Uncomfortable Truths

My husband is a pretty straightforward guy.  He gets up before the birds start singing, he is on time for everything and, if you ask him a question, he’ll answer you honestly.  And, as such, he has a habit of telling the truth when people ask how he likes living in the US.  Every time, he replies that it’s ok, it’s good, but that he’s left his two older kids in the UK and that’s been hard.  Just like that.  And it’s always more than the questioner was expecting — more detail than they wanted to know, more personal than they were expecting to hear.  And more than I wanted him to tell them.  They’re uncomfortable, I’m uncomfortable, he is… he’s just him, answering the question the only way he knows how.

“Oh!” they always say, a little shocked, a little concerned, but trying to hide it.  “How old are they?”  They’re expecting to hear that his other two children are in their early 20s and so it’s all ok, really.  When the reply comes that they’re in their early-mid teens, they are shocked all over again.  “OH!”, like clockwork.  And I feel all the accusations that I believe are suddenly running through their minds: He left his children!… How could anyone do that?!?… He left them for her!… Did she make him do it?!?…
The truth is that he didn’t leave them for me, and we tried everything we could think of to stay.  Neither one of us wanted to leave Britain, but we were between a financial rock and a hard place and we honestly couldn’t figure out how to make it work, no matter how we reworked the numbers.  Leaving Britain — leaving them — is something we both regretted at the time, and more and more with every day we’ve been here.  And we will put it right, just as soon as we possibly can.

But the people asking a casual question of two foreigners they’ve just met… they don’t know that.  They have too much information, but not enough information…  enough to condemn, but not enough to understand.  And in that moment — the moment after they say, “Oh!” and then nothing more — everything becomes very uncomfortable, everything slows down, and we all stand — hesitant, expectant — in the silence.  And then someone, us or them, breaks it with some lighthearted comment about how it will all surely turn out alright in the end and, gosh!, such a hard economy in which to make a move like that!  We all smile, tightly instead of genuinely, and carry on…

It happened again today, at a bagel shop we go to, with a Greek lady we’d just met.  We all followed the script perfectly.  But this time, when we smiled and carried on, I broke from the usual dialogue and mentioned that we’d been thinking of having M’s son maybe come and live with us for six months (or is it three months? however long a visa will allow…).  It’s not something we’ve shared with anyone before, let alone a complete stranger, but we’ve been talking about it for a while.  It’d give the two of them the kind of day-after-day time together that they haven’t had since his son was starting primary school, and it’d give his son a wonderful opportunity to experience America in a way most Brits never do.  I was surprised to hear myself speaking the words and giving life to the idea like that but, as soon as I did, it felt good.  And the Greek lady’s face lit up.

“Yes! YES!” — she grasped at the positive spin — “It would be so good for him!  And you could get him involved with something to do with kids his own age…  He could make friends!”  We were all smiling now.

I had already mentioned my parents — it’s my standard answer to why we’ve moved here: the grandparents, the grandchildren…! And they always emailed with so many opportunities…! I don’t mention the rock or the hard place — no one really wants to know that in casual conversation.  But the Greek lady began waxing on about the good of our situation — such a rare response given M’s unnerving honesty — and now she brought up my parents.  She said, “It is good for you to be able to be near your parents for a while,” and then looked right at me.  I could see that she meant it — this wasn’t some sugar-coated babble to smooth over the uncomfortableness.  She had lived abroad for twenty years, away from her family…  she got it, how tough it is for everyone, the balance needed on both sides.

It is good to be near my parents.  For as much as I complain that they drive me nuts, it is good.  And they won’t be around forever — they’re not young anymore — and even though I know they won’t be around forever, I don’t think I’d really thought about it that way until today, in that bagel shop.  My parents are here now, lively and young  enough to enjoy having us so nearby, to know and enjoy their grandchildren.

There is no relationship with as much responsibility as that of a parent to a child: M’s relationship with his kids trumps my need to see my parents or their need to see the girls — absolutely, hands down.  We need to go back to Britain for their sake, and we never should have left in the first place.  But I have family that I’ve been away from for 15 years, and I have missed them, and now I am getting the chance to have some little time to be near them, while I still can — and there’s a certain validity to that.   Talking to this Greek lady, I think she was the first person to hear the news of M’s children, to be shocked by it, and then to still go on and take the whole situation into consideration, to acknowledge that there are two people in this partnership and that we both have been away from the people we love.  No one can ever doubt that his kids have the higher priority but… well, it felt good to be part of the equation.

