A Year On, A Transition Remains Unfinished
Three years of living abroad in London were followed by one that was more challenging than expected.
The punchline wasn’t even that polished, absent anything other than alliteration, but it would serve its purpose as a suitable, self-effacing fallback over the following weeks and months.
“Well, we’re probably the first people to move from London to Lawrence,” I remember telling my wife for the first time that September morning.
It had been a little more than a month after we left London, our home for the previous three-plus years. After an exit that resembled an evacuation more than an emigration, we graciously decamped to North Las Vegas, where Amanda’s parents had purchased a retirement home.
Among the greatest unknowns when we boarded Icelandair Flight 471 on Aug. 7, 2019, was where we’d next call home. A variety of solutions had been presented to us, some more real than others; in fact, I had half a thought to handicap the decision in the style of a horse race, assigning and updating the odds of settling in Chicago, Dallas, Kansas City, Salt Lake City and Washington, among the more prominent options.
But it was that morning, with the temperature again steadily climbing toward triple digits and a summer haze creeping up the mountains normally visible from the back patio, when clarity finally surfaced. At the end of the month, we’d pack our bags — again — and drive 18 hours east to suburban Kansas, our resettlement finally complete.
The process, as Amanda frequently described it, was an exercise in mental gymnastics; the first time, we benefited from six months of preparation and a string of government guideposts, whereas the second time, we had six weeks and series of questions.
(Even our most well-intentioned of plans went awry: After being hit with a series of import taxes after mailing our belongings to London three years earlier, we hired a global shipping company to handle our exit. It mismanaged the process to such a degree that the British government levied a customs value of £147,518 on our belongings before common sense prevailed.)
And although we had returned to the United States, our reassimilation was far from seamless — something other former expats had warned me about. Yes, the inflictions of a conversation once again sounded familiar and the teams on television played a more familiar brand of football. Still, I’ll never forget trying to purchase a jar of salsa and confronting the paralyzing confusion that resulted from an unfamiliar choice of brands, styles and spices. I won’t shake my inability to discern a downtown traffic pattern while driving on the wrong/correct/right side of the road.
Then there’s Kansas. Like it was to settlers 150 years ago, it had become my own American frontier, a place I knew existed but one of which I had no intimate knowledge. Winter arrived soon after we did, as did a host of other challenges, and as spring approached, so did the COVID-19 pandemic. A year ago, I wrote that upon relocating, I “will get to truly appreciate what it means to be home.” Wistfully, I am still waiting.
So it has been, London to Lawrence, the United Kingdom to the University of Kansas, a road surely traveled by few others. Some obstacles we must go through rather than go around. Sometimes, the adventure is in the journey, not the destination.
Disclaimers: All products, services and experiences were paid for and arranged by the author and the vendors named herein had no editorial oversight of this piece. Photos were taken by and remain the property of the author. Contact for republication rights.
