Confessions of an Expat

For the first time since this blog began, I am in the United States.

I haven’t been in America for almost two years. Unlike most of my friends, who visit at least for the holidays, I’ve just stayed in England. Part of it is that my class and theatre schedules have made it impractical for me to get away for anything more than a couple of days, which is not cost-effective. And part of it is just a general reluctance to return to the nation of my birth. Family politics contributes (do I go to Mudball, Michigan to see my parents, but no one else, or do I spend the time with my own family and friends on the East coast and not see the folks?) but it’s more just that I don’t feel any real pull to return.

Being back here is incredibly strange. You wouldn’t think that two years away would change your perspective that much. I’ve always been culturally isolated in some ways(lack of television, for example, separates you from the rest of society pretty quickly, and I haven’t had one for years), so I didn’t truly expect that it would be that strange. But it’s amazing how much you adapt to your surroundings and forget about what you used to take for granted. No, I don’t have a cute British accent (although I do notice accents over here a lot, and I notice that there are some words that I pronounce differently, and certainly my current slang owes more to England than America, though arguably that’s always been the case). And having got back behind the wheel of a car today for the first time in years, I remembered how to drive (and after a few days of riding in my sister’s car, I had no trouble with which side of the road to use). It’s the little things that get me. My sister’s oven, for example, which is not anywhere near the size of my mum’s, is enormous. So are the cars over here, and the houses. Highways are enormous and chaotic. Everything really is supersized in America; it’s no wonder we were the home of the disgustingly enormous cheeseburger. Light switches, and electrical outlets, however, seem really small. Toilets don’t flush with anything approaching the turbo-suck of British ones. And even if I haven’t picked one up in England, people over here have serious accents. I thought that Midwestern ones were obvious once I moved to Washington, but now they’re all quite glaring.

And the grocery stores! As always, the thing that to me is most indicative of cultural difference is the food. The varieties of the same product here are legion. And say what you will about British cooking, the availability of prepackaged and instant meals over here suggests that fewer Americans scratch-cook. Britain, I think, does fresh food better- markets and specialty shops, like a proper butcher or fishmonger, are more common there- but America, unsurprisingly, does junk food better. ‘International cuisine’ in English grocery stores leans very heavily in an Asian, especially Indian, direction; over here the Hispanic foods section gets equal or greater space. Not that this is surprising- it’s perfectly logical; but this is something I would never have contemplated before moving to York. Most exciting to me is being back among the land of really good cheese. I have yet to be anywhere in the world that can compete with Wisconsin cheddar, or the sheer variety of astonishingly good other cheeses to be found there.

The truth is, even though I’m ‘home’, I’m not. I spent twenty-six years of my life in a country that feels absolutely foreign. In some respects it always did; my ending up in England isn’t much of a surprise. And since being there I have been happier than in all my life. Even in the summer of my discontent, when life seemed so utterly devoid of charm, there was the beautiful city and a feeling at least spacial peace. The feeling that I am in a foreign land in the nation of my birth is disconcerting. I miss New England, and my ancestral graves, but not much else.

My first encounter with America on this trip was going through customs and being hassled for not having all my information to hand. I politely explained that I wasn’t sure how to fill out the forms, since I am an American national but a British resident, after which I was grilled for contact information that I didn’t have. Since Kay was picking me up, I don’t know her address. The fact that I didn’t know her phone number by heart was somehow suspicious, to which I tartly retorted that one should not assume we speak. Her number, which has a mid-Wisconsin area code, was somehow suspect. Ah! But once I explained that my sister studies at a seminary in Chicago, there was no problem. Which so perfectly exemplified why I left, and indeed my first words to Kay were something to the effect of wanting to get back on a plane back home. In fairness, most of the people I’ve run into along this trip have been spectacularly nice and pleasant, but even that is odd to me. People in Britain are also nice and pleasant, but they aren’t your best friend instantly. There’s a distance that I both respect and appreciate. I find the... overt American friendliness unnerving; it feels slightly insincere. (It probably isn’t, but that’s how it feels.)

The best part of coming back here, apart from seeing my parents, is that it makes me all that much more convinced that England is the home I was always meant for. Before flying out last week I was actually quite reluctant to leave, but I have no such qualms about it from this side of the ocean. It’s lovely to visit the family, and I’m looking forward to Kalamazoo.... but it’s especially nice to know that this is just a holiday, and that in the end I get to go home to England.