The Slow-Motion Escape

Another lull. In between the deadlines and the crises, it has all suddenly gone quiet, although it's only temporary, I know. Just enough time to reflect a little more on the last couple of months and try to describe something of the slow-motion escape.

The initial problem was the question before us. 'Should we apply for this job in the UK?' is not the same as, 'should we move back home?', because there was the very real possibility that someone else would be hired instead. We had to commit to the notion of returning to Britain, but without immediately disengaging from our lives in the US, and, whilst both outcomes remained possible, I tried not to think about any of it at all. Tried and failed, of course, because once we had decided to apply, we had made up our minds, even if we weren't prepared to say it out loud. As soon as Laura hit send on that application, we were heading for the exit, whether she got the job or not.

I mentioned before the relief that came with the realisation that we were really going home. It's a complex mixture of feelings and responses, but there was one powerful element of it which surprised us, I think. We had to talk it through a few times, but we pieced it together. Going home meant an escape. Not from America itself precisely - it's not as if we haven't enjoyed our time here. But once we knew we were leaving, our perspective changed, and anxieties we had suppressed or ignored became things we could get away from. It became clear that we had both felt an unwelcome sense of exposure, but could only now acknowledge it. If our luck held for just a few more months, we could leave unscathed.

What were we worried about? Big things. High risk, low probability events. The sort of things that would only happen, or would be horribly exacerbated because we were living in America. The sort of thing that we had never been brought up to worry about.

Guns. That's the big one. America's insane relationship with firearms that turns schools into crime scenes and police officers into soldiers. Although statistically unlikely, whilst we are here it is possible that one of us could be shot, or have a gun pointed at us, either by a criminal, by the police, by an unsupervised child, or just by a bystander who thought they were being a 'good guy'. This madness doesn't exist in Britain. Going home means never having to worry about assault rifles, or that beeping my horn on the freeway is going tempt a fellow road user to pull a shotgun on me. It means that the next time one of my kids has a nightmare about a gunman in their school, I can promise them it will never, ever happen. When I think about this I realise I am counting the minutes to our departure.

So many things haven't happened to us. We've got through six hurricane seasons without a scratch. In 2008, Ike, a storm hundreds of miles across, went straight over the top of us and we didn't even suffer a broken window. None of us has been diagnosed with a major disease; the kids haven't broken a single bone. Either of those eventualities would have cost us hundreds or thousands of dollars thanks to a healthcare system designed to milk the American people of their money in order to swell the profits of massive corporations. We haven't been smashed into by a driver who was drunk, or high, or texting. None of Laura's hundreds of flights has crashed. We haven't had to miss any funerals back home. We haven't stumbled on a snake, or an alligator, or a bear. Okay, yes, we did stumble on alligators, and a bear, but we all retain all our original limbs and internal organs.

There were other things too. More insidious things, like racism and the attacks on women's rights. This growing social conservatism was only going to make America, and especially Texas, a less friendly place in which to live. In Britain our politics are moderately left of centre; here we're diabolical radicals.

Enough of that. Time to go.

And so the slow countdown started. We are going, we are leaving - but not quite yet. As the weeks pass, it increasingly feels like that long moment in a heist or POW movie where the escapee is trying to walk out under the noses of the guards, keeping his gait casual, trying not to sweat, not to run, hoping his papers will pass inspection, all the time waiting for a bullet in the back.

If this all sounds over anxious, paranoid even, it's because we are so close, and the proximity of our departure exaggerates everything out of proportion. The days creep past, even though this should be a frantic period, as we clear hurdles and cross of things to do. We have our tickets. We've had our papers checked, satisfied the IRS of our good standing and received their permission to leave the country. The removal men have come and gone and the house is empty. The cars have been sold.

Just three weeks to go: a few more forms to be completed, the final school concerts, the last farewell parties. One more Christmas.

And then the drive to the airport. I'll check in the bags and the cat, and endure one more TSA line. We'll board the plane, find our seats. Wait for the sudden thrum of the engines that pushes us up into the sky and away.

That's when Laura and I will share a look, and what I'll be thinking is:

"It's been a gamble and an adventure, a wonderful collection of experiences and encounters. I'm glad we did it, I'm glad we did it together, but most of all I'm glad we got away with it."