Grout

December 7, 2007

Or you could listen to the KQED radio broadcast.

I tell a story to a Dutch friend, about my mother's conviction that the "weather" would get into the grout in the bathroom if she ever allowed the window to be closed, "weather" being fungus. And so we let the weather in to keep the "weather" out. The result, in a house without central heating, with ice flowers blooming on winter windows, was that we’d find our washcloths frozen solid for our morning ablutions, molded into the shape of the sink.

The cold water was cold, hot water wasteful. Morning ablutions, needless to say, were not very thorough in winter. As soon as I rubbed the tip of my nose with a washcloth that resembled a frozen pork chop, I'd run back to my bedroom, slip into underwear, and race downstairs with my clothes under my arm. I’d lay them over the heater in the living-room for a minute before shrugging them on.

That's the story, but I don't get all the way through it. I can't think of the Dutch word for "grout."—how embarrassing when you can't speak your own language. After some back and forth, it becomes clear that my error was not in forgetting the word for grout, but in forgetting that Dutch people don't talk about grout. Instead they talk about the spaces the grout goes into, for which, I must confess, I don't know the word in English.

The moment I remember it, something does a flip in my head. It's almost a physical sensation. It’s hard to move between languages. You have to wrap your head around two different ways of seeing, and you have to do it as your thoughts unfold.

It's like ambling along in the forest and running head-on into a rock. You missed the turn-off a few steps back having mistaken it for a space between the trees. It’s more than embarrassing. It opens up a little space inside through which you feel the loneliness of exile, voluntary or no. You will never quite share in the cultural commons of the people who surround you. You are drifting ever further away from your own people.

As an immigrant, you stand outside the effortless, unconscious fellowship of mutual recognition. You fall on deaf ears. You're never truly at home.

Marijke Rijsberman

If you have any thoughts to share with me, please drop me a line at marijke@interfacility.com