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.

This 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.

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

little bridge and through the woods to the Wayside Inn for a glass of lemonade. The Wayside Inn was a historic Inn built of red boards and white uprights. As you went through the front door, a little door on the right took you into a tiny bar with wood-panelled walls and a floor with boards that revealed the marks of a couple of centuries worth of drinkers. The whole room smelt of wood smoke even though it was a hot summer day and several months since the colossal fireplace had seen any fires, but the generations of smoke had leached into the fabric of the walls, floor and ceiling and gave off their telltale odour. It was immediately apparent that life here was slower paced and much more simple.

As we walked back towards the car along the woodland path, a couple passed us, heading towards the inn. We exchanged pleasantries and continued on our way, but they turned and headed back to us.

“Are you English? Our daughter-in-law has just moved here and is very lonely. Here is her number. Maybe you could get in touch.” They handed me a scrap of paper on to which they had just scribbled a phone number and we continued on our opposite paths. Now, if I had been in England and a couple of pensioners had passed me and asked me to contact a random lonely woman, I would have thought them strange and placed the scrap of paper in the nearest bin, but I was becoming aware of the bond between ex-pats. We were all in the same boat, feeling the same thoughts, longing for the support that feels innate in your home country, so as soon as I got home, I rang. A woman named Jan answered, and like me, she did not feel threatened by a stranger wanting a friendship, and she agreed to meet up. She told me she had discovered an expat coffee group in the Boston area with lots of women who were on temporary ex-pat contracts. This was to become a weekly outing for me. One person would host and provide food and coffee, and we would discuss where to buy English food and how America was so different. I went to this group for many years. People came and went regularly as their assignments began and finished, and new people joined desperate to find a decent sausage or English bacon. As time went on, though, I outgrew this group of transient Brits desperate to make America as much like England as they could. I started to integrate into my new life and to love the differences and the people. I didn’t want a corner of England in America. I wanted America with an acceptance of my British quirkiness.

That acceptance, I discovered, was not always forthcoming. I joined Kindergroup, a Southborough playgroup run by the parents themselves. Here you were assigned a day which you attended every week. One mother would provide breakfast for all the others, and a couple of mothers would look after the children whilst the others would sit in the coffee room chatting and eating the fantastic food. It was great. Conversations explored politics, science and current affairs and were philosophical in nature. These were intelligent women with horizons that went far beyond sources of English sausage. It was just wonderful. When my third son, Henry, came along, I changed to another day and what a difference a day makes! This new set of women chose not to sit in a room separate from their children, but instead sat in the playroom discussing cleaning products and recipes.

One morning, I walked into the room, and all conversation stopped prompted by a couple of nudges and glances. I had heard the conversation as I took my coat off in the entranceway, but now the room had a sudden deathly silence. The day before, two bodies of a woman and her child had been discovered under the duvet in their bedroom in the next town. The woman’s British husband who had disappeared was strongly suspected of their murders. This was why the room had fallen silent. I apparently bore the guilt of a man who I had never met who just happened to be one of the 74 million people I shared a nationality with. These people had all behaved very politely to me, giving the illusion of acceptance, but when push came to shove, I was not one of them.

The new day was mind-numbing! Opinions were greeted with uncomfortable looks, not lively discussions, and I began to realise it was not nationality that was important, but intellect and critical thinking. I wanted to spend time with interesting women with opinions, whatever their ethnicity. This was when I realised that there were two types of American women. The first type would come to be known as Stepford Wives, devoid of opinions, considered Vermont a foreign holiday, an unhealthy interest in cleaning products and mind-numbingly dull and predictable. Then there were Hilary and Marcias, who brought spice and interest to life.

All three of my boys attended Meadowbrook preschool in Marlborough. It was run by a middle-aged woman called Mrs Whitney, who had a way of doing things that did not always suit rambunctious boys. James had been fine since he was devoid of rambunctious tendencies, but Edward struggled a little more as his determination and Mrs Whitney’s preconceptions occasionally clashed.

Even Edward realised that Mrs Whitney was a little frustrated with him. We didn’t know then, but Edward had dyslexia, and this meant he often muddled up his words and was not good at following Mrs Whitney’s multi-step directions, or, as Edward said, “Mrs Whitney says I am not good at following her erections!”

David and Daniel, Marcia and Hilary’s boys, also had spirit and a strong familiarity with Mrs Whitney’s naughty corner. As the mothers of spirited boys, Marcia, Hilary and I were often requested to seek an audience with Mrs Whitney to receive some parenting tips, which she hoped would allow our boys to lose any trace of the personalities we loved them for. Luckily, Marcia and Hilary were not Stepford Wives. They were not afraid to share their experiences, worries, and frustrations and did not need to appear the embodiment of perfection. Their lack of interest in cleaning products was replaced by intellect and wit that dissolved my stress like bleach on grime. We came to realise that our boys could not all be three-year-old delinquents, and it may be far more likely that Mrs Whitney was better suited to girls.

As the boys headed off to their respected kindergartens and then middle schools, high schools and finally universities, Hilary and Marcia continued to be a guiding light helping me make sense of the American psyche. They accepted me for who I was, but could enlighten me about where I had gone wrong when a Stepford Wife started to avoid my calls. They were open about their problems which made me feel free to share mine and gave me a secure feeling when I spent time with them.

However, people came into my life, be it a roaring Lancastrian in the library, a friendless ex-pat I discovered when her phone number was thrust into my hand by her well-meaning in-laws, or the mother of a delinquent toddler sharing a disapproving look from Mrs Whitney, all these people became my new family. They were there to moan to, support me, advise and entertain me, but most of all, accept me for who I was and make me feel a part of my new country.