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American by Accident, In Love without Intention

That I am an American has never been in question.  I need only open my mouth and — if you are a Brit — you will recognise the fact immediately.  If you are an American… well, twenty years ago you would have known right away — these days, you might be a wee bit confused.  But I was born here and grew up here, and — though I know am fully British as well (not half-and-half, but whole-and-whole) — my Americanness is not in question.

And yet my being American is just an accident of birth.  My parents, both Brits, were here only temporarily when I was born, working in the States for a few years — so the plan went — before moving back.  My father’s sudden death turned all that on its head and I ended up growing here… ended up an American.  And yet, if we had stayed in the UK and hadn’t moved back to the US last year, that fact would have become only an anomalous blip in a long and continuous line of Britishness: my parents and grandparents and all my ancestors completely British, my children and all my decedents just as British as well.  Indeed, when we go back to the UK, that will be the case again.  Pulling back and looking at it from afar, these two quick forays into America will become mere  interludes in a long line — generations — of  otherwise unbroken Britishness.

And that feels so very strange to me, because my Americanness is such a big part — such a real part — of who I am.    It’s really quite startling to think of it as an accident, as a blip…

We are going back — that is decided.  We knew it the morning before we left.  We both agreed on it a few months after we moved here.  We have been looking forward to it, and I have waxed lyrical here on my blog about it.  We are both quite settled.  We will all be Brits once again.

Imagine my surprise then when…  well, let me explain…

I was watching one of my favourite telly programmes — this was a couple of weeks ago, M had just got home from his trip to England.  It’s a property programme, a bit of eye candy, in which two experts guide househunters to their dream home.  I always watch it with a mix of excitement, jealousy, despair, and irritation.  The houses are interesting — the voyeurism is too — but the prices are ever eye-watering.  The house we bought here in the US would cost us five times as much in the UK.  And yet, their budget is always astronomical.  Where do these people get their money?!? It intrigues me, frustrates me — I can’t help but watch.

But as I watched it the other week, the sensation was strange, less voyeur and more uncomfortable than usual.  I was thinking about going home, thinking too much.  How will we ever move back? The figures never add up — even a two-up, two-down terrace in a questionable area of town seems beyond our means, and it always depresses me.  But there was more to it today… the sensation was strange…

And then the surprise, a quiet voice in my head: I don’t want to go back.

I stopped dead at that — every thought stopped as my brain tried to comprehend what it had just heard.  It had not been expected, not even suspected.  Had I really said that…?   Why would I not want to go back…?!?  I know I want to!  I didn’t believe it… it’s not true!  And yet… and yet…  I knew right away that it is true, at least in a little.

I’ve been thinking about it ever since, rolling that quiet statement around in my mind and trying to make it balance with all the other feelings I hold.  And I think I understand.  Our first year here was rough — we were fighting fires almost from the moment we arrived and we had hardly a moment to draw breath.  But, though we are still fighting a few fires even now, things have begun to slow down considerably.  There’s been a bit more time to to sit and relax, to enjoy the warm air of the summer, to go out and see a bit of the world…  to see a bit of America.

And I am beginning to remember what is wonderful about America.  We have been to fibre festivals, and driven through mountains and farmland and small towns to get there.  We have gone to lovely state parks, with deep woods and vast lakes, and sat in the sun watching the light dance across the water.  We have had dinner at grand and historic inns that sing out the vibrant history of the country.  We went to Gettysburg, and the place affected me profoundly, stopped my heart.  These past few months, I have seen the America that I had remembered, the America that I had hoped for.  These past few months, I have begun to fall in love.

