You Can Go Home, You Just Can’t Stay

This week, we ponder what “going home” means when you’ve been away for a while.

Mike:

Home, as Garrison Keillor has noted, is that place where, when you show up, they have to take you in.  I just returned from a two-week sojourn in my native land and, while everyone was very welcoming and accommodating, it was very obviously not where I belonged.

If I had never moved away, it would simply be the place I lived and I’m sure I would go through my days without the sense of underlying melancholic nostalgia that seems to increase with each visit.  By being away, events in my past life take on a significance they never would have had otherwise: the house—many times sold and modified since I last was inside it—where I visited Mary Callen one night while she was babysitting and had to climb out the bathroom window when the parents returned unexpectedly early, the curve in the road where four of my friends died in a spectacular car crash, the bend in the creek where I spent many lazy and languid afternoons.  These tattered remnants of time haunt my visits now and make me wonder if I could ever move back and truly fit in.

And other ghosts appear, as well.  My son is no longer the child, but a father, promoting me to grandfather, and I see myself in him in surprising ways.  My own father, the white-haired patriarch of the family, will someday pass that title to me, white hair and all, and the new child (as well as his future siblings) will now be the focus of attention, concern and hopes for the future.  It’s as if we have all been promoted to the next level on the conveyor belt to eternity.

I had a wonderful time there, really, but I almost relieved to be back in Sussex.  I am certain there are many, many ghosts here but, so far, none of them are haunting me.

Toni:

I still dream about “going home” but I know it will be a bit of an Alice in Wonderland experience if I ever do. Half of the names I read about these days have no meaning for me at all. A quick glance at the Mail Online (for blogging purposes only) usually leaves me non-plussed. Katie Price? Didn’t she used to look different? Wasn’t she called something else? I’ve never heard of half the boy bands and couldn’t pick out Peaches Geldoff in a line-up if my life depended on it.

It’s a bit of a weird feeling when I do “go home”. A lot has changed and yet a lot has stayed exactly the same, and I’m not just talking about Ken and Deidre in Corrie. I always feel right at home as soon as I step off the plane at Heathrow, and yet I don’t always know what I’m doing.

Before they made their debut Stateside, those bloody Dyson hand dryers used to scare the life out of me. You could do yourself an injury with one of those! And I was completely wowed with the hand held gadgets that are commonplace in UK restaurants now, but still a bit of a rarity in the USA. It’s bliss to sit on a loo without worrying that everyone on the other side of the door can see you, but not so great when the service beyond the public loo is so slow that I sound like an American when I voice my impatience.

Perhaps there’s a no man’s land somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic we could all stop off at to re-adjust before heading “home”?

 

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Coming Home - Or Am I?

This week finds Toni back in her native land, with a few observations to make about it, and Mike reminiscing about recent trips “home” and what it feels like to be a stranger in your own country.

Toni

My 7 year old caused some mirth a few weeks ago when he told a friend that it was hot in England. I mean, it can sometimes be hot, but it's not a country that's generally known for its climate is it? Fortunately, the last few summers we've been there have seen relatively warm days in my mother's lovely garden, so that's obviously what's stuck in his mind.

However, we're now packing for this year's trip and the suitcase is mainly full of sweaters and long trousers. We've been in shorts and t-shirts here since early June, it's sweltering in Chicago, and now we have to fly to mid-60's Fahrenheit with occasional showers.

Come on England - this is our summer holiday fer cryin' out loud.

This whining apparently makes me sound more American than Brit (according to my mother), and now I'm worrying about what else I will complain about that it will make it appear I've gone over to the Dark Side?
Small fridges - well, it's hard not to really. My mother has a standard under-the-counter size fridge, which is perfect for her. It's when you quadruple the occupancy of her house that it becomes rather inadequate. I find myself buying food that has a four month shelf life, and encouraging my kids to eat everything the minute I buy it.

One bathroom - again, who needs more than one bathroom when you're living on your own? However, when the house is packed to the gills, it becomes a bit of a problem - especially when a need to pee is involved. Last year, we had so many people staying in the house that I walked over the road to my brother's house to borrow their shower. His only problem with that was I was still in my (bright pink and blue pyjamas) and he was washing his car in the drive way. I haven't seen him go that shade of red for a long time!
No air conditioning - well, that has sometimes caused problems, but this year it doesn't sound like we'll be faced with that one.

