"Home" thoughts from abroad

In two weeks, we will be on English soil. Retrospectively, I’ll be able to call it a fortnight (did you know that Americans don’t use that word?). I’m excited and looking forward to it, and I know it will be a wonderful time, all 12 weeks of it, but I have to confess to being a little nervous too.

There will be so many good things. Seeing family and friends, time as a family together on holiday, enjoying the beauty of the gentle English countryside (I hope you all appreciate how lucky you are to have it on your doorsteps), seeing the sea. Oh goodness me, so much! It’s a vacation, and I want it to be that, but I can’t avoid the fact that it will also be a trip to the old country. I don’t want to use the word “home”. I’ve spent a year and a half carefully and consistently referring to here as “home”. So when I tell people we’re going to Britain for the summer, and they reply “oh how neat, you’re going back home”, I don’t let them spoil my record. I counter with “yes, we’re going to Britain”. I shouldn’t think they notice, but I have my own personal pc rules.

I don’t need to go to Britain any more. Last summer, I desperately needed to, wanted to, ached to, which in itself was probably a reason against. No, now I fear I almost need NOT to go. I might like it too much. The hermetic seal around my life here, a separate chapter, an interesting interlude, but not real life somehow, will be broken. I’ve invested of myself here heavily and genuinely. I haven’t pretended (well, sometimes a little). But I know deep down that I am like one of those old-fashioned toy clowns that children used to have, round at the bottom and weighted, so that they always bob back upright with a jingle when released by the chubby hands which bat them and hold them down at an angle. I do my best, but I can’t change my centre of gravity.

None of this is new, though, and none of it is rocket science, (or some touchy-feely equivalent of that – I don’t think rocket scientists would be all that hot on emotional analysis, actually). None of you will say “oh my goodness, Iota is going to Britain, and she’s feeling it’s a bit complicated, who’d have thought THAT?” You know me too well. And I don’t mind complicated, really. Not for myself. I do mind it for my children though.

I mind it for 10-yo, who loves it here, has grown into a life which he can’t bear to think of moving away from, and for whom the question “how long will we stay in America?” is threatening and best avoided. I know friends will ask, and I know if he's in earshot I will fashion the answer more for him than for them, pass it off lightly, and not look in the direction of his face as I do so.

I mind it for 7-yo, who is fiercely proud of his Scottish birthright, and occasionally comes home from school with an A4 wax-crayonned Saltire: “we had some spare time in Art, and she said we could draw whatever we wanted”. I mind that the place which retains a hold on him might live up to his expectations, and make it hard to leave. I mind that it might disappoint, and that afternoons with friends of 18 months ago will not be what he imagines.

I mind it for 4-yo, who thinks she remembers Scotland and her little friends, but probably remembers the stories we have told her, the memories we have created for her. I mind that she will adore the beach, and though the coast of Fife even in summer won’t be quite the same as her mental picture of a beach (California), she will flit about in her wellies and warm fleece (I think you can flit in wellies…), enjoying again the freedom and space and openness that I and she used to delight in, and now so lack in our impoverished hemmed-in suburbia.

I mind for us as a family, that we don’t share the same place in our minds when we root around for where we think of as "home" (oh, that word again). I mind for the family we have in Britian, who will have to say good-bye to us again, with a brave face.

Bother. I thought I meant it when I said I didn’t mind complicated.