Day 7 - The past

[davidn]

St Andrews wasn't our northernmost destination after all, in the end. I'm not sure what I was thinking when I said that I wouldn't make the journey to see my parents' house - once we had come this far, it seemed like madness to get so close to it and not see the place for the first time in three years. So now we've driven virtually the entire length of Britain, a journey of 600 miles and twelve hours in total.

On the way up, it felt like a perfect repeat of 2006 - packing our things for an overnight stay and then going up the A90, our route from university to home, with Whitney and I in the front of the car and quadralien in the back... the nostalgia came flooding in. As we went through Aberdeen, Whitney put on The Secrets of an Island, and he had the lyrics on his laptop and was singing to it, and... I went through the entire city barely able to see from crying. I'm serious about this.

I'm overwhelmed by everything. The house has changed since I last saw it - it always does, but this time the main hall has been entirely redecorated and it's a little like being in a dream where you're in a familiar location but the details are slightly wrong. Everything moves on when you're not around, at a very normal pace... it sounds selfish, but it was a realization that the world here can and does go on without me. If you look closely, there's evidence that I used to live there, scattered among the miscellany that fills the rest of the house... some of the posters on the wall of my old bedroom remain, and there are a couple of things of mine now stacked in pieces of furniture that I don't recognize. I have absolutely not been forgotten, but my era of actually living there has ended.

The house is full of... what I would probably describe as 'junk' if it didn't all hold such personal memories for me - it seems to be in insurmountable disorder, and I'm worried that when my brothers eventually move out there won't be anyone to really keep things like the Internet and television service working for my parents. They have the attitude of just coping with things not quite working until they become truly unusable, meaning that we survived without a working cold tap on the sink in the bathroom for many years and the kitchen fridge has a bottom shelf that's held on with parcel tape - and nobody has ever known how to really work the heating, though to be fair it's made up of four dials with no apparent relation to each other like a puzzle from Myst.

What all this made me realize is that even though this was my home, nothing can bring life back to how I remember it - I have my own home now, and a very comfortable one. I have to wonder what things would have been like if I had somehow stayed, and I'd love to live closer to my family, but I'm not even sure that I could go back to living in Britain now, not if I wanted to enjoy the same kind of life that I have in America. It gets to me that I feel so foreign there, but I've always been foreign everywhere - when we were trying to organize a UK mobile phone in St Andrews, the man there noted my "English accent". At least America has offered me the opportunity for my difference to be treated as by and large a good thing.

Anyway. I remembered to take a photo of the car before the sun set at just after three o'clock - this is the Hyundai that's taken us from Heathrow airport all the way to the frozen north. Now it's time to start slowly taking it home.

Comments

[rakarr.livejournal.com]

I'd have liked to make a longer response, but the things you bring up have got me a little melancholy myself!
But I'd just like to say.. you're not a foreigner among us, this motley collection of online (and lately offline!) people whom you call friends.
I don't know if that's comforting or just monumentally, stupidly sappy, but there you go!

[davidn]

It's a wonderful thing to say :) Thank you so much. It's good to remember the things that I have now that I didn't during the time in my life the house reminds me of.

[kjorteo]

What rakarr said--this post managed to get to me a bit and I'm the one who wrote The Afflicted, but, for what it's worth, you'll always have a home among us!

I got you a Christmas present (not because of this; it was actually already on its way before I saw this post) and it should have arrived at your (American) house by the time you return to it. I'm not going to claim that one silly little gift makes up for the pain of looking back on childhood memories and realizing they're gone or anything, but ... it's what the fact that I got it symbolizes, I think! Your friends are here, now. (And your wife, for that matter!) Even if you can't go back, sometimes going forward isn't so bad.... :)

[kjorteo]

(Though, admittedly, the overall cost/benefit ratio to your mental health that you get from associating with me is somewhat debatable.)

[davidn]

Oh! Thank you for doing that, that's very unexpected and will be something else to look forward to after the flight tomorrow.

And I really do value the friendship from you and rakarr and everyone - I remember saying to you that after spending a few months in the country I still knew nobody while the rest of my friends had stayed in close contact... but for me, you were the beginning of a group of friends that's built up and become stronger than anything else even over distance.

[kjorteo]

Every time I think about our friendship, it just reminds me how completely amazing it is the way entire courses of people's lives can change based on single decisions that happen to start sufficiently large chain reactions. I remember observing you from afar (playing ZZT Crime, etc.) and thinking that we seemed to have some potential connections, or at least a few things in common, but I wasn't brave enough to just message you out of nowhere with a "hi, you don't know me but...." letter or anything. Little did I know that you saw me, thought the same thing, and were.

But, I mean, if you hadn't clicked "Send" that day, then today you would be able to look at pigeons and not think anything of it.

[rachel-anne.livejournal.com]

Totally relate to this. Perfectly written, and sorry not to have seen you on your rather epic travels!

[davidn]

Yes, I completely lost track of who now lives in Britain and who doesn't! I sent a message out on Facebook a couple of weeks before we went, but as that now arbitrarily filters everyone's friends lists, it's not a very useful site for communication.