I don't often get questions like how is it missing your youngest brothers senior night, probably because high school graduation is a simple milestone here, and its not even called high school. I don't get asked about missing the smells of my grandfathers house which somehow still has the remnants of my late grandmothers pasta sauce lifting up like backdraft against the walls. I don't get asked about the 72 track meets I've missed my siblings run, or the updates on my fathers blood pressure regularly. I don't get asked how it feels to know last when a loved one in family has 4months left to live with the best cancer treatment available.
Its not likely Ill get asked what the weather is like in fahrenheit or how many dollars it costs a month for my "cell bill." Its all centigrade and mobile, British slang and rhetoric. It's probably why no one asks what my mom does when the lake freezes over and the boats are put away and how she still cares for our dog like he was a puppy, he isn't. I don't get asked how the treatment on my grams health or when she'll play tennis again. Miles are replaced with km, inches with cm, 12hr clocks with military time, and piece of shit "all-in-one" washer dryers replace the old fashioned efficiently operating separated stack. Integrated appliances are complicated to repair and operate landlord say, well so is integrating into another culture.
Life inevitably keeps moving forward. Life is a force just like Newton predicted in 1666; in motion until we decide to slow it down, and sometimes its out of our hands. The mass of our livelihood, need for financial stability, friends and everyday changes keeps the acceleration high, and force us to adapt without thinking of the consequences.
Sometimes we need the people close to us to help us to depress the motion, or elegantly soften the burden of all the external pressures. Its no surprise that the further you are from home the fewer strong ties you have and the ropes that bind those relationship resemble shoe strings as opposed to tug of war chains. It's not about the ability to change the decisions that have been made and the distance from all that I love, but more the recognition that the feeling of missing is omnipresent.
I don't know when I'll move back home, and lately its hard to determine where home is; London, US, row 8 on Ryan Air, Hamburg, Madrid, Milan, or Zurich. I've found unprecedented love here and undesired longing for home packaged together in a mixed emotional bouquet. I used to be so sure. But, I live for another day and as the equation of life continues to compute I know that the people I love, and whom love me, live.
(in dedication to Wendy Loness, Day 1 of Chemo treatment)