But the problem is that when I say “we”, I mean my mother and I, with the girls.  The fibre festivals were daytrips during the week; the state park was a Tuesday with some old family friends;  Gettysburg was a quick break while M was in England.  My mother is so excited to have her daughter and grandchildren nearby, and she delights in taking us away like that.  M and I don’t have the money for getaways or dinner on our own — he toils away at work all week, and sees the same city neighbourhoods day after day, and then our weekends are spent at home, busy with domestic chores and conserving our pennies.  In the year-and-a-half that we’ve lived here, he’s got away for one weekend: it was a fibre festival that, yes, was set in some beautiful countryside but, to be honest, it’s quite possible he was too bored to notice it.

So we’ve been going on separate emotional journeys, he and I.  I have been discovering what there is to love — and loving it.  And he has been seeing exactly the same thing he’s seen since the day he arrived: the same dirty city from the same van, doing the same dirty jobs in the same dodgy neighbourhoods.  He is not much impressed and wants to go home;  I am being a surprised by that quiet voice in my head.

I’ve been honest with him about: told him about the voice, told him my feelings.  “We need to make sure we go on the same journey,” I said.  “When it comes time to go home, we need to have shared this, so we understand each other’s feelings.”  He agreed with a grunt.  But so far, we haven’t.  This weekend, I will take E1 to her tennis lesson while M works on the furnace.   Next weekend, he is working.  Perhaps in October…  I want so much to take him to Gettysburg…  and there’s another festival in New York, through some beautiful Pennsylvania countryside.  Oh, but the money… the money!

Money or not, I have to make this happen.  He has to get away — heaven knows he needs the break, and he needs to see America too.  But most of all, he and I must — absolutely must — go on this journey together, the same emotional journey.  Because when we do move back to the UK, and I do say goodbye to America… my America…  I will need him to understand what I am leaving.

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Under Cover of Dark, the Depths Revealed

What I didn’t tell you, in that last post, was that, as M was looking up at the ceiling and crying in the dark after leaving his kids again, he suddenly muttered, “Oh, this is ridiculous!”

I was careful. “What…  err… what is ridiculous?”

“I tear up every day.  Like this.  Every day.”

I paused, calculating what he might mean exactly.  Then asked, “Every day since…  you’ve been back?”

“No.”  He sighed, a slow heavy breath that wavered a bit under the weight of it.  “No… every day.”

I was shocked.  Quickly rolling up onto my elbow to look at his face in the moonlight, I blurted out,  “But… but I never see this!”

“It’s usually on my way to work,”  resignation heavy in his voice.

I paused on my elbow for a moment while I tried to think what to say, and then gave up and rolled back onto my back and stared up at the ceiling too, and we laid side by side in silence for a few minutes while I let this bombshell sink in.  He has welled up with tears every single day for the past 20 months. And I have had no idea.  He’s never told me.

Days later, I am still feeling the shock.  And it is so clear that this changes everything.  What I was thinking of as our decision to go back to the UK is nothing of the sort.  There is no decision, because there is no choice.  There is only what must be done.

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Quiet, and Bloodstained Still

We had both known this trip would be difficult.  We knew it the whole time, and we thought we’d prepared for it.  But, really, there is no preparation — like so many things in life, there is only the getting through it.  And now that he is home, we are going through it.

The night before he flew back to the US — and the first night of the trip that his son didn’t stay in the same house — he couldn’t sleep for panic.  His panics come to him when something in his life is terribly wrong, his mind’s inadequate way of coping with the overwhelming.  And leaving his kids again — all over again — is overwhelming.

The night after he arrived back, he didn’t sleep either.  I woke to find him staring up at the ceiling in the dark, and saw glistening lines running from the corners of his eyes down to his ears.

“Are you alright?”

“No.”  His voice wavered.

“I know.”

“It’s just…” He stopped to steady his breath and then let it all out in a rush.  “It’s so hard to leave them.”  I shut my eyes hard, instinctively trying to block out his words, because I knew… I knew, but I just didn’t want it to be so hard for him.  And  I had nothing useful to offer, so I gave him the only words that came to me…

“I know.”

We carried on talking in the dark, awkwardly and to no purpose, and eventually I faded back to sleep.  When I woke again at 5am, he was still staring at the ceiling.  I tried again to say something useful, but I suspect I managed nothing more than to mumble half-slurred, half-slumbered nonsense before succumbing to unconsciousness and leaving him alone, again, with the overwhelming.

