Dateline Discovery

It has been enjoyable, yet challenging, to live abroad, and now the adventure is coming to an end.

There are two kinds of home.

The first is in the colloquial sense, a somewhat nebulous reference to a familiar location: “It’s about 45 minutes from home,” as always seems to be the case with everything in London, or perhaps more apt, “There are three pubs within five minutes of home.”

The second is more corporeal, a deeper sense of inherent belonging, an acknowledgement of identity. I never felt comfortable using that label in more than three years living abroad, for while I may have lived at a certain address, London has never felt like a place where I could burrow into its warmth and ignore the world spinning around me.

I truly had no idea what to expect when my wife, Amanda, and I left the United States in July 2016, other than knowing that personally and professionally, it was time for something new. Some people move to a new city without visiting, as I did when I headed to Washington, D.C., nearly a decade ago, but this was a move to a new country I had never stepped foot in, save for that Grand Cayman Island technicality in 2013. We didn’t just dive in to a new challenge: This was a cannonball into the deep end — one now measured in meters and not yards — and it was completely up to us to learn how to tread water.

It is through unfamiliar experiences that we uncover much about ourselves, and as I leave London after exactly 37 months, each one somehow excruciatingly long and blindingly fast, it’s impossible to measure the ways in which living abroad has affected me. As a society, we’ll surely look back upon this period as one of the more fascinating in modern existence, one in which every facet of our convictions was challenged by some type of upheaval. To have constantly been granted an outsider’s view has been enriching, but that sense of belonging has been missing.

As it turned out, to gain an identity, I had to lose one.

—<>—

It can be incredibly isolating to live in a foreign land, and it’s not as if London is particularly, well, foreign. The language is technically the same, familiar programs appear on television — there’s still a very odd fascination with “Friends” — and there’s a McDonald’s, a Domino’s and a Starbucks in virtually every neighborhood. When asked what it’s like to live in London, I tell people it was like we moved to Vancouver: a six-hour flight from where I used to be, albeit with the same goods bought via plastic money at differently named stores.

I had given myself about six months to adapt to the move, knowing that even though I consider myself a stubbornly independent person, loneliness would strike before it got better. In an attempt to avoid longing for the old life, I largely cut myself off from social media — a detachment I soon regretted. With my wife settling into her new job and my inability to find one, the rejection letters from media outlets and communications firms and even bookshops trickling in, I began waking up mid-morning and showering mid-afternoon, puzzled by a personal challenge unlike any I had ever known.

Several weeks in, I realized I no longer wanted to be consumed by my frustration. I went to the local sporting goods store, bought a pair of shoes and began running, despite the repeated objections of my balky knees. I picked up a few textbooks and dictionaries and vowed to teach myself German, a stop-and-start endeavor that’s still incomplete. I even took advantage of living in London and found my way around the city, remembering how much I wished I had explored Washington before leaving.

Gradually, Amanda and I began to acclimate to British culture. We attended as many soccer games as possible, carrying along with all of the fans’ whimsical chanting. We watched late-night comedy shows, learning the distinct difference between “whinge” and “minge” — two words you really don’t want to get mixed up. We accepted there is no type of cheese but cheddar, reconsidered baked beans as a breakfast food and digested the idea of meat in pies. (One thing we didn’t embrace: The utter disregard for air conditioning. It’s hard to see why anyone with the means otherwise chooses to broil in a room all summer with stagnant 90-degree air.)

By the following spring, with a job finally secured and an actual social network steadily building around me, I no longer felt like I had overstayed a long vacation. It helped, of course, that a steady stream of family members, friends and colleagues came barreling through. And, as I returned to the United States three times in my first seven months, those trips were the ones that felt increasingly disconcerting.

—<>—

“What do you think of Trump?”

Aside from wanting to know where I’m from — I’m not the one with the accent, pal — the presidential question has routinely been the first one I’m asked. Waiters, barbers, taxi drivers all want to know where I stand, surreptitiously judging me as though the political climate throughout Europe hadn’t also careened off the rails in recent years.

