Fixed points in time

The trampoline dismantled, waiting on our front lawn to be packed for America; March 2007.

Sixteen years ago today my family flew from England to San Francisco; we had left our home in Yorkshire for.... Not exactly our California home, although three of the five of us were born in the Golden State. We came back after eleven years as ex-pats, yet we all felt (and still do to small degrees) that Britain was home. It was a complicated return to America that was for the best, however any of us would give our eyeteeth to go back for varying lengths of stays. Alterations like this could be termed as fixed points within our lives, but seeing that my WIP is definitely going in a sci-fi direction, I've borrowed the Doctor Who phrase for today's title, lol.

When flying east, one gains hours, and when going from England to the West Coast of the United States, it's a LONG DAY not merely of travel but of swapping timelines, lifestyles, accents, and temperatures. We changed up SO MANY ELEMENTS of our existences; homeschooling turned to kids in public school. We needed new cars, new phone numbers, new mobiles, or cell phones as Yanks called them. The three small kids that grew up in Britain were now all teenagers, one heading off to college in the fall. In my luggage I brought loads of English tea, even more packed within our container of household items, but of course within a matter of time I'd drunk all those cuppas, wondering how we ended up back on American soil. Occasionally I still ponder that notion, how deeply living in Northern England affected me and altered me, turning me from a thirty-year-old into an almost forty-one-year-old as though in the blink of an eye.

Blink again and I'm pushing fifty-seven, ahem. But sixteen years ago, our worlds had stopped as though hit by asteroids. I honestly wondered how I would cope again dwelling in the US, having grown so used to the English manner of living, a slower pace, a humbler acceptance of oneself, part of Europe but not, lol. I took to America a stronger faith cultivated in a tiny church, also carrying the heavy weight of a dead sibling. I also packed my first novel, not quite completed but certainly hefty, along with the dream of perhaps finishing that draft, then.... From that fixed point emerged my role as an author, my hubby's leap in his career, our eldest's start at university where she met her beloved, our son's foray into navigating his place on the autism spectrum, and our youngest trying to figure out how Americans mail their letters, a notion she still struggles with, hehehe. In that fixed point, a place that nurtured all of us, once considered the mother country, became our nostalgic childhood home, a place of peace amid turmoil, where speaking solely for myself, a heart still beats amid the glorious green of Yorkshire.

I'll blink again and another decade will have probably passed or some other ridiculous period of time that doesn't seem wholly possible. 30 March comes along more quickly each year, and in those conscious hours I attempt to view my current status in regard to that fixed point. Not that I lament leaving England, nor do I regret all that has occurred since. Merely in studying for a brief moment what was, then appreciating what is. Perhaps that's the worth of fixed moments in time, the simple observation. Then moving forward to what comes next.