6 months repatriated

 It is hard to fathom that six months has passed since we left London.   Sometimes, it just feels like a dream that we were even there.

What do I miss?  I miss the accents, the closeness of our neighbours and being able to walk outside and see Saul standing on his slide just waiting for someone to come out so he could have a chat.  I miss walking to kids to school and seeing friends at the school gates and quiz nights and girls nights out.  I miss walking into Wimbledon to do my shopping and exploring cool book shops with Amber.  I miss walking Archie to Garfield Park and seeing old and new dog friends and watching him run around in circles.  I miss taking the tube and train into Central London to walk around and see building that are older than our country.  I miss the diversity of hearing people speaking all different languages all around me.  I miss walks on Wimbledon Common and runs through different parts of Southwest London and even over  Tower Bridge.  I miss taking the kids to Stagecoach and Drew’s soccer team.  I miss having my groceries delivered to my door.  I miss the pubs.  I miss watching premier league soccer with Drew and having him tell me all the fun facts from his Match of the Day magazine.  I miss being able to ask the girls to run to the Co-op to get milk, bananas, etc.  I miss the NHS.

What do I enjoy being here?  I love being able to see my family and friends.  I love having more space and my own closet that I can stand in.  I love that Drew has a friend down the street.  I love that Brad doesn’t leave home until 8 and is home by 6 pretty much everyday.  I love that Alison has excelled at gym and appreciates her coaches.  I love being able to go to Target!  I love that Lauren has learned the value of having a clean room now that she has a place for everything.  I love how Drew has adopted American teams in all of the big sports and watching Sports Center with him.  I love being able to park in a driveway and not having to worry about parallel parking and driving on narrow streets (although, I don’t love that I have to fill my car up once a week rather than once a month!).  

I feel we have, for the most part, slotted back into life in America pretty easily, despite being in the middle of a pandemic.  I whole-heartedly know that if we had moved to a place that was unfamiliar, it would not have been as seamless.  I know the timing of this move was the right time for our family; Brad is enjoying his job: the challenges, the people, the culture; Drew has made some good friends at school and knows more about American sports and athletes than I ever will; Alison has found a love for making fidgets and is really improving in gymnastics; Lauren has really matured and is doing really well in school.  

As for me, I am enjoying supporting my family right now and being the taxi driver, chef, cleaner, nurse, grocery shopper, therapist, dog walker and trainer, etc that moms are.  It does get lonely at times, but once more people get vaccinated, I know I will be more social.  Some days, I feel like I have forgotten how to be social because I just have not much interacted with people IRL much in the past 6 months.  But the weather is getting nicer, the kids are going back to school in a month, and Archie is getting more accustomed to being in the crate for extended periods of time.

The nearly 6 years that we lived in London can never be taken away; the memories that we all have we be cherished throughout the rest of our lives.  The kids will always remember being there, the friends they made and the experiences we had.  If anyone ever has the chance to be an ex-pat, Take it!  It was not easy at the beginning and navigating a new country, a new culture, a new school system is not always straightforward.  But life is too short to always be comfortable.  When you are uncomfortable is when you grow and learn and develop resilience.  And we learned to lean on each other, because in the beginning each other was all that we had.