England with Mother

I woke up about a month ago with the strong feeling that I never wanted to leave England. I had fallen madly in love with it. I loved their strange place names like "Basingstoke" and "Cockfosters." I loved their adherence to tradition at all costs. I loved the brilliant and incomprehensible color of green that comes out when the sun shines on the grass. But most of all, I love the people. British people get bad rap, but they're some of the funniest, kindest people you will encounter (now the Italians, those are some truly unsavory people.) England is in almost all respects, a perfect country. Except for one thing; all of my friends and family live an ocean and a continent away, in California.

Now I love California too. It's the best state in the Union in my opinion, but I've always had an Old World soul. Ask any of my friends. No really. I organized and successfully threw a tea party for my fourth grade teacher. Of course this is undeniably significant of my billboard-sized homosexuality, but I think this also speaks to a love of the eccentricities of Europe. And also a love of cake (it always comes back to food here on my blog, have no doubts about that.)

Up until my epiphany I had alternated between being homesick and being in love with England, the kind of love that they have in the movies, a love to rock the ages. Jack and Rose, Scarlett and Rhett, Adam and the British Isles. But I also had been having recurring dreams where I was able to fly back to California for a weekend and visit all my friends and family (and dogs.) I missed them terribly. But on the morning of my epiphany, I felt like I would be able to live an ocean and a continent away from them.

And then my mother came. I love my mother, everyone does. She's effortlessly lovable and genuine to the core. She taught me to love all things kitsch and camp, something so few appreciate these days. She's a wacky woman. Until she visited me in England, my mom had never had a passport and excepting Hawaii, she had never left the North American continent.

Walking around London with my mom was a different experience. She travels differently than I do. Whereas I often want to get to my destination as quickly as possible, my mother wants to explore every nook and cranny along the way, which makes you find things you didn't see. In Bath she and my cousin found locks along canals. She chatted up one of the other tourists on the walking tour and found out about a restaurant famous for its buns that we later went to and enjoyed.

And as I traveled with her, I remembered all the things I loved about California; the hodge-podge of Los Angeles, the hippie elegance of San Francisco, the poppies that bloom along the five in Spring, the oranges in my hometown of Redlands.

As we took the elevator (that is one word I simply cannot let go of, it is not a "lift" and it never will be) up from the Tube, my mom handed me an orange that she had picked from the tree in our yard. They say that the sense of smell triggers more memories than any other sense, and as I lifted the orange to my nose and dug my nail into it, my love of California came flooding back to me. Earthquakes, Mexican food, driving, traffic, all my friends, all my family, all my dogs! It had been so long since I'd had proper fruit that had been grown and allowed to ripen under legitimate sunlight. How could I even think of living anywhere else?

And now I'm of two minds. There's the part of me that loves California and shorts and oranges and the way the sun turns everything golden early in the morning. And then there's the part of me that loves England and it's ancientness and traditions and vaguely socialist democracy. And it's weird, to feel simultaneously homesick and content with where I am. My alternating feelings I had before my epiphany have now synthesized into some strange alloy and I don't know how I feel anymore.

But what I do know is this; I have two months left here in England, and I'm going to have the most amazing time living in a place that I love and that will have a very large piece of my heart. And then I'm going to go back home to California, a place that I also love, that also takes up a large part of my heart. And so when it comes time to leave England, and give up my overseas address and overseas mobile number and the amazing feeling that come from being international and having an accent, I'm happy to be giving it up for a place that I love just as much.