The next day, I sat down with a cup of tea to peruse leisurely the local newspapers he’d brought back for me.  I wanted to read news of the recent agricultural show, check out the pictures of kids going back to school, and sympathise with the locals’ frustration at incoming Londoners.  But instead, I found myself skipping past all that and going straight to the back of the paper, to scan the estate agents’ ads and then the jobs pages with a sense urgency that made my stomach suddenly flip-flop.  I was hoping to find something miraculous, some wild change from the situation we’d left 18 months ago, but I found exactly what I’d known would be there: houses that were half the size at twice the price, and jobs with salaries so low that my heart just sank at the sight of them.  No miracles.  And no idea how to make those conflicting numbers add up.

Suddenly, the panic rose up inside me too — up from my guts and into my chest –  and I had to push the paper away hastily.  How am I going to make this work?  How am I going to fix this? I stared at the table, at the spot where the paper had been.  My heart raced and I ran one hand up through my hair.  He needs me and I have no idea what to do.  What am I going to do?  How am I going to fix this?!? How am I going to fix this?!? How? How…? HowamIhowamIhowamIgoingtofixthis?

We thought we had prepared for M’s trip home.  We’d talked about it, talked through it.   We’d remembered the battles he’d fought when he got back last year, and tried to learn from them.  But the truth is that all the preparation in the world is inadequate to the reality.   And… time had passed and those battlefields had fallen quiet… the casualties buried in their shallow graves, and the ground above them going to seed and turning into peaceful meadows.

We had been fooled by the wildflowers.

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Few, True, and Real

My husband does not often give me compliments — it’s not his way.  I can make a huge effort to get all dolled up for a night on the tiles and come downstairs looking better than he’s seen me in years, and he won’t say a word (…until I clear my throat).  I have to remind him to give me a kiss when he gets home from work.  And I know that something’s going really quite wrong in his world when he suddenly looks up and tells me he loves me.

And yet, I don’t worry — I know he loves me.  I don’t know how I know, because the outward signs come so few and far between, but I do know.  It’s an inexplicable sense of security, a feeling of stability that I’ve never known with anyone but him.

By the time you read this, he will be back here with us after spending the past fortnight in Britain — a trip we were all going to take together, but that the present economy and that voice in the back of my head told us would be better made on his own again this year.  And so I’ve been unable to lend much support as he’s gone about the bittersweet business of visiting with old friends, his mother, his brother and sister, and, most importantly, his two older children.  Speaking to him on the phone each night, he never says much — again, it’s not his way — but his silence spoke volumes.  The first week of the trip, it crackled with excitement and, as the second week has rushed away, that crackle has gone and the silence has simply grown heavy and… more silent.  He does not want to come back.

But we are here and he loves us.  And so until I (or he… or we…) can figure out a way to get back to the UK, he will come back to us here.  Because we are a pair, he and I.  And though he drives me mad, and though I wonder regularly how on earth we ever got together, I do honestly believe we will never be apart.

As I drove him to the airport a fortnight ago, I knew he was a mess of mixed emotions — nervous and excited and afraid of the upcoming reunions, all at the same time.  And almost on cue, all those swirling feelings boiled over and he erupted into one of those rare emotional outpourings — he looked at me for a long moment, and then said. “You look nice.”

It had surprised me, but I kept my gaze ahead out the windscreen, and smiled only a little.  “Thanks.”

But he didn’t look away, and I realised there was more.  I turned, smiling amusedly now, and looked at him still looking at me.  The morning sun was ahead of us and I could feel its rays falling golden — and, I thought, conveniently flatteringly — onto my face.

“Yeah,” he said, looking at my face intently, his eyes moving over my cheeks, my eyes, my forehead, assessing me as he might a prize horse.  “You look nice.  I think you’re aging well.”

I laughed out loud at that.  As compliments go, it wasn’t much.  And yet it was — it was a wonderful compliment — and honest too.  As honest as he is, as honest as the way we feel about each other.  I grinned at him, and he reached over and grabbed my hand, and gave it a squeeze.

