” I’ve been a long time that I’m waiting
Been a long that I’m blown
I’ve been a long time that I’ve wandered
Through the people I have known
Oh, if you would and you could
Straighten my new mind’s eye.”

Nick Drake – “Northern Sky”

This was meant to be a kind of flippant Tuesday post about berry picking, but as it’s a gloomy August day – British specialty – and I’m feeling a bit maudlin. I fear I may veer towards the emotional and confessional posts which I generally try and avoid.

As you can see from the pictures below we spent part of this past weekend picking raspberries in the mild August sun. Nothing particularly special, but a nice way to spend part of a Saturday and a good way to get Vitamin D flowing. Doing this reminded me of picking berries with our friends Alex and Nichole back in Missouri about five years ago. That’s the balance of the pictures in this post – amazing how much we age in five years – more me than the rest of them! Apparently at some point in your 30’s you start aging exponentially instead of linearly or maybe it just feels that way. We followed that blueberry picking expedition with a themed dinner menu with all dishes involving blueberries. (This was the heyday of “Iron Chef“) Nichole actually remembers the menu which speaks well to her memory. I was impressed that I could remember the dinner. At any rate just a nice moment in time to remember.

But then, Alex posted this story for his daughter’s 2nd birthday and started me into this whole spiral. I got to thinking about good friends and how they are such a rare commodity and a relationship that takes time to grow. I’m such a private person generally that it takes me a few years to really establish a good friendship with someone. Five years in Missouri meant that I had made some really great friends ones that I hated to leave behind. I remember when Dr O’C first moved to Missouri in 2001 she struggled and was unhappy because she didn’t have many friends. By the time we left in 2004, I think even she shed a tear or two for some of the good friends we were having to leave behind.

Leaving friends behind has been kind of a pattern for me – I’ve spent most of my life moving from place to place within a few years, a pattern that I think got established from early childhood. I was talking to my Dad over the weekend about just that. With a baby on the way I was fretting about getting geographically settled. When I was younger, because of the nature of my Dad’s job, we moved every few years New York to Canada to California back to New York and finally to Florida. I remember when we moved to Florida I was 10 and I hated it. I had started school and had good friends in New York. The people in north Florida talked funny and it was hot and I didn’t have any friends. I wanted the contentment that I had established in my ten year old mind in upstate New York. I eventually settled and made friends and did just fine but from the time I hit adulthood I went back to the nomadic lifestyle – South Carolina back to Florida to Washington to Georgia to Missouri to Britain. Always looking for that place where everything is going to be perfect…

Oxford was the latest move and it’s been good for what it was supposed to be good for – moving on in careers for both Dr O’C and I. We’ll have been here three years in October and I’ve started to make some good friends now. But as is the pattern, our time here is coming to an end in the next six months or so and it will be time for the next place. Always looking for that place where everything is going to be perfect. It’s only recently that I’ve realized that place can be wherever I and the people I love are – you make your own home. With our own family on the way – 36 days at last count – I think its time to settle, maybe not here, but somewhere and soon.

“It’s easier to leave than to be left behind
Leaving was never my proud
Leaving New York, never easy
I saw the light fading out…”

R.E.M. – “Leaving New York”

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