Submitted by: Jane in Hudson
This is a good question; it is something I was aware of but something I had never really given thought to. Here are some thoughts, from my own experience and others I have met in the same situation;
- Relationships. For all of us these are real and long-lasting. We worry about parents, family and friends left behind and how they all are. We feel guilty for stealing away grandchildren and not being able to be there quickly when we are needed. We know how important these relationships are for our children and that they will miss out on something important if they are not part of a close family group. We need to keep in touch with home, for those still there, as well as for ourselves and our children.
- Winters! 6 months of winter is a long time with small children and babies to bundle up and protect from the cold. Skiing is all well and good if you have someone to watch your little nippers when you go off but when you don't have that, a British spring, with flowers in February, is certainly a good tonic!
- Pop music. How can you be brought up with Top of the Pops, only to discover that it is been banished to BBC Kids here! Where else can we hear decent new British music? How can we not occasionally go home for a top-up of Robbie?
- Vulnerability. For many of us, this is the first time we have been completely dependent on our partners. Many of us gave up good careers to come here to support our partners in their ambitions and also (without the pressures that having two working parents brings to the family) to try to be the mothers we want to be to our children. But what would happen if things went wrong? What if our partners died or something worse?! What if we couldn't stand the two-tiered school system any more or the constant discrimination? We need to keep our connections with our old lives, friends, family, and jobs; just in case! This is certainly there in our subconscious, if not at the front of our minds.
- Shopping! Come on, who can live without Next, Monsoon, M and S, Debenhams and John Lewis? City centre shopping is far more enjoyable than strip malls.
- Girl's Nights out. Where in Hudson can you go for a few girly drinks and a dance round your handbag? Montreal culture is all well and good but it's too far and often too cultured!
- Food! We all need our top-up of British sausage, bacon, malt loaf and British Special K (yes, it really is different).
- Practicalities. Our parents might actually die while we're here. This may actually be the last time we see them. We need to go home to see them, just in case.
- Reality check. Going home helps you evaluate whether that life-changing decision was the right one. What is important to me and mine? Do I want to swap the big house for pretty countryside, history and family? Is the children's education suffering? Are they safer here or there? We need to constantly evaluate this and going home helps us to do it.
- Remembering who you are and who you want to be. OK, I'm a "stay-at-home mom" now. AAARGH! I hate being a "mom". When I'm in the UK, I'm a mUm, on a career break who has job prospects, when and if I choose to take them up again. Here, I have no job prospects unless I learn a whole new language, start again from scratch and bite my tongue alot about discrimination and about a whole load of other crap! I am that apple-pie baking mom, who, according to the bank, cannot use our joint credit card to top-up my phone because my husband is the wage earner! AND I have to put on a Canadian accent to say "voucher" because the stupid automatic system doesn't understand my accent! So going home helps me relax, makes me feel that I belong somewhere and, that I have a future.
Submitted by: Richard
Does anyone at all / could anyone miss Britain these days? Every time I go back now I feel more and more alienated from the place. Too crowded, too busy, too expensive but most of all too aggressive. It's not the country I grew up in, that's for sure.
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