2004-03-30 - 7:34 a.m.
Homesick
*sigh* I just read Weetabix's diary entry about her trip to London, and I'm homesick. I never thought I could get homesick for a place I have so firmly moved away from, but I do. I love living in America. There are so many things about the US that make it an improvement over the UK. It's more practical, yet more imaginative. It's pragmatic, and hopeful, and optimistic all at once. It's big. It's varied. It's friendly, and beautiful, and open, and cheerful. It's cheap. But sometimes, I miss my first home. Spring is a particularly resonant time for me - it makes me think of Hedenham, and my mother's cottage. Spring means snowdrops, and then daffodils. Cowslips and primroses, and fat little hedgehogs searching for insects. But really, any time of year is perfect, especially if the sun is shining. (Um, not that common an occurrence there; East Anglia - North and East of London - is at or near sea level, and acts as a big sinkhole for whatever clouds may be passing over England. But when the sun shines - oh, it's beautiful.) The spring gives way to summer almost imperceptibly - and then there are dog roses, and small birds nesting and scolding you from deep inside the hedges that line the roads. Autumn doesn't have the pageantry of fall on the US East coast, but it makes up for it by giving us rose hips and blackberries, and the first frost that outlines everything in white. Winter makes everything snuggle in and become more local, and mornings bring brisk walks while evenings are spent by the fire with a trusted book. I'm a country girl at heart, even though I spent the weeks of my childhood in London. Weekends were spent either in Norfolk (at Hedenham Cottage), or Dorset (at my paternal grandparent's house, Long Close). Summer (and often winter) holidays were spent up in Northumberland at St. Aidan's, my father's house in Bamburgh. I am a country girl. Not much of a farmgirl, I'm afraid - I was in the rather fey upper-middle class category of "little girl who wanders around picking flowers" rather than "someone who might actually be useful". I was happy, though - far away from other children, free to wander about at will, and often quite far afield. As long as I made it home for meals, everything was fine. I recall spending rather a lot of the time in my own little world - something that hasn't changed much. I'm a stranger there, now, albeit one with connections. My mother has to introduce me at parties, and I am the exotic American daughter. Everyone else in the family is more familiar with the house - they have "their" rooms - I have none, since I don't visit often enough - and I stay in one of their rooms while I am there. I don't belong, but that's not a problem for me - belonging means responsibility for change and reality. I am happy to drift through once in a while, and see things through the veil of the past. I suppose I *am* more Americanized these days - I coat the village and the house with a layer of nostalgia and quaintness it does not possess for the people that live there every day - but I don't care. Spring means snowdrops, and then daffodils. Cowslips and primroses, and fat little hedgehogs searching for insects. *sigh*
Dorsal - Ventral
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all words copyright Laura Mellin 2000-2005
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