On losing my tongue

'You can't have it all, Brooke.' It seems I've been hearing this loathsome phrase falling from the lips of surprisingly too many people recently. These are words I've never really believed in before, never accepted them as pertinent to my life, and dodged them with the same intensity I swerved out of the trajectory of that big red rubber ball in jr. high gym class. That phrase doesn't apply to me, I've insisted, with clenched fists and my jaw set against it. I am slowly beginning to realize for the first time in my life, that I may have to accept this tenet of adulthood as truth, afterall. I recently came across this post from Kerstin at Gipsy Life, and it got me thinking about what a weird, wonderfully frustrating thing being an ex-pat can be.


I often get blamed for things American, though I've only touched down on U.S. soil twice in the best part of three years. "Why won't you guys let Amy Winehouse in for the Grammys?" they interrogate, holding me personally accountable for U.S. Immigration policy and wholly expecting me to answer for the injustice. Or when they ask about the current election progress, who I think will win, what do the candidates stand for, what is popular opinion, which states are red states or blue - I realize with a sinking heart that I really have no idea what's going on in America anymore, nor do I fully understand the idiosyncrasies of British politics or English society at large, for that matter.

The issue of accent is a hugely important marker of both class and geography here in Britain. The subtleties in tone and cadence are completely lost on me. The sociologist I've become since moving abroad has noticed that when people are introduced for the first time, their accent is usually first discussed in order to set them into the correct status boxes. My husband denies this, but still does pretty accurate impressions of the accents of people he thinks are wankers, so I know he's paying attention. I'm often asked, so where is your accent from? Which makes me laugh, because it implies that I'm completely disembodied from the way that I speak.

My own voice is becoming increasingly more and more muddled. Last autumn, I sat at an airport bar in Minneapolis next to a Canadian who insisted that I was British because of the way I talk. You wouldn't get any of my neighbors here suggesting I sounded English, but my friends and family at home point out the idioms I can't keep straight anymore, the way I'll complain that the weather is doing my head in or Geno is taking the piss and I can't remember the American way to say the same thing. My seven year old niece accuses me of speaking Chinese and giggles uncontrollably when I mistakenly call the trash, the rubbish instead. I lead a double life of zucchini and courgette, of petrol and gasoline, and where the sycamore tree is a completely different species altogether. (acer macrophyllum - big leaf maple to me!)

I don't exactly fit in, in either place, anymore. When I go back to the States, I marvel at how egocentric it is. International affairs are hardly a blemish on the nightly news or everyday conversation, with the glaring exception of anything 'threatening freedom and democracy', of course. I'm flabbergasted at the way there seems to be this campaign of fear nobody living there even notices anymore. You can't turn on the TV without there being some imminent terrorist attack about to take place or go in to the grocery store without being aware that the 'alert level is orange' or whatever it happens to be that week.

My parents are convinced that I'm going to blow up at any given time over here, and it saddens me to think that this will prevent them from probably ever coming to visit me. I know that I didn't notice the propaganda (for lack of a better word) when I was living there, my parents fervently deny it exists, accuse me of conspiracy theories, but it's just one of those forest from the trees things - they've never experienced a media that is essentially free from corporate or political interests. It's one of those things you'd never really pick up on unless you lived somewhere else long enough, I guess.

That downside of American life leads me to the discussion of the ups and downs of a life in Britain. Though, in general, there's this English stiff upper lip, the 'just get on with it' attitude that keeps living in fear of bombings from the IRA (historically) and other fundamentalist whackos (more recently) at arm's distance, but that same attitude also means that things are much more complicated here than they have to be.

Geno is always telling me to stop moaning about the cost of electricity, for example, when I complain that we can't afford to use the clothes dryer. He reminds me that I come from the most luxurious country on Earth and shouldn't expect the rest of the world to have the same standards of convenience. 'But....' I stammer, 'There are efficient clothes dryers out there! It doesn't have to take 2 hours and exorbitant electricity to dry a load of laundry!' The list of things people live with (or without) because 'that's the way it is' is admittedly shocking to someone from America's luxurious lap. Like insulation and central heating, for instance. We have neither, and heat our house with a coal fire (yes, coal. Really.) and no one bats an eye at it. It's perfectly acceptable to only have one room in the house available for use in the wintertime. Perfectly normal. 'But we rent the whole house,' I complain. They sigh and explain to me, like I was a child, about the way life is.

As Kerstin also mentions in her blog post about living in Britain, life here is often a financial struggle. Things are very much more expensive here; the cost of housing is astronomical (because there's 65 million people living on land the size of Oregon and space is precious), heating and electricity (only recently privatized), running a car (petrol is a staggering $10 a gallon) not to mention car tax and annual MOT (where your car is checked over by a mechanic and your forced to replace anything that isn't working perfectly), groceries and eating out (we can afford a meal out maybe once a month), clothing and shoes (where standards of acceptable fashion are much higher here), and public transport is a complete joke. An expensive joke. It costs nearly $200 to take a train into London from Coventry during peak hours.

Despite these major financial obstacles, the quality of life is much better here. Take my job benefits, for example, I'm given 26 paid days off a year, not including the 12 national holidays that I'm paid for when the college is not open. If I were to fall ill or get hit by a bus, I'd have 6 months at full pay to recover and another year and half pay. I get a pension and continuing education benefits as well. If we were to have a child, we would both be given paid maternity/paternity leave. Not to mention a super duper biggie - health care is nationalized, which means it is paid for through your national insurance tax and that everyone is covered, even tourists will get free emergency treatment.

Sounds great, doesn't it? Well, yes, if you don't mind run-down and bug-infested hospitals, old equipment, ten-minute doctor's appointments, long waiting lists for investigative procedures and surgeries, and no preventative care to speak of. You can only choose a GP within your postal code area, if you move, you're forced to change doctors. And customer service? Forget it! I had to go to A&E (accident and emergency, the ER) at one point this winter, when I was having particularly nasty trouble with my belly, and the receptionist at the desk took one look at me and said in a nasty voice "So, what's wrong with you then?" Four hours later I got an x-ray and was sent on my way with a bottle of lactulose and nothing in the way of instruction. I had a load of (invasive) investigative tests in December and still haven't received the results!

That said, I hadn't had health insurance in America since I was 23 and if these problems were to have arisen then, I wouldn't know how I would have been able to find treatment. Even fractional and substandard medicine is better than no medicine at all when it comes down to it. An American friend's father recently died waiting to turn 62 so his medicare benefits would cover a heart work-up. He was 2 months shy of his 62nd birthday. That is truly criminal, in my opinion.

I'm babbling aren't I? I have to admit, I often fantasize about moving back to the States, where the buffalo roam and the purple mountains majesty and all that, but at what cost? Can I go back to 7 days of holiday a year? To no or restricted health coverage? All you can eat 24 hour diners? Shopping centers that are open on Sundays? Can you live with (or without) these things?

P.S. The photos are from along the canal that runs through our village during the recent cold snap that kept the ducks' feet dry and left us with this enchanting hoar frost for the best part of the week.