FINDING FRIENDS By Kate Gostick
It’s the people that make a place feel like home and surely in an English speaking, western country, everyone would be pretty much the same as those who made England home. They speak the same language, look pretty similar and have the same basic daily routine.
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his is the error that makes US/UK ex-pat the immigration with the highest failure rate, and it was a trap I could so quickly have fallen into if I hadn’t met the wonderful people who made all the difference. It was three months after we had first discovered that we would be relocating to America and already Dominic was living in a rented house. So the boys and I were heading off to stay with him for three weeks before we would head back home to pack up and make the permanent move. Our relocation agent, a woman with no kids in her early 60s, had told us the library was the place where it was all happening for mums with young children. I wondered if this may be her revenge for Edward throwing up on the beige leather in the back of her Buick on our discovery trip a few months earlier, but decided I had nothing to lose, so I headed for the children’s section and let the boys pick out some books. Amongst the calm American voices saying, “Now Tucker, it isn’t appropriate to hit Chuck across the face with a copy of ‘The Hungry Caterpillar’. Please place the book back on the shelf.” came the almighty roar of a Lancastrian mother. “Michael! Stop that now!”. This wasn’t my roar. It was the roar of a woman who was now hurtling past the bookshelves reaching out to grab a small boy by his collar and drag him back to enjoy the story she was reading. She looked at me, rolled her eyes and gasped, “Sorry about that. They are driving me nuts!”. I hadn’t expected to discover someone just like me in the ‘Land of the Free’, but hearing that voice, seeing someone else battling through was just what I needed. I, too, was having a terrible day. 164
LANCASHIRE & NORTH WEST MAGAZINE
James seemed to have recovered from his asthma attack he had had the night before we flew, but I had been told by the hospital to find a doctor to get him checked out as soon as we arrived. Edward was being a total nightmare, bad-tempered, screaming and attention-seeking. Finding Anna McGlynn in the Marlborough Library made me feel like I was no longer alone and had the strength to carry on. Anna, who it turned out was from Blackpool, introduced me to her friends, and many lifelong, strong friendships began right then. The next day I found a doctor for the boys, and she gave us a nebuliser for home so that if James’s asthma got bad again, he could be treated at home rather than me rushing him off to the hospital. The doctor seemed not to be terribly worried about James, but instead asked if I was concerned about his younger brother. “He’s just going through the terrible twos,” I said, hoping she would accept that excuse rather than thinking I was a terrible parent. “I don’t think so,” she replied, pointing to the pus dripping out of Edward’s ear and running down his cheek. I hadn’t actually noticed that, but when she told me he had a perforated eardrum, it did explain why he had been a little whiney the last day or so. It was all so overwhelming that I had failed to notice his ear. Just getting through my day at this point was all I could manage, but soon things settled down, and we could begin to enjoy discovering our new surroundings. One such discovery was the Wayside Inn and Grist Mill. A beautiful stone mill sat nestled in the trees with a huge, red waterwheel turning to drive the millstones inside that ground the flour. The miller invited you in to explain the process all at no charge, but with the invitation to buy his flour. Then children ran out to play poo sticks on the little wooden bridge over the exit of the millpond before crossing onto the green field in front of the water wheel to play in the sun or relax on a picnic blanket. When they were done with running around, we headed back over the www.lancmag.com
