One evening last month, I set the balcony table while Markus grilled a variety of Würst for us. Leaves rustling. Birdsong. Distant traffic. He set the steaming sausages on the table, and within seconds, a grist of blowflies descended. Whoa!
The Swiss are a clean and sober folk, yet oddly relaxed about houseflies—screened windows are few here—but these glistening green flies, buzzing about our dinner, alarmed even my very Swiss husband. “Where the hell are they coming from?” he said, waving them off. He rushed inside to fetch a fly swatter and tea towels to cover the meat and side dishes.
The flies triggered memories of a place I’d lived as a kid, Taiwan. Like the flies themselves, they came in buzzes of images, from those of the fly-infested, weepy eyes of the brahmans and buffalo pulling carts of fresh produce and fruit into our compound, to the bug-ridden heaps of garbage the corners of narrow alleys seemed to collect. I even recalled the corpses of dogs left to rot in ditches and those of cats hanged from tree limbs to keep bad spirits from inhabiting them and roaming the streets. To me, the writhing maggots seemed worse than any idea of bad spirits. Flies are gruesome, and the memories they trigger are gruesome, too, but homely and welcome as well. They put me into myself.
with my sister’s dog Cricket.
I spent two years in Taiwan, and I’ve been in Europe for over thirty years—Switzerland, mostly, but five years in France, too. And I said to my husband, once he’d finished battling back the flies, “You know, I’ve lived more years outside the States than in it.” He grew up in our town on the Rhine. His sister and her family lives next door to us in the house his parents built after retiring. His brother and his wife live here town, too.
My husband smiles and points to the Wurst on my plate. “Mustard?” he says.
The balcony is disturbingly littered with fly corpses, so I fetch the dustpan and sweep up them up. As I do so, I say, “My memories of Taiwan remain so vivid. And after our return, our Taiwan experiences made the States seem incredibly boring.” No colorful temples sitting in rice fields. No night markets to lose yourself in. No benjos to leap over, ripe tropical fruits to nibble on, or brilliantly red flame trees. “I thought I was going to die of boredom in Denver. And it was so dry there compared to Taiwan. We’d make trips to the botanic gardens just to be in the conservatory. To feel humidity again.” The teak furniture we had made in Taiwan would split, Colorado was so dry, and we’d rub it weekly with oil.
He knows what I mean about the humidity. He and I backpacked through Southeast Asia together before settling down. “Is it boring here, too?” he says, dipping his Wurst into Dijon mustard.
People here and back home used to ask me if I suffered homesickness. But Switzerland is so singular a landscape it never reminds me of other places I’ve called home. Not like the buzz of blowflies.
When I travel to the States, I still sense my arrival home. There are times on my visits, that I could easily imagine never having left. But I experience the same on my return to Switzerland. I pierce my Wurst with the tines of my fork, releasing a clear jus, and smile at my husband’s question. No, Switzerland is not boring. There is so much to discover still.
Triggered memories put me in three frames of mind at once, the present moment, which spins me back in time and launches me forward. Are there certain experiences that trigger your fond memories, enriching your life?
Meredith Writes 