(FEBRUARY 8, 2002) As I write, it is early morning. Chris and Elena are still asleep on the old bedroom floor. No beds for us for now. Everything we own is on a huge orange cargo container sitting on a dock somewhere, waiting to be loaded into the belly of a great ship. Tonight we board a different kind of vessel and fly to our new home across a darkened sea.
England. Today it is a place imagined; Boswell Field and the West Country; a portly Winston Churchill and a confused Royal Family. Monty Python dressed in scarlet Inquisitor's robes; Ray Davies lamenting for his Waterloo Sunset. Hobbiton, Neverland, and Track 9 3/4. Tomorrow, and in the years to follow, it will become a part of who we are. We will never look at life the same.
I am convinced this is meant for us; this place on the globe at this time in our lives. Judy's usual scan of the Sunday want-ads led to the phone call that led to this. The sale of our Dover home went easily; twelve years of coaxing revealed the beauty of our modest house, and finding a buyer took only a week.
Chris is ripe for change. His closest friends have moved and the boys at school tease him because he is bright and close to his feelings. Elena, too, is ready; her's is brightness of a different sort that perhaps more people were meant to see. And I have begun to sour; my allegiance to an ailing dot com startup squandered by management of lesser substance. Time to move on.
Life is about timing, about the moment seized. Mabelyn is a talented friend (visit www.mabelyn.com) with a love for stained glass. She says the window makes itself; the artist only assists. I told my old pal Bob over beers at Heartland Brewery in NYC that we did not choose this move; we were asked to go.
Serendipity. Coincidence. Alignment. Grace. "Nothing in this world ever happens by mistake."
So, we are off. When we land, a new beginning ... and new adventures to share with you, our friends. Be sure to stop in from time to time, and follow the Yanks in Blighty*.
(*Blighty is a familiar name for England. I believe it is derived and corrupted from an old French word for 'filthy'. The French never did like the Brits!) [Nope. It's corrupted from a Hindi word meaning 'foreigner'. - Ed.]