It’s as much affection as he’d shown in days.  If I’m honest, I wish he were more affectionate — I’d like outpourings of love to flow around us like water, to be as regular and numerous as they were when I was growing up.  But that is not his way.  He is who he is, and I love him.  I cannot ask for anything more.

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Doing the Maths

Two

“This house!” M muttered under his breath as he kicked a tangled pile of laundry out of his way. “This bloody house!”  And then he turned and stormed back upstairs without even looking at me.

I sighed.  But I understand why he’s frustrated — this house, indeed.  It’s always on the edge of mess, always verging into chaos.  I feel as though I fight all day just to maintain it, just to ensure that the mess is no worse at the end of the day than it was at the beginning.  But it never gets any better than it was.

The worst of it is the laundry.  We are perpetually buried in the piles of clean laundry — washed and dried quickly enough, but rarely folded and almost never put away.  Folding laundry with the girls is an exercise in pure crazy-making.  I have not made sorting piles — I have made fall-breakers!  I have built obstacle courses!  I have amassed fascinating collections of dressing-up clothes!  When I do manage to fold a couple of baskets’ full, I am so exhausted at the end that I can’t be bothered to haul those baskets upstairs and put them away.  Not right now… maybe later… maybe tomorrow.   But instead, we raid those same baskets daily, still sitting in the corner of the family room, for knickers and socks and today’s outfit, until the whole thing is such a mess that it couldn’t possibly be put away without being dumped out and refolded.  And that does not happen.

And there are always dishes clogging the kitchen — from breakfast, or the snack, or lunch, or the snack, or dinner…  And a pile of papers that needs filing over there, and stacks of magazines half-read.  There are still boxes to be unpacked from the move.  And certainly, oh certainly, this place does not yet feel like a home — it still feels like we just moved in… or are just about to move out.

“What was that?!?” I prodded angrily at M, as he disappeared up the stairs.  I couldn’t help myself — I just can’t let a muttering go.

He paused and turned, casting an eye across the chaos, and said hotly, “Well, I just think this place should be… tidier.  It should be getting tidier!”

I was defensive now.  “You could help, you know.  I only have two hands!  You could pick things up when you see them instead of stepping over them!”  It’s true — he’s as likely to step over a mess the girls have made as clean it up.  He’ll clear dishes but leave the mess all over the table.  And he opens his mail, and then drops it back on the table for me discover,  and deal with, later.

“You’re home all day!” He countered.  “You should be dealing with this place!  It should be…”  he glanced around the room, his eyes lighting on any number sins, “It should be getting better.”  Ah, of course, I’m home all day.  I should be spending all that time getting the place sorted.

Plus two

As every weekend approaches, we have conflicting expectations that cause… well… regular conflicts.  I see the weekends as a chance for me to get a break from the intensity of full-time care for a four-year-old and a two-year-old.  I’d like to wake peacefully, rather than be yelled from my bed at whatever hour the girls awaken, to take a shower alone without interruption, and then to slow everything down a bit and spend time as a family.  M sees the weekends as his chance to catch up on the myriad projects that need doing about the house and to quietly recover from a tough week at work.  In both cases, the three of us just get in the way of his plans — hinder rather than help — and, understandably, he spends most of his weekends trying to escape us.

I was on my own in the kitchen, drinking a cup of tea and contemplating the pile of dishes in the sink, when I heard it all begin to fall apart in the other room.  The girls’ voices rose and quickly became shrill, both of them screeching over some great injustice.  M’s voice started quiet and weary, but soon followed their lead and, within moments, he was bellowing at them.  And then for me.  When I walked in the room, I found him standing by the front door, holding a cordless drill in one hand and with two little girls practically hanging off his other arm.  A mess of his tools and their toys were strewn in equal measure at his feet.

“I can’t get anything done with them here!” he roared. “You have to take them.”  And then with a little less volume, “If I’m supposed to make any progress with this,” — he waved the drill in the general direction of the door he’d been working on — “then you can’t expect me to be looking after them as well!”  I ushered the girls and their screeching away into the kitchen, and smiled to myself.

He’s quite right — it’s impossible for him to get his projects done with them underfoot.  I know that.  They are wonderful little girls, but it is the nature of their ages to create mischief and mayhem where-ever they go.  And keeping that under control brings everything else to a complete halt.

