Reverse Culture Shock

People here in Atlanta love their homes. And with good reason — most I’ve seen are beautiful. They are freshly painted, with manicured lawns, cute lanterns adorning front doors, often set off by faux Roman columns.  They are filled with massive appliances, and every imaginable convenience: from room-to-room intercom systems to fire places that create fires with the flick of a switch.

So as we search for a new rental house, we are not surprised to find that people are moving, but renting out their old house simply because they want to keep it in the family.  But it makes me wonder whether their emotions will render them unable to leave the premises.

At the house we viewed on Friday, the father stroked the built-in stair gate and explained how they put that in themselves when they first bought the house. Never mind that their children are now too old to require a stair gate.

And a framed photo on their refrigerator showed how the house looked 15 years ago when they first bought it, before they extensively renovated it. Their basement was filled with so much junk (an empty jar; a string of light up jack o’ lanterns; reams of packing material) we didn’t think they’d be able to move, even if they wanted to.

They explained that they wanted to be closer to the children’s school, which makes sense.  But they, like the owners of another house we saw, were willing to pay two mortgages so that they could hold on to the house for sentimental reasons. 

It’s a touching concept, and one I never experienced in London. Most people were flat ashamed, rather than house proud. We only had one closet in the flat we own in London, so we found storage wherever we could.  Moving to a place with more space was a relief.

And yet, I do find that I miss that flat sometimes.  Even the ruckus called by the trains that raced by on the tracks adjacent to the building.  So if we had had a massive house with all of bells and whistles, I would probably love it too much to ever leave.

We went to the annual auction for our daughter’s preschool last night, and were impressed by the explosion of good will. A bidding frenzy exploded over a painting which included dots created by one year olds sticking their finger into paint, and placing them onto a canvas. It went for almost three hundred dollars.  A man physically restrained his wife to keep her from bidding again.

I really admire the enthusiasm Atlantans have for school fundraising. A woman told us that the playground at her son’s elementary school was lacking. You might hear a similar complaint in the UK, but it would be followed by a closing comment, such as: “Doesn’t that suck?” and then the subject would be changed. 

This woman explained that she was on the board of the committee that would raise money and manpower to remodel the playground. 

We left the auction with a footstool, painted with the footprints of our daughter and her classmates (only $80 — we clinched it early in the evening, before cocktails loosened the bidding hands), hand-made burp clothes for $20, and the warm fuzzy feeling of having helped the school.

I just got back from a week long trip to London, where we visited my in-laws, saw lots of friends, and tried to hunt down my wedding dress, which appears to be well and truly gone.

The one bright spot out of that whole mess is that it looks like the dress did not end up in a landfill in East London, as I had feared; rather, it appears that the dress was stolen. The fact that the dress might be worn again makes me feel a bit better — even if the new wearer is a thief.

London is always a great place to visit.  But it’s an odd feeling to return after having lived there, and to feel like you don’t really belong there anymore.

But we’re not sure we belong here either — we returned to a note from our landlord, saying that her lender is foreclosing on her house, and we need to move out in the next two months.  Welcome home, indeed….

While my husband and I speak the same language, we still find little discrepancies between British and American expressions. Even after nearly five years of marriage, I still find myself explaining such cultural phenomenons as opposite day, which came up during last Thursday’s episode of 30 Rock.

Apparently, kids in the UK don’t play the hilarious game of saying to friends: “I’d like to hang out with you…if it were OPPOSITE DAY!!”

Then he described playing “Tig” during recess at school, instead of “Tag.” Who would have thought that such a random word would have a different translation in the UK?

Other words, like garden (yard), estate agent (realtor), nappy (diaper) he’s grown accustomed to saying.  Now in that we’re in the South, I suppose we’ll have to start saying “Y’all”….

We interviewed a nanny yesterday, and asked her our standard question: how do you effectively look after two young kids, who are just 18 months apart, at the same time?

She paused, then replied: “I pray.”  She explained that she will ask God to keep the children safe while in her care.

While I admire her religious devotion, I worry that she might think that prayer takes some of the responsibility for the kids’ safety off of her.  I imagined coming home to find one of the kids injured, and hearing her say: “It was God’s will.”

Maybe I’m overreacting.  If she had mentioned prayer as her third, or even second option for helping her to watch over the kids, I would have felt a bit better. But as the first response, it made me think that perhaps we should look for someone who relied more on themselves, rather than their God, to help look after our kids.