Losing It at Hooker's

Hookers

LJ Hooker's is a real estate company in Australia, with offices all over Sydney. They're really house pimps, pimps of houses...they manage the houses and the big business that is rentals. This office is what I would call a dwarf-scraper; not like the ones making canyons, complete with canyon-winds, in New York City, but a building that stands out like a large alien ship in the middle of an older, more quaint part of Paramatta.

They did their best to make it look like an alien ship inside, too. When sitting in the white lobby with the white walls and the white, white-lit letters "JLHOOKER" on the wall, in the space ship chairs with the weird red carpet in the shape of an amoeba, I watched the very young realtors in tight-pant suits (which made the men's feet look like Bozo in Italian leather), and loads of expensive hair gels and make-up, and then I knew I was in a space ship. We were the aliens, I found. We didn't fit in in so many ways: Thaddeus was wearing his Frassatti T-shirt and cut-off sweats (oh please), and I was just a tiny cut above that. Our accents also marked us as experimental entities in that smooth-running, efficient Office.

And then the trouble started. When you move to another country, you really do need people to be more clear than they are usually, because even if the terms like 'cheque' are the same (which often they are not), what is omitted is sometimes even more important. We'd not been told outright that we were only allowed a 'bank cheque' (why don't they just go all the way to France and say 'banque cheque'? Or go completely rebel and say 'bank check'? Come on, get out of this colonialism (( 'cheque' is French; the English upper classes after William the Horrible Conqueror spoke French, so this is a vestige not only of English colonialism, but of French imperialism of English Colonialism))).

Anyway, back to the Hooker's. So, we made a little American protest. "We weren't told you would get a surcharge for using a debit." And then we asked a rather unforgiveable question (I still haven't figured out why, although I have my suspicions): "If it's coming straight out of the bank, why does it matter?" Up. Too practical. Or maybe it was too dumb.

We got the blank look. Everyone who has traveled or immigrated knows what this look is. It is an inexplicable rejection of you; your question, indeed, your very being is chucked like I chucked the inexplicable sign in Outback Jack's. It simply does not compute, and they don't want it to.

So, eventually, our techie Thaddeus worked on it, the maze of banque cheques. Meanwhile, I was starting to use bad language as I went to sit in the space lobby. I wonder if they, as they heard me mutter, "Pain in the ass," thought about how peaceful and compliant American culture appears on the interntional news. I had lost it. Why?

I think anyone who's even moved across the States will know. I lost it a couple of times like this when I moved from California to Maryland. Things that you really do take for granted suddenly become difficult again--and you're mad because, dammit, that one I figured out. Now, everything's game for difficulty. I know, in my rational mind, that of course it will be this way. I've had enough experience of it by now, and I'm supposed to be the one helping Thaddeus and the kids through the more intense process of small difficulties that happens in another country. Most of the time, I even like it.

But I sat there in that lobby and wished for familiar things, like the kind ladies at Wyoming National Bank, for a home I owned, for the RAV that has the steering wheel on the left, for a routine that ran itself. I felt suddenly a feeling of being an alien rush in.

Our agent, Maddison, who looks about nine with make-up, came in and was very nice, although she ran through the lease at double-speed (in Australia, closing time is sacred...maybe it is that way in offices all over the world...I've worked in an office and still have the clock face at five pm burned in my retina). We got our keys and got ejected through the space doors with our keys--and fan remote controls?

Thaddeus was looking at me all the way home like a shark, sideways, but a shark that felt sorry for me. I went over to Campion and lay down on the soft bench in the cloister walk, and just looked at the trees. I went over to the statue of Mary and looked at her peaceful face and I touched her out-stretched hand, a hand of reception--"Let it be done unto me according to Thy Word."

Later, I went over to 143 Bulli Road, our new house. It has a doorknob in the center of the door, which always strikes me as funny ("Let's be cool and put the doorknob in the middle"). The wood floors are shiny, and the layout makes you feel normal--everything in a rational place. The yard is really something else; my farmer blood immediately noticed the thirsty trees and I got the weird water cistern pump going, and started watering the poor plants. As I watered, I realized that this had, until recently, been a home, not a rental. You can just tell--there's a certain personalism, a care, in the little touches all over the garden, because it didn't get scoured and painted the way the inside of the house did. There are six garden plots, fruit trees, vines, palm trees, eucalyptus, and little colored rocks, a bird perch, and a little child's soccer ball hidden in the planter.

As I watered in the evening, thinking about how relieved the little trees must be, I felt better. I'm a farmer inside a city person.