The Exchange, last day

I don’t know what to buy for him or with him to take home to France. Since he touched down, he has wanted to purchase a pair of Nike shoes with his $300 USD. Apparently there is a pair of sneakers called “Air Force One” costing roughly the same as a drink stirrer on the famed aircraft. What is the appeal? I couldn’t begin to tell you. They look like sneakers to me, probably manufactured on the same belt with the Walmart knock-offs, but hey, who am I to get in the way of branding? Thank goodness he let go of the “Superior” brand T-shirt idea: with prices that look like typos on their website ($125-$279 for T-SHIRTS!!), all I can think is superior ripoff. I know where air force ones live: Short Pump Mall. I would rather be strapped down kicking and screaming on the Intimidator at Kings Dominion than go to Short Pump mall in the hundred degree heat on a Friday. Sorry, boy. Sophie can take him. I don’t think I will feel guilty, either. We scored two things for Jacques (his little brother) the first few days Camille was here, shopping for clothes at the Old Navy on a Delta tab. I pluck a little American flag out of the planter out front the house and that will complete his gift.

Mostly I want to fill his pockets with our time. I want him to treasure the memories, so rapidly and intensely gained; I want him to parse them out into the language of care and love that they are. Or were. His time here is quickly coming to an end. The last day is all business, matter of fact packing, up and down the stairs a dozen times to locate belongings. He has many miles–and hours–ahead of him. His group leaves Richmond tonight at 17:36. Of course we will need to take him sooner, padded for a group. Richmond to New York, New York to Paris. Charles de Gaule. At Midnight tonight he will be on a plane to Paris, arriving at one in the morning with a few hours to kill until the flight to Nice. Nice, and then I’m sure there will be a ride –is it another hour or more? About midday Sunday, just as we are getting out of church, he will at last be in sight of home, after 24 straight hours of travelling, most likely tucked into the backseat of his dad’s Volvo driving home to Cogolin. Ah, little bird. Would be quicker to fly. Would be sweeter to stay...

What will he carry with him? In the wild disparity of a young boy, he carries a $60 bluetooth speaker (bought by him) and a pocketful of penny candy (bought by me). Both seem to make him equally happy. I give him strict instructions not to eat the candy now, tonight. Some of it is for Jacques. It is taffy and gum, silly boy, for your little brother. You cannot eat that with braces. Put it in your suitcase. It is a souvenir. Instead, he wants to turn over each piece, learn its name, ask me what each item is. He wants to know each flavor, what it tastes like. Whaaaaattt? You’ve been here three weeks, you’ve been in my car and in my kitchen and in my home, there have been a bazillion things I wanted to name for you, and now you have an interest in candy? Don’t you go all educational on me now! Bring me that taffy so I can strangle you with it.

Finally he comes up the thing he wants. The thing I must score for him at the 11th hour. There’s always something. Luckily it is very easy and will require only a trip to the Food Lion. When we were at the lake I happened, par chance, to produce a true American novelty: flavor drops for water. Yep. That’s right. All of the miles and money and planning and preparing and energy poured into this little boy could have been substituted for this Dansani miracle potion. He is enthralled that instead of handing him a boring old bottle of water, my picnic also includes the power to make it tasty. He is enamored. I tell you what. If you take a plain old bottle of summer and you put in a few drops of boy from France, my, does it taste good!

The other completely unexpected souvenir (and by “completely” I mean COMPLETELY unexpected) is a large stuffed snake that he chooses during a hasty breeze-through the science museum gift store en route to the airport. “Bah, oui!” says Camille, “I love les serpents!”  You dooo? Kid, I coulda probably ponied up a copperhead or two in the back wood at my house for a lot less than that plush incubator you got would around your neck. Just to make a point, and to burn though his cash, he buys four of them. Four enormous, five foot long stuffed snakes in psychedelic colors wrapped around his neck and swallowing his small frame like he’s wearing a body boa. Can he see over the coils as we walk to the car? Can he breathe? Note that we have not actually visited the Science Museum of Virginia. Pas du tout! We went there only on a last-minute hunt for Richmond or Virginia souvenirs. I am suddenly sick with panic that we did not. There’s no more time! Nor did we take him to the Richmond (OR Washington!) zoos. My regret and panic start to bubble up inside as I look at my watch and realize the hour has come. Who made that bucket list anyway?

For the first time in the history of the exchange boy is a l’heure. On time. I try not to let that sting. He is ready, has been ready a couple days now, taking his leave emotionally, gradually, with Will getting moody and me starting to reel. Electronics generation has no earthly idea how to process the depth of emotion about to occur, because as previously noted, electronics combined with adolescence has (okay, seemingly) dulled their emotional intelligence. No worries, stunted middle-aged mommy has a PhD in sentimentality, so I will ride this wave for the three of us.