Unless, of course, that everything is folding laundry, and filing the paperwork, and unpacking boxes.  And you are home all day.

Equals three

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And Our Insurance Premiums Rise by 350%

A letter came in the post last Friday and after I read it, all I could do for a few minutes was stare at it in shock.  I sat down and put my hand on the couch to steady myself, and then read it again.  It wasn’t so much the news that it brought — though that was bad enough — but the way it made me feel: vulnerable… so, so very vulnerable and out of control.  The letter was from the girls’ insurance company and it informed me that, due to “increasing [insurance company] financial losses”, the premiums for their cover will be increased from October by 350%.

The girls are covered by the state’s CHIP programme — the only long-term cover I could find that they qualified for when we lost our health insurance because M was suddenly laid off three months after we arrived in the US.  Because the girls are US citizens, they did not qualify for the insurance policies that are usually offered to incoming immigrants.  And because we had just moved from abroad, they did not qualify for most normal insurance policies which, I discovered to my utter bewilderment, all seemed to have “residency requirements” that disqualified anyone who had not lived in the US for the last 6 to 24 months.  My daughters had both been recently diagnosed with potentially life-threatening food allergies (my elder daughter to eggs, my younger daughter to no less than eight foods, which later rose to 12) which had had a huge impact on our daily lives, and I was desperate to get them onto a good, long-term policy that would give us some peace of mind.  We were still reeling from a string of devastating events that had begun almost as soon as we arrived and had consumed nearly all our mental, physical, and financial resources (besides M losing his job and our insurance, I suddenly developed incredible pain that debilitated me for months before we got on top of it, the medical bills started rolling in and  ate up half our moving fund, we found we had to pay the IRS a huge sum which wiped out the other half of our moving fund, the house we were renting was put the market, we were going through  all the stress, isolation, and disorientation that an international move almost always brings, and it felt like we were doing everything wrong).  Looking for insurance under these circumstances was turning into a nightmare and when I found out the girls qualified for CHIP, the relief  was so strong I burst into tears.

The coverage was excellent; the price surprisingly affordable.  The programme is funded by the state, but administered through a choice of several large insurance companies.  I picked the one that we’d been on with M’s previous job, out of sense of familiarity more than anything, and got the girls signed up as fast as possible.  Each month a bill arrived with bold letters telling me that one missed payment would result in permanent cancellation of the policy — I began sending the premiums in two months in advance just to make sure I never paid that price.  In a world that felt like it was falling apart, knowing the girls had such excellent coverage gave me a sense of stability that I clung to like a rock in a stormy sea.

So as I read that letter — and reread it, and then read it again — all that stability seemed to drain away and the horrid, terrifying, desperation of a year ago rushed in to fill its place.  Could they do this?!?  Could they just casually send me a one-page letter which matter-of-factly stated they were increasing the premiums not once, not twice, not three times, but a full three-and-a-half times what they were now?  No warning, no alternatives, no choice…  This is our only option, this is our salvation!..  Could they do this?!? I rang M up at work and he listened patiently while I told him the news, then began to cry, and then composed myself and told him I’d be alright and thanked him for listening.  My tears were more out of fear and uncertainty; we will  be able to make the new payments (just, and with sacrifices), but it’s what they represented — the lack of control — that put me over the edge.

When I told my mother, she was shocked, then horrified, and then began to rant.  Was this what Obama had in mind for the middle and lower classes?!? Or was it the Governor’s doing?!?  It didn’t seem ethical!  I pointed out that it wasn’t Obama’s doing — his reforms haven’t even taken shape yet, let alone been enacted — and it wasn’t the Governor’s either.  It wasn’t to do with the CHIP programme itself at all.  It was the insurance company’s doing: they take the money the state gives them and then set their price within an approved range — but times are harder now than were before, there are these “increasing financial losses”, and so they’ve raised their price.  And, no, I told her, it didn’t seem ethical… but I don’t know that I think ethics plays any part in this.