One of the most fascinating aspects about living in such a cosmopolitan city is the variety of people one encounters. The United States may be considered the world’s melting pot, but there’s nowhere in the country where one can board a commuter train and hear a family speaking in Spanish and two ladies conversing in Polish while a man watches the latest episode of “Game of Thrones” on his phone in Cyrillic subtitles.

Generous immigration policies (for now, at least) allow people from all over Europe freedom of movement around the continent. So, too, do cheap flights, with a variety of budget carriers ferrying people from one city to another for the cost of ordering takeout. Thus, we made sure to travel as frequently as possible, knowing within two hours, or roughly the time it takes to fly from Boston to Baltimore, we could be somewhere distinctly different — Copenhagen, Venice or Lisbon.

Midway through my London residency, I was visiting a physical therapist — partly the result of an unfortunate sledding accident on one of those weekend trips in Oslo — when, in the course of routine conversation, he noticed I mentioned traveling rather often during my appointments. He had never ventured much beyond London, with the idea of spending two hours on an airplane making him shudder. Why, I asked, when there’s so much to experience nearby? He stopped, shrugged and supposed that it was because he had everything he needed at home. To me, it seemed indefensible.

In a city with more than 14 million people connected by 270 stations on 11 subway lines, there is a certain convenience and interdependence to London that I hadn’t found elsewhere. (Washington, given all it represents, is much more culturally stratified.) But make no mistake: Brits still carry a haughty defiance, that “stiff upper lip,” which has been helpful in global affairs but an obstacle when forming personal connections. Want to alienate a stranger? Try to talk to him or her on a train.

Personality-wise, those who know me would say I’d fit in well in London. I’d counter that fitting in and belonging are not the same thing.

—<>—

I roll out of bed to the dull roar of planes landing overhead and sunlight gently glowing through the gaps in my curtains. It’s an early August morning in southwest London, my final day in the house we have been renting for the past two-plus years, and leave it to my dog to let me know she really needs to go outside.

Begrudgingly, I grab my glasses off the floor, amble down the disjointed hallway and unlock the door, leading her into the back yard. She does her usual lap, sprinting first toward the dirt pile in the back corner before looping around under the cabbage palm and the hydrangea and finding that perfect smell. This is, after all, her territory — the reason we moved to this house in the first place, so that for the first time in her spoiled life, she could have grass to call her own.

She wants to cherish it one final time.

Change has always been difficult for me, and that ranges from something as simple as the progression of the seasons to life-altering decisions. The final night before the final day, I lay in bed for what felt like hours, recalling the simple delights I’d felt living here: Strolling aimlessly along the River Thames, that quintessential English neighborhood beside Wandsworth Common, the wonder of exploring something so old, yet so new, for the first time. My mind retraced all, making sure I remembered to mentally put a bow on them by experiencing them once again.

There is no greater adjustment than taking one’s entire life and shaking it upside down by moving to another country. As it turns out, there is also no greater adventure than doing just that, too. There were so many personal, cultural and societal hurdles to overcome in three-plus years that I was left constantly feeling short of breath. As such, cramming all of one’s belongings into 10 boxes and six suitcases, as we did on the way here, seems like a fitting final exam.

What will I miss? For one, the entertainment of being asked if I’m Canadian, because, as it was once explained to me, Canadians bristle at being called American whereas Americans just laugh it off. As a journalist, I will miss walking to an actual newsstand and seeing a dozen full-color newspapers on sale, even if they all “reveal” the same baseless political speculation.

But at the same time, I will no longer have to deal with inefficient transportation in what has to be Europe’s least-walkable city. (When is a crosswalk not a crosswalk? When it’s in London.) I will no longer have to wait three days for my clothes to dry. I won’t feel like I’m making unreasonable demands when speaking to employees and, yeah, air conditioning.

It was because I lived in London that I was able to live out my goal of exploring much more of what the world has to offer. It was also the place where I lost my wedding ring in a downpour and spent three days metal-detecting a five-acre park to find it, so there’s that. The things I took for granted for three decades will return. The familiar will be familiar once again. It’s a new day, and now, I will get to truly appreciate what it means to be home.

Wherever that is.

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.