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This morning I awoke before sunrise and said my sad good-byes to my daughter and her finance in our UK village home of the last year. Our Cheshire home was set on a high plain and overlooked idilic pastures, sheep, protected forest and quaint cottages.

Living in England for the past two years has been a life experience I will treasure, but.

The flight from Manchester to Dublin, Ireland was uneventful, well as uneventful as being seated within five densely packed rows of middle aged women from China that can’t comprehend that you have to pay for coffee on most UK flights, can be.

My dear wife Pam, drove me to the airport and the sadness of the journey to the airport was dulled by traffic empty roads and was punctured by the massive curb hit she took in the rental car as we neared the terminal. “Holy Mother Fuc…” In an instant I went from sadness to wondering how much that was going to cost when we turned the car in.

In anticipation of the move I sold my car a couple of weeks ago. I expected that it was going to be a time consuming process, so I started early. The car sold in ten minutes and then I was without wheels, thus the rental car. Which, by the way, is a new VW Golf Estate (wagon) that gets 50 MPG on the motorway. I wish they sold those diesel models in the U.S. But then again my big ass Mercedes Benz in the UK got 45 MPG on the highway. I digress.

A quick kiss at the curb and a long hug will have to last me for the next month until she arrives in the U.S. Once again I’m the point guy and she’s logistics, getting the house packed up to put in a box and then on a ship for a sea voyage home. Who knows when we’ll see our stuff again but I know I’ll see her in a month.

The departure was emotional enough, leaving everything I love behind, and even at the age of 48, it is still difficult to do. But it is a bit anti-climatic to prepare to depart on the long journey back home to the United States, only to fly for 30 minutes and have a four hour layover.

And that’s where I am now, sitting in Dublin, Ireland, in the executive lounge on a €20 day pass. I touched down in Dublin and nearly got tsunamied as my Chinese flying companions could not make up their mind to use the front or rear door to deplane, and I was awash in the middle of the whirlpool of Chinese femality.

At least with U.S. Airways you can usually get an upgrade to business class on the day for £250 but Aer Lingus wanted £1,800 and they wonder why those seats often fly empty. Of course that is cheaper than the £2,800 they wanted originally for business class but that’s a price I can’t justify even on the eight hour transatlantic flight I’ll board my economy seat in a few hours.

The United States

As sad as I am to lose the views of the green lush pastures of my England, I am eager to return home to the United States.

There is so much about the U.S. that I don’t agree with and stuff that embarrasses me to be an American but for all its faults, it’s my home where I am a natural born citizen.

When I was much younger and lived in Africa; Lagos, Nigeria, to be exact. The excitement of living in a foreign land was palpable. Of course the reality of living through a coup or two was intriguing as a child as well.

But living as a U.S. citizen in a foreign land, as an adult, made me appreciate the value that being a citizen provides. I treasure my right to vote for president, I appreciate my status as a recognized member of a state and I long for the return to the friends and family I’ve been separated from over the past couple of years.

But all those things that I miss, others miss as well. Displaced ex-pats mostly long for their home as well. And home is a comfortable place.

The single most important lesson I wish I could share with the majority of my fellow U.S. citizens is that in all of my travels through Europe and the rest of the world over the past couple of years, it only reaffirmed my belief in the goodness of people, of all colors, races, religions and sexual orientations.

People everywhere don’t give themselves enough credit in their inherent goodness and kindness. But in all the locations I’ve been, from Cape Town to Oslo, there is one underlying constant, ignorance.

In America people besmirch the Mexican’s and in Europe, they bitch and complain about the Polish. And the thing that is the most ironic is that you could easily take the same complaints from either side of the pond and replace it with Mexican or Polish and you’d have the exact same sentence.

There are bad things in life but we can’t lose sight of the fact that there are plenty of good things to be grateful and thankful for as well. I don’t give a damn if you are Mexican, Polish, yellow, brown or in drag, the same basic human dignities still apply. While I owe you nothing, I am happy to give a smile, courtesy, graciousness, and a hug if you need one. I give those away free, to all that ask.

I’m no saint, who is? But I make an effort to try to be nice to others. And that’s what I’ll do as soon as I get home in 12 hours as well.

There will be no parade welcoming me home, no balloons, no banners but there will be one thing waiting to welcome me, my citizenship, and for that United States, I’m grateful.

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Steve

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