I and Love and You

Is it OK that I'm feeling homesick.  My little nephew turns 1 and my sisters are far away, I've not spoken to my mom in a few weeks and well, it rained and it smells like Spring, it smells like home.  Even the gentle cool breeze makes me yearn for English shores.  The clean pavement and the green grass and dare I say it; the cow smell driving home. I want to eat double cream and drink Pimms and sit by a canal dock on the grass.

I miss friends, even though I loved being with friends this afternoon, I miss friends of the past...people I lived life with before now..just for a day I'd love to have them here with me..show them this new world I live in, process my thoughts, ideas, new experiences.  Eat, drink and generally have a great time hanging with them.  I miss New Zealand, I miss the ocean. 

Instead I cuddled my friends baby and helped her with a chore, we talked, we ate and we parted ways.  I came home to an empty house and ate wafer cookies  for dinner with ahem...beer.  I know terrible.  It feel so wrong just cooking for myself, with no one to cook for and share a meal with.   I normally love this alone time...but today I want to be with people.

I want to be at my nephews 1st birthday party, with my sisters, tiredly tucking their kids into bed or watching late night TV with my mom, cuddling to keep warm on a cold English night by the fire.  I want to be with old friends eating pizza and drinking coffee, making music together and telling jokes.  I want to be home.  I want to be where I'm understood, loved unconditionally and not a big deal.  Just part of the regular scenery.

Listening to "The Avett Brothers" makes me more sick...one foot in and one foot back.  Didn't Lots wife turn into a pillar of salt?!  There is so much good, so many truly lovely people in my life, new babies, friends who I'm already sad to say goodbye to.  Dang my littl heart can't take it anymore.  Not tonight.

I know there is a lot of America I am yet to discover, the depth of people, the love and passion of the American heart, what it means to be loved by a nation, the local people.  to be let in, to be treasured by them.  I know that it is in the future....an unbreakable bond to this land and to these people.  Even possibly a departure to add to my nostalgia and reminisce.   I'm already attached to the golden sunshine that permeates each day.  The strength and devotion to purpose.  People who care about doing a good job, opinions on food and creating an edible and delicious salad.  Smoothies...yep...I guess it's a Cali thing, but I'm actually hooked.  Tanning...or being tanned, a place where my skin color is a positive thing!!!  Being a strong woman is respected and encouraged, even expected; like seriously....no room for women belittling here.  I know there is a lot more to discover and to survive as this nation figures out it's corporate identity....as a Brit abroad it's shocking and at the same time I'm curious how long passions last upon topics that are more like fads, start ups, trends...which things will go the long distance, or is that not really an American trait?  I don't know?  Is there really something bigger and better yet to be discovered? 

Is vintage Americana so comforting to those who can't face the changes happening to this country..it's sort of comforting to me, it the America I know from old movies and TV shows...I still can't believe I actually live here..it's so surreal.  Modern America, much like modern Britain is a far cry from the Jane Austen/John Wayne world we once knew, read about or daydreamed about.

I hope I can keep up...