Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Homeward bound

Yippee! This time next week we'll be in Saltburn! We are heading home for a whole glorious month: 4 weeks with family and friends up North, bookended by a night or two in London at the start and end of our trip. It is a supreme indulgence, and I am supremely excited.

I have been feeling increasingly sentimental about lovely Britain of late. As in, welling up a bit, can't quite finish my sentence as I ramble on about how Lady P will miss out on autumn mists, and school uniforms, and proper apples, and cricket. (Yes, I edit out things like UKIP, the Tory disembowelment of our welfare system, and persistent light rain).
Saltburn! Aah.

England! Sigh.

I long for home! Much more than I did last time we lived in the US. Maybe we can blame my current trash TV favourite, I Wanna Marry Harry, which is full of shots of misty fields and golden stately homes and cream teas. Sigh. Or maybe just an increasing awareness that American bread tastes like sweet, salty nothingness.

On reflection, I think something about being in the US permanently has given me permission to indulge in full blown sentimental nostalgia about home.

At the same time, being in the US indefinitely (permanently?) requires me to get to like it a whole lot more - and being settled here makes that possible. I know why we came here, and the way we decided to make it work (namely with a long stretch at home every year). I also know the many benefits of living here: the Hermosa Beach lifestyle is a very easy one to fall in love with. We're happy here - to the extent I feel almost guilty about it. Like I'm cheating on England, where I always said I wanted to live forever.

I hope we can have our cake and eat it to. That is, enjoy the career and lifestyle benefits of being in LA. And still nurture those precious relationships with family and friends - and Lady P's knowledge of her English roots - with a long trip back each summer. I wonder though. I hope our month in Saltburn just cements this feeling that this works, and we don't lose too much by being here. And not that after we leave I cry for a month...

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