Winding down and packing up: 'Farewell to England!'

Our Year of Living Academically is coming to an end. Next week we say goodbye to Cambridge and hello to Toronto (at least if our tickets are valid. We have doubts. But that's another story).

The boxes have arrived and the suitcases have been pulled from storage. Their mouths gape open, hungry for our possessions, which seem to have increased in orders of magnitude from the four pieces of checked luggage we brought from Canada. Books, boots, bits and bobs; it all adds up. Now we need to organize, pack, ship, and cry. I'm not quite as overwrought as Byron in his poem ("Heart-broken and lorn, I resign/ The joys and the hopes that thou gavest") but I certainly have emotional moments.

Byron in the Wren Library, Trinity College

As I pack, I run through a litany of memories and think of what I'll miss about living in Cambridge.

Clare Hall

Well, everything. 

• Our home from home, flat 17, Clare Hall
• Casual conversations daily in the dining hall on subjects ranging from Bach's obsession with numbers, to advances in material science around hip replacement, to views on brotherhood from the perspectives of anthropology and of classics, and so on--- all before dessert and coffee. 

• The dining hall. Being cooked for by creative chefs. Mushroom stroganoff for lunch! Thai curry for dinner! Soup every day!
• So many people at Clare Hall and beyond who have become friends and inspirations.
• Proximity to old friends who knew me back when, who knew my children as babies, whose life histories are part of my own.
• Weird though it may sound, the NHS, which served us very well when we needed it most.
• Weird though it may sound, the climate. 
• The dozens or hundreds of concerts and lectures and seminars (who knew historiography could be so intriguing?) advertised on laminated posters affixed to railings and posts: Cambridge's local internet is the inter-fence

• The River Cam.

• Riding bikes in a city where cycling infrastructure works. 

• The people who stay here. 

Neighbours 

• The people who visit.

• The swimming pool.

• Springtime in college gardens.

• Location, location, location: an hour to London, two to Brighton, three to Durham (well, four with the ever-present roadworks)
• East Anglia: north Norfolk--Walsingham! Cley!--and rural Suffolk, their coasts, pockets of Essex and Cambridgeshire. Sky and more sky.

Lavenham, Suffolk

Cley-next-the-Sea, Norfolk

• Trains
• Walks and runs along fields and paths, from right outside our door

• Not living in a big city. Turns out I'm not a big-city person. It's taken me a while to realise.
• Europe on the doorstep.
• The timezone advantage that has let me write in the mornings and work in the afternoons.
• The people. Again.
• This year-long adventure à deux  ♡

On the other side of goodbyes, of course, will be the hellos. What I am looking forward to in Toronto:

• Reunion with our kids (until they dissipate, leaving us in the empty nest--unlike this past year, when we left them)
• Reunion with the dog and two cats (a very close second to seeing the kids. In fact... no, I won't go there)
• Reading the paper in bed surrounded by the dog and two cats
• Settling back into our galumphing old house 
• Reclaiming my houseplants (thank you to everyone who kept them going)
• Wrestling with the scraggly neglected garden (hint to husband: how about a new garden bench for our anniversary?)
• Connecting with friends and neighbors and colleagues in real life (hey folks, please can we go for a coffee? An ice cream? A cocktail? Soon?)
• Greater proximity to my North American family; seeing many of them next week for...
• ...middle child's graduation ceremony!
• Cooking meals (though not the associated washing up). So many new Nigel Slater recipes to try, plus the Alice B. Toklas cookbook.
• Dining and drinking on restaurant patios unassailed by cigarette smoke.
• Living on a continent with a Pacific coast. 

Bridge over the River Cam 
July 2022

This week the farewell gatherings come thick and fast, punctuating the packing up. There will be tears before leaving for sure, but also bright hope for return. In the meantime, I believe I've ordered enough Sainsbury's own-brand tea to see us through the transition to Toronto. 

Thank you, Clare Hall, for everything. À bientôt. 

Full moon from Flat 17 

 

Empty-nesting in reverse

Here I am, on the other side of the Atlantic. It's déjà vu all over again. This year, or much of it, husband and I will be based in Cambridge, England, at Clare Hall College, where husband has been awarded an international visiting fellowship, and I have been awarded 'partner' status (someday I want a tee-shirt depicting an ivy-covered wall that reads 'trailing spouse'). The college's motto is "a place to think". 

"I think we're mad," I said to husband as our preparations for departure ramped up. It was a lot of work. Saying goodbye to home, friends and neighbors, the garden, the pets--the dog and two cats--heart-rending. 

Clare Hall. Our flat is somewhere in the middle. 

At least we were spared saying farewell to our children as we left Toronto, because they had flown to London the week before, in order to spend several days with their grandfather. Among other activities he seems to have set his sights on teaching them the rules of cricket. As far as I can tell, he very nearly succeeded. Mercifully, just as they were on the verge of understanding such concepts as leg-before-wicket and 110-not-out and 7 ball over, and were consequently at risk of suffering the nefarious neurological changes such an inculcation might entail--the three kids took themselves off for a siblings' jaunt to Dublin for the rest of the week. They had a blast. Cricket must wait.

 

Meanwhile, Heathrow welcomed husband and me to the best of its 1950s brutalist ability. There have been upgrades. The automated passport control system worked well, and our luggage arrived promptly. In fact we spent more time in Toronto checking in the two massive suitcases than we did collecting them at the other end, because the conveyor belt at Toronto's Pearson Airport had broken down. Even that glitch offered a little serendipity: while we twiddled our thumbs waiting for the bag-drop to return to service, a friend and colleague whom I had not seen in person since pre-pandemic, and whom I had very much wanted to see before leaving, just happened by ( YouTube star Andrea Furlan, the pain doctor). We did a little reunion dance involving elbow bumps. It was the perfect send-off. 

Arriving in England after a two-and-a-half year absence has felt both momentous and ordinary. There have been moving moments: the covid-postponed stone-setting or unveiling ceremony for my mother-in-law, Rochelle, who died during the pandemic, the reunion with my father-in-law, my sister-and-brother-in-law and niece and nephew, as well as other family and friends. There have been wonderfully ordinary moments: shopping at Sainsbury's and popping a box of their own-brand Earl Grey tea into the trolley. Knowing that next week we can go back for more. 

Rochelle's beautiful gravesite

We crafted a mini-holiday for the five of us, fun family outings in Cambridge, in London, in Brighton and Lewes. Our children are sheer joy to travel with. What luck for us.

Punting on the Cam

 

Palace Pier, Brighton

Then, on a sunny Sunday, we drove them to Heathrow and said tearful goodbyes. Our three nestlings returned to Canada, the country their father and I chose to make their home twelve (12!) years ago. Back to their jobs, university, friends, pets. 

Heathrow farewell (followed by a parking ticket)

Husband and I stayed put here in England, sans enfants for the first time. We are empty-nesting in reverse. We will parent remotely. We will enjoy our adventure as a twosome. Letting go is meant to happen. We know that. And yet...

So far, I am loving Cambridge and our flat and college life and new friends. Clare Hall is indeed a good place to think, and I have much to think about: work, writing, reuniting with old friends. 

But when I pause to think about the ocean between me and my three children (and the pets), I confess I think about crying.   

Heigh-ho. We shall see how it goes.