Counting Down

There is an air of sadness overhanging the bubble household and it’s because our bubble is about to burst.  We’re counting down in days rather than weeks until our return to the UK and the teenager is stamping her feet and having a hissy fit and saying she doesn’t want to go.  I tell her we’re going home and she tells me this is her home. And its true – she’s been here since she was 13 and now she’s 16½ and driving a car and has boyfriends and girlfriends and is planning a leaving party that apparently is going to last for the next two weeks.  I’m not totally heartless and I do sympathesize.

There will be things here that I too will miss – not the Starbucks and the fast food, or the crass TV and the traffic.  It’s good riddance to all that.  What I will miss will be the people, and that eternal air of optimism and positivity that they all have.  Yes I know I’ve complained in the past about the childlike cheerfulness a lot of Americans possess, and how it smacks of insincerity, but I’ve acclimatized – how will I cope when I go to a supermarket back in the UK and complete my transaction in a complete silence – never having to speak a word; no-one wishing me a nice a day?  Even the car park attendant at my local Fresh n’ Easy told me he’d missed me when I hadn’t been for a couple of weeks.  How will he cope when I don’t go at all? How will I cope when I have to pack my own shopping bags?  

My gardening friends were the first friends I made in the US – I took up volunteering as soon as I arrived before I had the opportunity to procastinize and talk myself out of it.  It was the one sound piece of advice our re-locator gave us. This week as I walked to the Rose Garden through the plethora of peacocks which wander freely through the flowerbeds, past the ducks and the geese, I realized I wasn’t looking forward to the thought of returning to the UK at all.  I’d have to find a proper job.  How could I go back to work in an office after this?  One morning a week pruning and weeding in the sunshine wins hands down over four days a week working for local government – which is what I did in my former life.  Do I want to go back to that? No way!!  Just before I packed away my tools a native Californian red tailed hawk, the size of a small eagle, flew overhead, swooped down low in an attempt to snatch a lizard, and landed with an ungainly thud in a clump of irises.  Slightly disorientated – irises are more sturdy than they look - it then took flight and perched on a nearby arbour whilst it recovered.  It’s come to say goodbye, one of my fellow volunteers suggested. How did it know? Was this a sign? Do the natives like me after all?!

When people here ask me what I will miss most about California when I leave, I’ll tell them the weather.  But that’s not really true.  I can cope with the British weather, I really don’t mind the grey and the damp, and the odd "phew what a scorcher" three day wonder heat wave. 

When I first arrived in the US, I felt lonely and isolated. I wished I could have picked up all my friends and family and brought them with me.  Now I just want to take everyone home.