Torn

Tom and I are both feeling a bit homesick at the moment. We're around half way through our time in the USA if everything goes according to plan. Long enough to feel at home. Long enough to miss our families and friends back home, and to realise how far we are from the people we love. And that all comes into stark relief when things are happening back home that you are very worried about. Thousands of miles, an 8 hour time difference, make being able to be a support for family in hard times, very difficult. Neither of us like feeling this useless.

We have booked tickets for our trip home this summer and our time there can't really come soon enough.

But we're also conscious that soon we will be leaving the US permanently. And there is a real sense that the clock is ticking and have we done enough exploring, are we taking enough advantage? And won't it be awful when we stop seeing the lovely people we've got to know. Children we now see all the time will grow up and forget us. I find this really hard because I have spent so much time in my daughters' classes this year, that I get big hugs whenever I turn up at school. Of course, we're not going yet. But I definitely feel like we need to make the most of what time we have left.

And added to that, is the fact that this city is a lovely place to live. So we are torn. We want to be home with our families, and we miss them, and we worry about them. But we're having a good time here and I'm a terrible one for imagining permanent lives that just aren't going to happen, wandering around thinking - "what if we bought that house?", "I wonder what Berkeley is like to live in", "wouldn't it be great to have a cabin at Tahoe or a beach house" and so on.

Yesterday was Sunday Streets in the Mission. One of my favourite SF days. The event moves around the city during the Spring, Summer and Autumn. Streets are closed to cars, and opened to pedal power and feet. Cafes serve food on the pavement outside. Bands play at cross streets. There was yoga, taiko, capoeira, and a very Mission car show on Harrison. Tom and the girls were wheeled so they soon disappeared down Valencia, and I was left for dust, pottering about behind them. So if I used my abandonment to spend a reasonable amount of money on a posh frock, then they only have themselves to blame.