camel back.  Under an umbrella, bizarre trees in the background.  Darker haired, tighter skinned people that looked a lot like my grandparents smiled back from dozens of photos definitely not taken anywhere in Kentucky.

Perhaps even more fascinating were the exchange students they hosted.  Its a very strange feeling as a young person to meet adults who don't speak English.  They're decidedly grown-up, yet they talk like children.  they're curious about you and want desperately to speak, but are forced to rely on broken phrases cribbed from television and meaningful eye contact.  They were friendly with my adults and were clearly vouched for by them.  And they were strangers.

As children, we are all given the same opportunities to embrace strange cultures and people.  To be clear, i am not describing a situation in which my mother and father encouraged me to speak to strangers, take their candy, or accept their rides.  I am referring instead to that rite of passage that all of us took at some point, which i am sure is not unique to American culture;  the sleepover.

I was 6.  It was Friday.  That morning, I took a letter from my mother to my teacher.  Having read it, she sent me to the office to show it to the secretary.  She read it.  Then she reached into her desk drawer, took out a slip of paper, and wrote down the information.  Then, dear readers, for the first time ever, before any of my plane tickets or Eurail passes, I was handed the most amazing billet any child may ever hope to receive;  a permission slip to ride a different bus.

A child's ticket for travel.  giving it to the strange bus driver, in the strange bus, parked in the strange location.  Then, off to the strange house, filled with strangers.  I had my friend as a guide of course.  but the trust required in such in arrangement ought not be overlooked.  Having been sanctioned by my parents, he would be my only touchstone, my only reference point, my only familiar on this expedition.

Let's be honest; i wasn't going overseas.  Yet, to a small child, it might as well have been a ticket to Zanzibar.  I'd had playdates before.  I'd been to other houses for birthday parties.  but this was different.  I was alone in my strangeness.  No other kids to share the oddness, and most importantly, no ride home when it got dark.  No festivities, no event.  No balloons or cake.  Just a whole lot of weird furniture, weird lighting, weird toys, in a weird house in a weird neighborhood.  and most of all, weird smells.   It might feel like a normal playdate.  Right up until dinner.

For those who may not think smell is important or indicative or evocative, i offer this test.  Walk through or near a grade school at lunch time and convince me you don't become nostalgic.  Bleach, fresh paint, and musty radiators will always be redolent of dorm life.  A strange house would be so firstly because of the smell.  Strange laundry.  Strange cleaning products resulting in disorienting floor-based play on an odd carpet or linoleum in a weird basement.  And it would all come to a point when the first fingers of aroma from dinner would find their way downstairs or out to the backyard.

Every new experience, every vacation always has a newness about it.  Something to remind you that you've gone beyond the familiar.  I argue that its the smell of other people's dinner that makes it real.  New ingredients, new techniques.  For me, as a child, that's when a play date become...sinister somehow.  Foreign.  Scary.  And no concession, whether in demeanor or speech, would ever be made in my direction to indicate an understanding of my apprehension.  My friend, his parents, and maybe a sibling or two, would simply slide into their strange chairs at their strange table and start eating their strange food.

As every day before it, that day would end. At a slightly later hour, maybe, but end it would.  With strange toothpaste in a strange bathroom.  And finally to bed, to be tucked into odd-smelling linens with my head pointing the wrong way with none of my stuffed animals on whom to rely, and what little light there may have been definitely in the wrong location.  It is at this moment that we become one of two very different kind of people.

When i was in Europe, those moments that still glow faintly in the dark, cold, shelved corridors of my memory share one immutable common theme; i was lonely.  Abjectly, despondently lonely.  By choice, i travelled alone.  I found friends with whom to share a day, a meal, or maybe a train ride.  But by forcing myself to wander alone, and through my stomaching and enduring, and most importantly, eventually riding out the resultant homesickness, I became self-reliant.  And confident.  I discovered that there is something valuable in the kindness of strangers, upon which i was forced to depend to overcome my loneliness.

I think our response to the novelty of a sleepover and the overwhelming panic of being, dare i say it, a stranger in a strange land, is what ultimately determines our acceptance of other people's cultures.  Even if we gave up and cried for our parents until they came and took us home, we recovered, tried again, and eventually spent the entirety of some night at a friend's house.  Sometimes the night passed slowly, tearfully.  Lonely.  We either become forever wary and afraid of other people, other cultures, only comfortable with a lifestyle that changes little.  Or we trust ourselves to other people, strangers in a strange home, to take care of us, never forgetting who we are and where we are most at peace.  But stronger, more confident, and more willing to expose ourselves to something foreign.

Always waiting on the other side, as a reward for our endurance, was a bright, cartoon-filled morning.  Greeted upon waking with a warm smile, by parents not much different, really, than our own.  In a kitchen, now filled with sunlight, that looked remarkably less strange and rather more familiar than when we were afraid.  And at a table with four legs, just like at home, with plates, not much different than ours.  Piled with pancakes.  Just like at my house.