Nevertheless, boy is tracking. He is showered, dressed, and after a hearty American breakfast of waffles, strawberries and cream, he re-ascends to pack. Keep in mind that he brought maybe three or four changes of clothes, at least one of which is lost and another one trashed, so we’re not talking a major operation here. Along with the shoes he arrived in, he brought a pair of cleats. A beach boy! Soccer cleats?? He brought re-useable socks and a few pairs of sweet striped boxers. I have done his laundry for three weeks now, the same 9 or 10 pieces that could still be had in the kids’ section at H&M. Folded and packed they take up so little space! Bulkiest item in there is the Captain American beach towel I bought him as a souvenir. There is room in that bag, I surmise, to fit a full-grown mom. Or, thankfully, four huge snakes.

There is a really funny scene in the movie Ramona and Beezus that I’ve always loved, being a mom and all. Funny like a heartache funny. Washing over your weary heart and probably bring you slumping to your knees funny. Ramona, fit to be tied at 10 or 11 years of fightin’ age, is finally running away. Her mom cheerily bids her good-bye, offers to pack her a snack. Her bag is bigger than she is. In the scene, she is rolling an enormous old banged up suitcase up a city sidewalk hill, Sisyphus-like. She cannot complete the task. The camera zooms in as she slaps the bag over and unzips it open right there on the sidewalk. What could possibly making the suitcase so heavy? Camera close-up, sentimental music swells. Tucked among her clothes, her prized possessions, her books, toys, trappings and favorite stuffed animal, the mother has packed a giant bowling ball. A bowling ball! It is the weight of family. It is the weight of our connections, that will never let us go. Ahhh, child, it’s not that I don’t want you to go far. It’s that I’m not ready for you to go yet.

He will forget stuff, you know it. He’s so hopeless I’ve got my own 12-year-old checking behind him. Under the bed Will finds a pile of clothing, I put my hands on his passport, and we get him zipped up and down the stairs in one tiny travelling systomate. Still we miss the toiletry kit (he goes back for it, back through the front door, back up the stairs and STILL forgets the toothbrush and lotion we discover that night). Right before he goes upstairs for the last time I enter his room, checking for left behind items but also to steel myself for the inevitable. He is really leaving. Three weeks of the most joie de vivre this house has seen in years, and he is taking it all with him back across the oceans to the place of sun and sea breezes. Into his bag I tuck two letters: one to his parents, in English, and one to Camille, in French. When I returned from my exchange in 1985 Irene wrote a letter to my parents in English: “Dear Mr. and Mrs. B, We were very pleased with your girl. She likes every think, and is interested in many thinks, and for a month has lived like a French girl.” Dear Irene, you are right about all that ‘thinking.’ Today, I think I hurt. My heart hurts as I write to Camille and his parents. Real letters, on real stationery, not printed out. I believe in the cementing power of the written word, so boy, listen up: these shall serve as our contracts, that you belong to me and I belong to you. “Jamais, jamais t’oublies la famille americaine qui t’aime…” And then, eyeing his open suitcase, I fill his cleats with ketchup packets and hastily bury them again in his bag. If they pop in flight I will blame it on William.

I have to smile when I enter this room a second time today, after it is all over and I’ve come home from the airport down a boy. For one, the bed is made better than he ever did in the three weeks he was here. Thank you, Camille. For another, along with stuff he didn’t mean to leave (the toothbrush, a neon orange USB cord, a bottle of nice Nivea lotion) are the things he did: a stripped pair of earbuds, his King’s Dominion water bottle I thought for sure would be a keeper, and a pile of tickets, tags, and packaging from the speaker purchase. Quite clearly “trash” that I, decades ago, would have lovingly glued into a scrapbook as treasure. Are those candy wrappers I see??! Yep. Sorry, Jacques. I tried.

I am old enough to know life goes around, and I am stubborn enough to wait. I’ve seen it. Will this young one come back to me when I am old? Will he come back to us, as he promises, in a hasty round of hugs and good-byes, chez Burk? The Burk motel. You know if you leave a toothbrush here it will be waiting when next you come. Stop by anytime. Just please, can you make it sooner than 30 years from now?

The most wonderful left-behind find, the thing that bursts my heart and sets me weeping, is the wall above the bed. The one I painted before he came. It was so smudged, marked and dinged by the child who vacated it for college that I wanted to make it fresh for Camille. So the night before he came, I pulled out the bed a little and I washed and painted the wall with 10-year-old paint that freshened it up just fine. Now, along with some new smudges from laying on the bed and kicking the wall each night by accident with dirty feet, there they are encore: two little handprints, just above the level of the comforter, a boy’s mark on our lives. A French boy’s marks on my heart. And this time, I am in no rush to paint over them.