Roads that were not built for (two lanes of) cars - I know I  used to drive around these weeny streets, but I now find myself closing my eyes when I have to squeeze a car through a medieval market towns. Not a good thing when I'm the driver.

Speeding cars - ditto with them. I swear my mother reverses out of her driveway faster than I go forwards.
Maybe I'll just do my terrible American accent to go with the whining!


Mike

Like Toni, I often feel like a foreigner in my own country, but unlike her, I don’t find much to complain about; at least not at first.  In Britain it’s easy to find things to whinge about—laughably small appliances, cramped and uncomfortable flats, narrow, higgly-piggly roads and people who drive on them as if they are trying out for the Indianapolis 500, and a government that sits on your shoulder like a giant vulture ready to peck your liver out at the first sign of weakness.  But America is boundless and bold and unashamedly bounteous, offering everything you wish and holding out the promise of more.

Whenever I return to the States, I spend the first few days in a giddy state of delight, driving on wide, straight highways, enjoying unending hospitality, eating in good, inexpensive restaurants where the staff are abidingly cheerful and never fail to wish me a good day.  Even the weather is big and brash, baking you one moment, freezing you like a brass monkey the next and drenching you with sudden, though spectacular, storms in between.

But after a few days the vastness gets to me; I begin to miss the proximity of desired destinations and the palpable sense of history Britain exudes, and find myself longing for the snug and ancient little villages of Sussex.

And then I start to see the things that aren’t there: pavements are rare, and pedestrian footpaths non-existent, and public transportation, such as it is, is mainly the reserve of recently released felons or people too addled, old, poor or otherwise unable to drive a car.  Everything is an hour’s drive away and I suddenly feel myself attached to the rental car as if with an invisible umbilical cord, a feeling I don’t have in Britain, and one I don’t miss.

Then there are the bugs and other pests, all ready to bite and suck or otherwise make you uncomfortable.  And while medical attention is easy to find, it is difficult to pay for.

But I never complain; it would be churlish to complain when surrounded by such openness and opulence.  Instead, I file the feelings away and look forward to returning to the land I now call home, where I can, once more, begin missing the place that will always define who, and what, I am.

What about you?  How do you feel about visiting “home” and what do you feel when you are actually there?


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Wherever I Lay My Hat

This week’s post is from Toni, who is on a sojourn in her native country.

They say home is where the heart is, and I’m in a quandary.

I landed in my beloved England on June 30th and well, my heart (in the shape of three kids, the Ball & Chain and the mad mutt) was still in the States. Furthermore, despite having lived in Wimbledon for four years in the 1980’s, I only half knew where I was as my mate Di drove me to her house. (The one way system was never that complicated when I lived there and I’m relieved not to be driving this week.)

It was great to hear English accents all around me, and to ask for something in WH Smith without most of the shoppers turning round to see where the funny accent was coming from. The prices were a bit of a blow to the solar plexus mind you. How do you people afford to live here? And then the adopted American in me kicked in as I waited for two and a half hours (ish) in Café Nero for two cups of tea. “Come on girls, you’ll have plenty of time to talk about your weekend plans when you’re NOT WORKING”, my inner voiced screamed. Oh for the manic efficiency of my local Starbucks.

Then there are the bathrooms with no toilet that I forgot all about. In many lovely Victorian houses like where I’m staying, the loo is a small room by itself as opposed to being part of a larger bathroom. This is fab as it means that you never have anyone knocking on the door when you’re taking a shower and telling you to hurry up because they’re dying for a wee. (I realize that this doesn’t happen often in the States as many houses have a least two toilets, but in more modern houses in the UK it’s not unknown.)

The biggest thing about coming back to your country of origin after many years of living abroad is the feeling of being in an altered state. You know where you are and what you’re supposed to be doing, but everything’s just that little bit different.

As Mike said, when we discussed this, “It’s like waking up from a dream” but I would venture to say that when things change as much as they have in the UK over the last twenty years, it’s like waking up from a dream and finding you’re still in a dream. If you know what I mean: It’s life Jim, but not as we know it.

Toni

It's life, Jim, but not as we know it.

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