Twizzlers, Root Beer, Cheez-its and My Credit Crunch Bloggy Lunch

A few weeks ago when the BBQ season had officially arrived, HRH and I were out in our postage stamp-sized garden, firing up the grill when my neighbor struck up a chat through the fence. Because we live in a fishbowl, a terraced house in London where everyone has done the side extensions in their kitchens, we’re used to our public lifestyle. If my neighbor is standing in her daughter’s bedroom on the first floor she can look down into my kitchen and vice versa. I never knew how detailed her view was until she started asking me for recipes for the food I’d made the previous evening.

Anyhow, my neighbor and I brought our glasses of wine to the fence and talked about warm-weather concerns---where to go for a good bikini wax, the best (cheapest, quickest, most hygienic) pedicure and the nicest spot for al fresco lunches. To be perfectly honest, I’m not a very high-maintenance girl and alluded to that through the fence.

‘I haven’t gotten my highlights done since January,’ I said.

‘Oh yes, credit crunch roots,’ she replied.

‘And you know I never go out to lunch. Unless it’s with the kids.’

‘That’s true. We’re good like that.’

HRH made a little throat-clearing sound which was not lost on the neighbor.

‘Perhaps, Nappy Valley Housewife, we should start leading the lives our husbands think we lead,’ she said.

‘Yes, make a reservation, dahling.’

So it was in that very spirit that I found myself heading out of Liverpool Street station on Saturday morning, on an Essex-bound train, all by myself. I met a few fellow bloggers in Saffron Walden for the expat meet-up. The absolutely fabulous and organized Michelle from Mid-Atlantic English picked me up at the station and kindly gave me a tour of the North Essex countryside. It was beautiful and green and covered in bluebells. Honestly, it was like a picture postcard, everything that Americans probably dream of when they try to conjure up an image of the English countryside.

We met the others at a local restaurant: Mike from Postcards from Across the Pond and his wife; Not From Around Here; and 3 Bedroom Bungalow. The great thing about meeting fellow bloggers besides, of course, getting out of the virtual world and into the real one is that you already have common ground. The fact that all the bloggers gathered were Americans made it that much easier to have a conversation. The conversation flowed, there were no awkward pauses and everyone was incredibly kind. It's kind of funny that whenever I get together with fellow American expats and we ask each other what we miss about America, the answers are mostly food-related.

The lunch was relaxed, friendly, fun, and entertaining. Who could ask for anything more from a lunch without the kids? Of all the positive things that blogging has brought into my life after only a few months, meeting the real people behind the blog has been the highlight to date. Social media networking is a great way to connect with people but email, twitter and blogging have their limits. There is still no substitute for sitting down with a person, talking to them face to face, and sharing a meal together. Oh, and I almost forgot--I'm pretty sure that Kat from 3 Bedroom Bungalow mentioned something about scoring some Twizzlers for me. At least I'm hoping. See that? Connections.

Limbo, Limbo, Limbo

In many ways, choosing to make your home in another country, a place in which you were not born and raised, means living in a state of limbo. At least, that’s how I sometimes feel. The last time I visited the States, I was discussing American politics with a friend. As you do. Naturally, this led to related issues such as gun laws, education, Michelle Obama and the state of the health care system. It was all very Michael Moore-ish, warm and fuzzy. Rather annoyingly, I may have used the line, ‘Well, in the UK, they do such and such’ one too many times. As somebody once said, comparisons are odious. So, unsurprisingly, my friend stopped me halfway through my rant and said, ‘No offence. But how could you possibly know? You haven’t lived here in a decade.’ Hmmph.

I think she went on to say that I sounded un-American, a regular turncoat. In a way, she was right. Because, when it comes to the really important issues, I want to choose from the a la carte menu, not the set menu. I want to do a pick-n-mix from all the issues and solutions on offer and come up with the ‘perfect’ combination. But we all know that it doesn’t work that way.

On the flip side of that coin, if I venture into similar weighty discussions here in the UK, I get the old ‘Yeah but you weren’t born and raised here. You’re an American.’ So where does that leave me? Stretched tautly across the breadth of the Atlantic, one big toe digging into the ‘Land of the Free and the Brave’ and a sinewy hand grasping for This Sceptred Isle?

I don’t really consider myself an expat. The UK is my home, albeit an adopted home. We own a house here and have no plans to move away any time soon. When we lived in Japan, we were ‘expats.’ We knew it would be temporary and treated it differently. We never tried to ‘blend in,’ which would have been challenging for my blonde Amazonian family anyway. We tried to experience as much of the culture as possible but Japan was our host country and we were the visitors, the outsiders, the Gaijin.

As anyone who holds more than one passport knows, having a British passport does not a Brit make me. I will always be an American. Straddling two nations is not for the thin-skinned. As an American living in the UK, I get a special insight into the British view of Americans. Sometimes it’s lovely and sometimes it’s not. But it has opened my eyes to a whole new way of seeing America, my birth country. Perhaps one of the benefits of dual citizenship is that, distancing myself from one country and familiarizing myself with another one, affords me a fresh perspective on both my adopted country and my birth country.

My view on being an American is similar to my view on family. I didn’t get to choose them but, if I had, I would choose my family and my country all over again. I’d protect them in a fight, take their side against enemies, and brag and complain about them in equal measure. Whereas living in the UK is, for me, like choosing your friends. You’d take a bullet for them, celebrate their victories and empathize with their pain. With friends and your adopted country, you embrace their fabulous qualities, their endearing eccentricities and learn to live with their annoying habits. Because you love ‘em, warts and all.