Complaints aside, I too shall give thanks
November 28, 2002 ~ 11:41 a.m.
My mother arrives in London today. I haven�t seen her, or any member of my family, since July. And just because I am nearly in my mid 30s does not mean � nor should it mean � that I don�t miss my mom. You bet I do.
I really have overcome the feelings of homesickness that afflicted me for the better part of a year, the sensation of being torn apart in the absence of the neighborhood where I spent my formative years and the folks I was always surrounded with. It took patience and a constant, mentally strenuous effort, but I have finally carved a reasonably comfortable slice of life for myself in a previously heretofore foreign city with only my wife (and occasionally my MIL) for company. Here, in this place, they are all I have, and probably ever likely to have.
Stateside, I left behind two very good friends, an older sister, an uncle, my parents and my grandmother. I miss them all. I sometimes think about life carrying on as normal back home and how exotic my life in one of the world�s largest cities must seem to them. Little do they know that the non-descript corner of Americana that is my true home turf is the sweetest tasting form of existence that I know of. And even though I see the place two or � if I�m really lucky � three times a year, I always get the sensation of a homecoming after being lost at sea for years.
Every time I turn the key in the door to the apartment that is my residence, I still feel like I�m a visitor there. I have become very familiar with my own little area of suburban London, yet I still to this day feel like it�s not really my place. I can almost imagine waking up to the view of vinyl-covered houses constructed from wood and the massive, elaborately shaped eastern white pines dotting the horizon that I gazed upon for more than twenty-five years. Instead, like a dream I never seem to wake up from, I stare at a hodge-podge of little backyard gardens and a row of brick houses from an adjacent side street. So English. So not like home.
Somehow, it seems incredible that I went from paying Social Security to National Insurance. I now carry around two numbers-for-life with me.
In my own home I retain the dialect I grew up with, using every Americanism that once rolled off my tongue effortlessly. I am determined not to lose it. But for every time I say postbox (as opposed to mailbox), knackered (for tired), cheers (for thanks), ground floor (instead of first floor), loo (for bathroom), kitchen roll (for paper towels) and half-six (for six-thirty), and for every moment I pause to reflect on how different my rendition of words like �hall� or �not� sounded, I realize that I am making more and more of an effort to stave off the inevitable effects of assimilation.
What�s a proud American, who should be celebrating Thanksgiving in his native land, got to be thankful for?
Despite living in the �Old� England, I still have my upbringing in New England to be thankful for.
I have a good job and a comfortable apartment in a reasonably safe area of the city to be thankful for. (Very thankful for, in fact, when you�ve seen, as I have, just how grimy, depressing and/or dangerous some parts of London really are. They always make our neighborhood in SE20 seem idyllic by comparison.)
I have my wife of slightly more than four years, who puts up with me, who comforts me, who knows me inside-and-out, who has even learned how to talk back to me without raising my ire (a real, finely honed skill, no doubt). She can live with me whereas so many others would have left me after four days, never mind four years. I have her to be thankful for.
I have my mother-in-law who is very tolerant and no less understanding of me. So many guys have MILs-from-hell stories to tell. My mom-in-law is a gem. I am thankful for her.
I still have a room in the Boston suburbs to relax in on hot July evenings listening to Boston talk radio chat or ballgames, a place where many of my personal treasures are still kept, and the Charles River will always be there for me to run along on muggy, Massachusetts-style summer mornings. Things are changing over there bit by bit, but it�ll never change beyond recognition, for despite how it sometimes feels to be home, I am never gone for more than six or seven months at a time. I am thankful for all of this.
And tonight after work, when I see my mother for the first time since mid summer, I will reflect on how thankful I am for the family I grew up with. And that I am not the only member of said family to be spending Thanksgiving this year overseas.
Good to see you, Mom. Happy Thanksgiving.
� M.E.M.
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Copyright � 2001-2007 by M.E. Manning. All material is written by me, unless explicitly stated otherwise by use of footnotes or bylines. Do not copy or redistribute without my permission.
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