I have to admit to feeling rather annoyed with her, to harbouring some deep-set and mostly unjustified feelings of blame.  I had been concerned about healthcare before I moved back to the US… concerned… afraid… frightened…  But my mother and my father and my sister had all assured me that I was making a mountain out of a molehill.  It’s fine, they told me.  It’s a system!  It’s not the system you’re used to, but it’s a system.  As long as you work hard, you’ll be fine.  My husband, I thought to myself, does work very, very hard.  And I do too, in my own way.

My had mother added that she didn’t know anyone who had a healthcare problem.  What about my sister?, I asked, pointing out that she’d gone for years without health insurance, avoiding going to a doctor even when she needed one.  “Oh… yes… ” my mother’s voice trailed off, and then came back again with strength, “But she never had a problem!”  I felt misgivings at that, paused, and then… brushed them aside.  It would be fine.  It would be fine.  …And so if there is blame to laid, perhaps some goes to my mother for closing her eyes to the problem, but some goes to me too for choosing to believe.

There is series of ads for one of the largest insurance companies in the region which they run on television all the time.  It shows someone walking a dog, or jogging, or riding a bike.  At some point the camera closes in on the person, and they look directly into it, before raising a hand and pressing it with palm forward and fingers spread, so that it appears to be just on the other side of the glass of the television screen.  And as the person fades out of focus, the handprint remains, glowing blue and pulsing gently, and a warm and reassuring voiceover says, “Giving you a greater hand in your health.“

As I sat there staring at this letter, with its incredible, horrible news, I had to wonder: is that hand meant to be pulling us up… or pushing us away?

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Here, Too, I Belong

I love bluegrass.  And of course I can listen to bluegrass anywhere but it only feels right when I listen to it here, here in its home territory.  Bluegrass needs to set against the backwoods of America in order to really blossom into what it’s fully meant to be.  I’ve listened to bluegrass many times in the UK — either caught by chance on the radio or one of my CDs — and, though it always sounded lovely, it never was more than a shadow of its true self.  A little like  hanging an Italian Renaissance painting on the wall of a log cabin.  No… wait… more the other way round…  maybe like spreading an handmade calico quilt over a bed in a some swanky, modern, high-end New York hotel.  It’s still beautiful, but its beauty suffers for being in a place where it just doesn’t fit.

We listened to bluegrass on the radio on the way home tonight, driving down country roads with the windows open on a muggy evening that came at the close of a perfect, lazy, summer Sunday.  M has never appreciated bluegrass properly, but then he has never experienced it where it ought to be.  He still doesn’t quite get it really, but driving along tonight, with the warm air running over our skin and the girls falling asleep exhausted in the back, I think he started to.  A little.

I love bluegrass.  I love country music.  I love hot, muggy summer evenings that smell of the promise of a cool night to come.  I love storms, real storms — powerful, scary storms full of threats they can fulfill, if it turns that way.  I love diners, and oversized plates of good plain grub, with lots of needless melted cheese and served with endless refills of coffee — even though I can’t eat at them anymore.  I love closets…  forced-air heat… garbage disposals… mixer-taps.  I love country roads, yellow schoolbusses, and the possibility that there’s bear in them thar woods… because those woods go on for miles and miles.  I love fireflies, chipmunks.  I love hummingbirds — hummingbirds! — right there at the feeder on the backporch, whizzing past my head to get to it and scaring me to death with the sudden buzz of their wings.  And I love the backporch too, and sitting on the porchswing at the end of the day, and having dinner outside and a slow beer, as the girls run off the last of their energy with the neighbour kids, and I sit wrapped in that heavy, warm, still summer air.

M is in the wrong place — like the quilt, like the painting.  He doesn’t fit, and he is diminished by it.  And I’m not in the right place either, because I don’t belong here anymore — there is too much of me that is left in England and the separation hurts, every day.

And yet, at the same time, I do belong here — deeply, deeply belong here.  All these things I love… they are my childhood, they are my formation.  They are what made me who I am and, when I am in Britain, I am diminished no less by the separation from them too.

“Let’s face it,” M said at one point as we drove, “we’re not going to get back for at least five years.  There’s no way we’ll manage it sooner.”  I don’t like it, but I do think he’s right.  It’s a huge undertaking, an self-funded international move, especially with a family in tow.

