Fixing A Hole

Learning to stand I guess with my dad and mom in my grandparents' back yard, Normanton.

35 years ago, my family emigrated from England to the United States. I believe that experience growing on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean is one of the many advantages I enjoy in life, most of which were provided to me by my parents. Even today, my American family is very very small. My dad, mom, sister and I have been supplemented by a brother-in-law and a niece. That's it. That's all the family I have here. The rest of my relatives all live in England and primarily in the county of Yorkshire.

I love my adopted home and I'm proud to be an American. I believe I had an immigrant's love of this country. Not that life in England is significantly different than it is here, but I believe the United States offers me more opportunity than anywhere else in the world (not that I've been everywhere else in the world) and the diversity of culture, history and natural landscape makes this country one that can be discovered over and over again when you thought you understood the place completely.

Despite the fact that I am an American, part of me will always be English. It's where my roots and my family history are. Since we arrived here in July 1979, I have been back to England probably far too infrequently. I believe I am the least frequent visitor of our original four family members, having only returned four times: twice when I lived under my parents' roof in 1982 and 1985, then twice on my own in 1997 and 2007. Today, I am making visit number five.

Forced smile. Early 1970s. Castle Donnington.

I speculated in my birthday post this past June that the second year of my five year project to see more of the world would likely be one of filling in gaps in my past or in my American experience. So rather than jetting off to new continents or walking on glaciers, I will likely spend some time in the last half of 2014 and the first half of 2015 catching up on some things that I have missed in the places I have already been. I see this trip as the first piece to solving that puzzle. 

I believe there are English experiences that I have missed in my first 11 years and my four return trips. Some are nobody's fault: I was either too young or not interested enough at the times when I was in country to get to them. Others I've had the opportunity to do and just couldn't be bothered or didn't try hard enough to get to them. So in the next week and a half, I intend to check off some English "bucket list" items, if you will, that have so far eluded me. I'm hoping to do most of these from London.

I also believe that I have not engaged my ancestry in a significant enough way. I am here today because all the people ahead of me made it in some way. I intend to dig into that past, even if just a little bit. I'm likely not going to do it thoroughly enough for some but I figure any little bit helps. So for this part of my quest, I'm going to have to head up north to Yorkshire for a couple of days. I'm sure I could spend weeks, months or years doing this. I'll have to make do with a little more than two days.

Going back home tonight and I'm feeling good about it. I can't wait to step off the plane at Heathrow. There's an uneven night of sleep sitting upright in coach between then and now.

Me and my sister in the back yard of our house at Ashby-de-la-Zouch.