After my last Mass with the English Catholic Community in Phnom Penh, before I departed for the United States, a woman asked me if I was going home or leaving home. Her query jolted me a bit and brought to the fore vague anxieties and anticipations about leaving Cambodia.
I replied to the woman that I was experiencing both going and leaving home. And now, after four months in the U.S., I think my answer would still be the same.
I have received a tremendous welcome from my brothers and sisters and extended family, from my fellow Louisville priests and from so many old and new friends I have encountered.
Unforeseen, but especially appreciated, have been the contacts with so many of the girls — now grandmothers — I taught at Angela Merici High School. I have encountered them everywhere since my return and have enjoyed the renewed friendships.
Reconnecting with so many of these people has made me feel I have returned home.
But the home I have returned to is quite different from the home I left 42 years ago. It has been something of a Rip Van Winkle experience — he slept for 20 years and woke up in a world profoundly changed.
I have had a similar experience, with some of the changes really surprising, even shocking:
- In Cambodia I spent $25 to $35 a month for food. Here in the United States, one or two meals can cost that much.
- I have a $10 watch I bought in Cambodia. A couple of weeks after arriving here, the battery died, and I asked a watch shop to replace it. They charged me $17!
- I used to drive out Dixie Highway and turn right two lights after K-Mart. “K-Mart? Oh, yeah. … That closed in 2014 and is now a Kroger.”
- In my previous life, I drove my VW around Louisville. Now, due to macular degeneration, I am riding an e-bike everywhere (a wonderful gift from my siblings and cousins).
- In Cambodia we have two seasons: hot and wet and hot and dry. Now I’m back, experiencing the first snow and ice I’ve seen in decades.
- Three years ago, in a routine annual check-up, my doctor saw a spot on my kidney in an ultrasound and ordered an MRI and then a CT scan before the surgeon decided the spot had to go. The scans took place in three hours. The surgeon then asked when I wanted the surgery, and I said “How about tomorrow?” and he said that would be fine. That sequence in the U.S. would probably require three to six months or more. And the cost in Bangkok was an eighth of the cost here.
Other parts of the transition have been less jarring.
- In Cambodia, I was pastor of the largest parish in the country. Here I have been asked to work with liturgy at St. Boniface Church, a wonderful small community — and no administration!
- In Phnom Penh, the last few years I lived alone after Maryknoll withdrew from the kingdom. Now I am with a super group of retired priests at the delightful Nazareth Home on Payne Street.
That makes me feel at home in Kentucky, and that I am in the right place. My mission in Cambodia has changed (but definitely not ended), and now I am in Louisville and new opportunities are developing here. Louisville is home once again and a good place to be.
Father Charles Dittmeier is a priest of the Archdiocese of Louisville who recently retired from decades of service as a missioner, most recently serving the deaf community in Cambodia.