“I know,” I said.  We drove on, and after a minute or two, I added, “But I am glad that you’ve been here.”  Because as crazy and as difficult and as exciting as the past year has been, what it’s really been is an education for him — a crash course on the subject of his own wife.  He knew me before, but he knows me so much better now.

He turned and looked outside for a moment, at the quintessentially American summer evening as it rushed past us, and the muggy air blew cool and fresh through the windows.

“Yeah…”  He looked back at me and smiled just a little.  “Me too.”

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Golden, As I Remember

I walked out onto the front porch tonight, just for a moment, as the sun was setting.  It had been a hot and sweaty day, with the kind of direct bright sunshine that I’ve never liked, but the evening had begun to mellow all that.  And though it had threatened rain all day, it never come true on the promise, and yet the smell of  an impending storm hung in the air.

I was only dashing out for a moment to grab something that had been left outside — the children still needed to be fed and bathed and put to bed — but I found myself paused there on the porch.  It was just too seductive — so balmy, and quiet, the sunset golden pink…  I didn’t want to leave it.  It was utterly enchanting.

I have always loved English summers, with their cool freshness, their faint mildewy-ness, the warmish days and chilly evenings.  But they were all the forgotten — the last 15 years melted away — as I was transported to back to the summers I grew up with.  And I stood unmoving, frozen in place for a few moments, to drink it in.

English summers are blues and greens, gentle, and tender.  American summers are dusty golden yellow, harsh, and brash.

And beautiful, beautiful…   beautiful.

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Not As I Say… Not at All as I Say

I hit a real milestone in our repatting adventure the other day, one I wasn’t expecting at all.  Indeed, I hadn’t even given it a thought before.

Growing up in the US with an English mother, I was used to way people treated her because of her accent.  In shops, salespeople would sometimes just follow her about, ignoring other customers and hanging on every word she said — sometimes she appreciated the personal service, sometimes she disliked the intrusion.  A realtor once took her to see a $1million house, under the mistaken impression that we must be loaded just because she sounded posh to him.  And often, people would reply to her in an attempted English accent — I always noticed her slight flinch, but I never really understood it.  To me, their attempts were charming, flattering, funny, and usually, I thought, pretty good.

When I moved to the UK all those years ago, I had a perfectly American accent.  In reality, if you listened very closely, you’d be able to hear a tell-tale lilt that revealed there was something different in my background, but most people didn’t catch it.  Certainly the Brits I lived and worked with didn’t — to them, my accent was as American as apple pie and Chevrolet.

And, apparently, my accent was just too tempting as well — at least once a week, and sometimes more often, someone tried to imitate me.  I’d say something perfectly innocuous and what I’d hear back would come as a complete shock.  What were they saying?  What were they doing?  That strange sound!…  OH! It’s… it’s… it’s supposed to be me?!?  This is what they think I sound like?!?!?

And I’d smile… or wince — I was never quite sure which expression my face pulled — but no matter how I looked outwardly, on the inside I was always cringing.  They never, ever got it right.  No matter how many attempts at an American accent I endured, week after week, year after year, not one of them was anywhere near as good as the imitator thought it was, and every one was painful to hear.  Ah… at last, I understood why my mother’s face always registered that barely noticeable flinch.

But now, we are back home and I should blend smoothly back into the crowd.  Except that after years and years abroad, I don’t sound so very apple pie any more — most Americans, in fact, hear my now mixed accent and assume that I am a Brit born and bred.  It’s confusing to them — and amusing to me — when I explain that, actually, I was born just down the road.

So I should have been expecting it, but I wasn’t.  I was chatting away quite cordially with my neighbour yesterday when her voice suddenly jacked up an octave and she began speaking peculiarly, mangling her vowels and sounding a bit like the Queen being strangled.  For a moment, I didn’t get it.  And then she did it again, and I realised… she was trying to imitate me! And it was awful… awful.  That familiar feeling came over me, and I cringed inside.  But I tried very, very hard to be smiley on the outside while I quickly brought the conversation to a close.

And as I took the girls’ hands and walked back to the house I realised with a sigh that I’d reached, again, that most dubious of expat milestones.  And then I realised with surprise that I’d one-upped my mum… Oh, lucky me — I get it from both sides now!

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