To a deafening cicada chorus in the back yard our Lyft pulled in to the house in Philipsburg, PA. Now, cicadas are nothing new to me, something even expected on my many visits to Spain, but these guys were deafening. The conversation (definitely felt like a two-way street, this chorus) lasted well into the night. The dogs were restless too. I’d let myself in alone by the front door, and in stark contrast to my first introduction to the household I was soon being mobbed, rubbed against and jostled by the shepherds, muscling out Jackson to get to me. But, agile as ever, he soon pushed through and blounced me with his increasing bulk and showered me with kisses. I made a mental note to cut down on his food, walk him longer and more often, and re-order those mint-flavour chews.
This time around I’d be staying for more than a month, still working on my English teaching and preparations for what was to be my final tour of the year in September. At the same time there was plenty going on back in Scotland with the house sale, finding somewhere more permanent than the flat I was currently renting, engaging a solicitor to act on my behalf, and supporting Becky and the girls, as her experience with her mom was mirroring that of my own – a fall in old age, declining physical and mental health, considerations for home and longer term care. The least I could do was to take a little weight off the daily necessities as she kept family and work going. Dog duties would be a pleasure and get me both exercised and out of the house; yard-work equally rewarding and beneficial, as long as the dogs didn’t ‘help’. Shopping and meals I could manage. Driving practice for daughter number two, maybe. Trying not to drive daughter number one crazy was also on the list, and I was hoping to work on some common ground in our shared love of photography – where time and opportunity might coincide.
As it turned out Becky’s cough morphed into something more long-lasting, exacerbated by the flight and fatigue of travelling home. So shopping, taxi and catering services floated to the top of my priorities as Jackson kept her company on the couch. As the mice play when the cat’s away, so it transpired that daughters left to their own devices find their own focus – work, games, books, boyfriends. Nothing sinister, nothing serious I remind myself, but absence changed the perception of ‘necessary’ chores rather to emphasise ‘chore’ than ‘necessity’. The impending return of a parent, usually a spur to frenzied tidying, obviously had little effect. Even when that return was delayed by 24 hours, the resulting reprieve seemed simply to permit more distraction. Once the dogs had tidied up after the girls, though, and I’d returned the milk cooler on the coffee machine to its original purpose – removing the curds and whey generated over the past fortnight – the house started to take back something akin to its usual shape and we could all sleep more soundly. Even the young-uns could sleep in longer, safe in the knowledge of a job well done – by someone else.
Aside from August presenting me with new experiences of flora and fauna – monarch and fritillary butterflies and caterpillars standing out on the foliage as Jackson and the others , endless fields of sunflowers, grasshoppers, even a groundhog or three, maybe the same one on repeat – it seemed to be evolving into a month of transition. Like the caterpillar and butterfly, the opening of the sunflowers, and the various stages of the grasshopper, I seemed to be experiencing a sort of transition too. I experimented consciously and unconsciously with changing the vocabulary I used to fit the American usage, realising eventually that that just wasn’t me. So I reverted, mostly, to talking about garage, garden and grill, giving in on a few americanisms having worked out they weren’t just Becky’s affectations or errors – not, for example, identifying the chaise lounge as the hill I was going to die on, after sixty years of chaise longue memories in the UK and Europe. I was transforming, too, into family member, and starting to be recognised in the community, whether walking the dogs, hitting the hardware store or supermarket. The ‘Englishness’ kind of stood out, worn for once as a badge of identity, albeit qualifying myself as a ‘Brit’ to hold those various past identities together. Friends stateside enquired, visited, invited us to play cards or share a meal or glass of wine. I was starting to feel settled. This so much easier, now that it was abundantly clear how settled Jackson was in his new environment, his new pack, his new home.
My sights started turning to where I wanted to see and experience amongst the 50 states. The idea of a road trip was forming more strongly in my mind, aspiration and logistics becoming a little more concrete. I wanted to see it, share it, with Jackson, but in the first forays it would have to be with Becky. Previously in university work I’d passed through South Carolina and Georgia, into Florida, but I’d never gone so far as Misssissippi or Tennessee, however many extra consonants and vowels they threw at me in an effort to draw my attention. I’d visited Texas, too, but parties of Texans on tour had been at pains to describe the Austin that had so inspired and entertained me as more like California than their own home state.
Chicago was the only part of Illinois I’d tasted and tested, and fallen a little in love with. But what was the rest of the state like? I’d been to a Kentucky Derby event, yet that had been in Pennsylvania, a mere 8 hours drive away from that other ‘Commonwealth’, so I asked myself how did the two compare? And then there was New York state, bordering on PA, with a landscape apparently so different from the city that never sleeps. There was Virginia and its Western cousin, and Washington DC, all places I’d seen on TV and still realistically close enough to include in a road trip of some sort. So much to think about. But it was, indeed, taking shape. Further afield Becky and I started planning to share trips to Iowa, Arizona, maybe even California and beyond, places a little far flung to consider driving. But there were plenty of candidates in the game for Jackson and me. And plenty of time to plan – not wanting to put the cart before the horse, but keen to set things in motion.
International-Eyes.org 