What Is This?

What is this thing you are reading?  This blog?  This historical account?  This " we are apart and staying together" -- that title that seemed so inspired when I came up with it a year ago; now....not so much? What is this missive that comes into your in-box a few times a week to tell you about Norwich, travel or the weather (my most popular tags)?

It is a project that has taught me how to write, how to research, organize and communicate. It has given me a reason to say: oh wait, I need to take a picture of that.  Smile.  I have not lived the year of living dangerously but [sigh] The Year Of Being Photographed. It has made "blog post" a new family word (though it has serious competition from "I couldn't be bothered" and "she is really good.") It has kept me from endlessly repeating our days to family and friends. And family and friends have been so responsive and supportive in kind. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Yes, it is all that.

It is also a tribute to Alice, strong confident wonderful Alice.   Alice has the best attitude of any 15-year-old on this planet.  I am so lucky to have had this year of being Alice's mum.

She made this year be fabulous! And because she made this year fabulous, we have had a fabulous year. 

So I am flying back to the States today.  Getting ready to leave has been surprising emotional.  Yesterday morning I burst into tears at the start of the parkrun.


Huh?  

Tonight I will see Carl and Fred. You'd think that mommy would want to get home to her cubs and I do, I do. I know my days in that capacity are numbered.   


But leaving means we have come to the beginning of end of this, our Year Here, our English Adventure, our Grand Day Out.  All those lists and late night internet apartment stalking and packing Carl and Fred for college and driving them there and saying good-bye and flying over here and starting school, starting work, mastering the grocery, look left, shifting with the left, playing hockey and taking controlled assessments and making bread and making pizza and watching American TV on iTunes and playing gin and Skyping and texting, iMessage is fer sure feeling that Ward love, and trains and planes and automobiles and Kate and London and Spain and Paris and Switzerland and Norfolk.  Norfolk?  Yes, Norfolk, the Graveyard of Ambition and of 33 Leicester House our home for the past 9 months...



So really...

...at the end of the day

after all is typed and posted...

...this blog is really a huge long timeless love letter to my husband.

I have spent 25+ years with EW dreaming, planning, learning.  We have raised 3 exceptional children, wiped countless butts, cooked, cleaned, wined and dined.  We've lost parents, children, dogs, gained peace, love and understanding.  To describe the infinite energy field that is the joy of having spent the last 9 months here with him will destroy its here and now.  I am trying to stay in the present.

He will understand.

Onwards.