The Wall

Dear all,

This summer was, as I have mentioned before, a bit long though we were blessed with a visit from our 13-year-old Prairie Crossing neighbor.  Each and every one of us was thrilled to have him with us.  He is like a part of our family and, in fact, when we moved to England, I felt deeply that I had left a child behind I missed him so much 

We took him to very important places in England such as Cadbury World and Weston-Super-Mare, a seaside town with a proper grand pier.  Sadly, two days later, The Grand Pier burned to the ground in a matter of minutes. 

J and the boys dragged him around London.  What a trooper N was, throwing up on the lawn outside Westminster Abbey and nearly passing out at the Hard Rock Café while fighting a forty-eight hour flu.    You can always count on a good time when you visit us.

The homesickness was palpable in our house for weeks after N returned to the USA.   Then we endured the Olympics, which came on at 3:00 a.m. and annoyed R to no end because they only interviewed British athletes and the coverage did not include US teams. So those were a wash.

While touring a castle in Scotland, I walked into TWO rooms with the same William Morris Willow wallpaper we have in our house back home.  The sight of the wallpaper made my insides hurt.  I missed my house.

Ex-Pats often experience a little known phenomenon we refer to as Hitting The One Year Wall.  It’s when the charm of living abroad has evaporated.  When you miss people who understand that when you say ‘windbreaker’ you mean ‘jacket’ and not beach paraphernalia.  Or when you say something gives you the ‘willies’, you are not faced with looks of horror and mothers making mental notes to never let their child play with the little American boy.  Ditto the phrase ‘Just blow it off’. 

The Wall means you are tired of paying $12 a gallon for gas and $5 for a can of refried beans. Tired of the weather, tired of the five guys at the butcher’s shop staring at your boobs while you order up pork and leek sausages, tired of calling their sorry excuse for band-aids ‘plasters’, tired of hearing Michael Jackson on the radio, tired of the metric system and Celsius. But mostly, I’m tired of trying to figure out WTF is so intriguing about Posh and Becks.

I think, although I am a bit overdue, I may have hit The Wall.   And God knows, there better be dark chocolate, Merlot and really good music on the other side….

With love from England,

T-Ann