The Prodigal Daughter Returns

To Vancouver, Washington.  For her sister's wedding.

(It's probably clear from that Biblical allusion that I know nothing of that particular story other than there was a guy who went away for a while and then came back.)

I am jet-lagged, fog-brained, and completely disorient(at)ed by the oversized roads, attentive sales assistants, and cacophony of American accents.

After 9 hours of plane travel, 3 hours of car travel, and 8 hours of time travel, I arrived at my mom's house last night just in time fall into a 10-hour coma.  I managed to get a Burgerville dinner in there somewhere, making every other harrowing part of the journey worthwhile.

My sister's wedding is on Saturday (more to follow), and I am doing my best to shove 9 month's of maid-of-honour duty into three days.  Today this meant buying shoes, getting a dress fitted, acquiring appropriate undergarments, and offering my time/energy/help to my super organised, slightly stressed-out sister, who promptly turned me down.  All she's asked is that I do a reading at the ceremony.  I'm sure she'll tell me what it is at some point, but doing cold readings is pretty much 97% of my job, so it'll be fine.  Oh, and a toast at the reception, but I'm an improv pro, so that'll all work out, too.  If all I have to do is show up in a dress that fits on the day and speak in front of a large crowd of people, I'd call that my ideal bridesmaid scenario.  If I don't trip or fart on the way up to the podium, nothing more need happen.

(I genuinely have a fear of farting at my sister's wedding that has cropped up in the last week or so. I often perform in front of large groups of people, I have never farted then, and I do not have a general problem with flatulence, so I'm not sure where this fear derives from, other than my certitude that I will do something inadvertent and absurd to ruin the perfection that will be my sister's special day.  But I won't.  I promise.)

It is weird to be home.  It gets weirder the longer I live in London, the more it feels more like home.  Do I really live 5000 miles away?  How was I just there and now I'm here?  Is this delicious boysenberry jam trying to convince me to stay?  Why does everyone hate healthcare so much?  These are the questions that have plagued me for the last 24 hours.

I felt nostalgic driving down the evergreen-rich stretch of I-5 between Seattle and Vancouver, and I love seeing my family, but this place doesn't feel like home anymore.  I guess it hasn't felt like home for a while, but it's a new revelation that somewhere else does.  Maybe it's just a product of living in the same place for more than a year -- which I haven't done since college -- but leaving London showed me just how much I want to stay there.