“We will be preparing for landing. Please return to your seats, bring your seat backs to an upright position, fasten your seatbelts and turn off all electronic devices.” The flight attendant’s voice starts a bustle in the cabin as passengers prepare for the end of the long flight. As we descend, the snowy white caps of the mountaintops resolve themselves into tall, sparkling peaks. My nose is pressed against the window; it’s cold.

Nick taps my shoulder. “Move over, I want to see too.” Our mom heads off an argument by telling us to buckle up. We do. Below, the city of Sofia is getting bigger, racing underneath us as we head for the airport. The ant-like specks morph into people, the airport signs become legible, the mountains loom overhead and suddenly everything is real. I can’t believe I’m finally in Bulgaria.

“You’re Americans,” my father used to remind us. Maybe he needed to; I have always felt more like a European than an American. Having a Bulgarian mom who was still deeply rooted in her culture, I was exposed to Bulgarian and other European cultures, languages, and foods. But my father forbade us to speak Bulgarian and would yell at my mom if she ever spoke it, even with her sister or my grandmother. “Talk in English! What are you hiding?” He didn’t want to be the odd man out. It’s been almost a year since they split up. Only a month ago my grandmother moved back to Bulgaria. That was when my mom announced, “It’s time for you to see where we are from.”

I feel a bump as the airplane’s wheels hit the pavement. My bag slides around under the seat. As I use my foot to stop it, I hear clapping. I turn to my mom, who answers my tacit question: “It’s a Bulgarian thing.” They are happy that we landed safely. Nick and I decide to join in the applause, initially embarrassed but soon enjoying the revelry. I think of my grandma with all of her superstitions. I decide she would be clapping too. The flight attendant scolds some passengers who have prematurely taken their seatbelts off, and I’m relieved to find that I can understand most of what she is saying. I try to eavesdrop on other conversations around the cabin, to test my language skills. “Will I be able to communicate with anyone here?” I wonder. What if everybody hates Americans?
I remember when we visited Paris. After shopping and walking around all day, Nick and I were both hungry, so my mom picked out a little restaurant. “This looks nice.” I nodded my head in agreement as I felt my stomach rumbling. It was one of those typical French restaurants that you see in movies, with ample outdoor seating. I saw a little French girl at a table with her grandparents; her grandma was cutting her food for her. Nearby a couple was smoking and drinking wine, talking to each other so quickly it just sounded like buzzing. I felt a warm breeze brush past.

My mom finished looking at the menu. “Let’s sit outside. It’s so nice.” Instead, the maître d’ walked us inside, all the way to the back, to a table next to a loud family whose little boy was screaming for his food. The Barcelona bag on the back of the woman’s chair and the man’s Madrid shirt marked them as tourists, like us. My mom seemed frustrated.

“There’s an open table outside. Can’t we sit there?”

“It is reserved,” he said, giving us a facetious smile. “Inside is good. Please, sit here.” There was no more French buzzing around us now, only disjointed chatter in English and Spanish. We were lowly foreigners, unworthy of sitting in the sun.

Is that what it’s going to be like here? No, I reassure myself. My mom’s Bulgarian. That must count for something. I hear a click. My mom gets up and reaches for the overheard compartment. It’s been a long day and I can see the exhaustion on her face as she hands me my camera and Nick his tennis racquets. In the aisle, there’s a little girl with her dad, and behind them, her grandparents. The dad helps her put on her backpack and holds her hand as they start down the aisle. The grandmother retrieves the little girl’s stuffed animal and blanket from the seat, and follows them.

I’ve always only had one grandparent, my grandma who lived two blocks away and never quite learned English. Now she’s back in Bulgaria – and so are we, about to meet our huge, typically overbearing (according to my mom) Bulgarian family for the first time. Our extended family that, my mom insisted, would shower us with love. “But they don’t even know us!” I objected. “It doesn’t matter,” my mom replied. It must be another Bulgarian thing, I decided.

We start down the aisle and get off the plane. Why are there stairs and not a walkway? It startles me for a moment; I stop moving. The hot summer sun heats the skin on my face. It feels nice after being on the plane for so long. I remember my mom saying that summers here are more brutal than in New York. Not that I’m even a New Yorker anymore.

“You can’t move to New Jersey!” my friend Gina had shrieked in disbelief before we had left for Bulgaria and I had told her the news. “You’re not the Jersey type!” Our car had been approaching the George Washington Bridge along the West Side Highway, the Hudson river zooming past us, an indelible line between New York and New Jersey. A sense of finality had overwhelmed me.

  “I know! But don’t worry, I’m not moving to that part of New Jersey,” I’d said. It’s actually really nice, like upstate New York except closer. It’s right over the bridge, and then nine miles north.” A park had flashed by on our right, with skateboard ramps and basketball courts. Trees. Nature.

“But aren’t you going to miss New York? Being able to walk out any time and go anywhere. Aren’t you going to miss that freedom?”

Of course, I had thought, but saying that aloud would have given Gina too much satisfaction. “No, because I’ll come every day for school and still do the same things except during school nights and on the weekends. Plus I’ll have a house. It’s like the best of both worlds.”

“But you won’t be a New Yorker anymore.” She’d sounded worried. I was worried too, that she might be right, but then I caught myself. I was not a zip code.

Nick prods me. “Come on.” I start down the stairs, wondering who I will be when I get to the bottom and set foot in Bulgaria. I never even thought of myself as American until I went to France, but that didn’t mean that I wasn’t American. Just like the fact that I never set foot in Bulgaria before doesn’t mean that I’m not Bulgarian. I love France even though it doesn’t love me. I’m still a New Yorker even though I no longer live in New York. Maybe when I get to the bottom, I will feel just fine. Maybe I will feel at home.