My Second Childhood

It’s important as an adult to never forget what it’s like to be a child, to never forget how long five minutes can last, how terrifying the dark can be, or how exciting and overwhelming life can feel because everything is so new and often mysterious. That’s what it feels like here sometimes, it feels like a second childhood. Mundane things fascinate or horrify you. Simple tasks turn into undertakings that require a herculean effort. And sometimes you wish you could just pop your thumb in your mouth and tuck yourself behind your mother’s skirt or sit in front of the TV and watch an entire season of Blue’s Clues while eating bowl after bowl of Cap’n Crunch.

Case in point, the grocery store. Yesterday I sat down to my morning Muesli with yogurt and discovered I had instead purchased sour cream, which had been selected after a full five minutes of painstaking label comparison with other things that might or might not have been yogurt. And tomatoes. I bought a rotten tomato. Even though, come on, it’s obviously a tomato and all you’ve got to do is give it a little squeeze to make sure it’s edible. I was so desperate to put something recognizable in my basket, I didn’t even check to see whether or not it was good.

After wandering around the store for a good 20 minutes and finding exactly five things to buy, two of which were either inedible or something entirely different from what I had hoped, I lined up at the check-out. Here they want you to move as fast as is humanly possible. By the time the cashier rings you up, you’re supposed to have finished bagging your junk and have gotten the hell out of everyone else’s way. I knew this, so I immediately started shoving the scanned items into my bag. This is survival mode at the grocery store. Say “Labadiena” with a believable accent. Act like you know exactly what’s going on. Bag your stuff. Locate the total on the screen because you can’t understand spoken numbers. Pay. Say “Aciu.” Leave. And all the while, pray to God that they don’t say anything to you. Halfway through my believable ruse, the cashier spoke, and it was all over. My face, I’m sure, washed white with a blank and awkward stare. Maybe I grimaced. Maybe she thought I had a cramp. So she said it again, loudly and more slowly. And again. There aren’t a lot of foreigners in Lithuania, so the woman was probably confused. I wanted to say I didn’t understand Lithuanian. I even know how to say that I don’t understand Lithuanian. But I couldn’t. Instead, I just panicked and shook my head and grabbed my debit card and left. I still have no idea what she was talking about.

So we try fast food sometimes, which is better here than it is in the states, and slower. The other day we went for kababas. Kababas is like a kabob pita sandwich stuffed with a bunch of meat that’s been shaved off a spit, cabbage salad, onion, and four mystery sauces. It’s delicious. And, because I am in my second childhood, strangely fascinating. The spit is vertical and wrapped in a slowly-twisting meat tornado. The machine buzzes as it roasts. Flies swoop in and out through the open doors and windows. Happily for Scott, I remember the Lithuanian word for onions, which he hates. I also remember the word for no. When our turn comes, I try to be as Lithuanian as I can. I say “Good day.” I order two big kababas, one with no onions. Unfortunately, the “two” comes out French, and the “one” comes out German. My gig is up. When our kababas are finished, the woman hands them over the counter. She points to one. “This one has no onions,” she says, in perfect English. I thank her. Translated, I say “Very thank you,” which probably sounds just as bad in Lithuanian as it does in English. Despite my taking a sledgehammer to her first language, she smiles and nods. We take the kababas and walk home.

As we walk, I think about my students back in the states: the refugees, the single mothers, the young professionals, the teenage boys and girls. I wanted to come here for many reasons, but one big reason was so that I could better understand what they go through when they come to the United States either to study English or merely to survive. Already, I understand that each thing they experience is probably more consequential than it might seem to anyone casually watching. A patient bus driver. A kind cashier. A simple explanation repeated for the sake of clarity. A map drawn on the back of a receipt by a stranger. Small, simple kindnesses that may indeed be just that simple but are definitely not that small.