In May of last year my husband, Phillip, received a job offer which would entirely flip our worlds upside down for the foreseeable future. After a last-minute audition in New York City, Phillip booked the role of Jerry Travers in Top Hat the Musical. Not only was it a dream role for him to embody and make his own, it was also a contract based entirely in the UK for a. whole. year! After seven and a half years of not being able to visit my home country, we were going to get to return, and not just for a quick vacation, but to actually do life for awhile.
As I started writing this, I was reminded of a moment the day before we found out that Phillip had gotten the job. I was sat on a friend’s couch whose house we were staying in temporarily as we were still displaced by the LA fires. I was exhausted and emotionally overwhelmed by the prospects ahead, but also the realities of that week that we were living in. I called a friend and mentor who asked me the simple question, “Put everything else aside for a moment, is this what your heart desires?” For context, I was employed in a role which I absolutely loved, with a group of people who I adore, in a place that I had made home. Leaving any number of those things was not an easy choice for my heart. But in that moment, with the phone pressed against my ear, I felt the heat of tears stinging my eyes as a desire deeper than my present fulfillment poked its head above the surface. To be with my family, to be in proximity to my friends of old, to tread the pavements of the city I grew up in, to see the beauty and the wildness of the rugged coastlines and green countryside, to hear accents which sound like home and taste food that I have been craving for years. To get to experience all of these things would be a deep dream come true.
Through tears, I dared to give my answer, “yes.”
Ten months later, I am sitting at my sister’s kitchen table in Liverpool listening to the gentle sound of my son Justice as he sleeps in his stroller by the door. Outside, the sky is a brilliant spring blue, the sun lighting up the city in bright white, and the cool breeze reminding us all that winter hasn’t fully passed yet even as the seasons ready themselves to turn. At this table, I sit in gratitude.
I don’t want this time to end.
When we first arrived back in England last summer, time felt like a resource which we had so much of. We are here and we are present; let’s do all the things! And we have been doing just that. My boys have seen more of the UK now than a lot of people I know who’ve grown up here. We’ve traveled to many of the cities that Top Hat has been performing in, have jumped into school routines, weekly grocery shop runs, regular coffee dates and friend meet-ups like it’s the most normal thing in the world. It has been a delightfully smooth transition and a wonderfully fun time. But it also isn’t 100% normal life.
Today, I walked to pick up Justice from nursery along streets lined with purple bins, under a brilliant bright blue sky and I felt the desperation in my heart for this not to end. When you know that something isn’t going to last forever, it causes you to live differently whilst you still have it.
The Top Hat tour ends in May and from that point forward we really don’t know what is next. Can we stay here longer? Where will the next paycheck come from? Do we return to LA or will somewhere new invite us to make our home there? Where will we live? What will we do? Where do we want to be? Can we keep the things we have gained here, or will we once again have to empty ourselves of possessions and start again somewhere else?
So many questions. So much unknown.
At least once a day I now have the thought, “this is going to end soon.” It would be easy for this to induce anxiety, a sense of panic over not knowing what the future holds, but for the most part that doesn’t happen. I’ve been in this position enough times at this point in my life to know that ultimately we will be ok, and that knowledge and assurance stills the potential freak-out before it can take root. Instead I find myself responding with an inward pleading for this not to end. Please can we stay. Please can this time continue just a little bit longer. Please can something come along which will allow us to remain, and not have to say goodbye again so soon. Please can we build here…In Liverpool, the city whose people never walk alone; where everyone is a ‘love’ or a ‘queen’, and where humour and warmth are imparted like a birthright amongst people whose hearts I swear are made of gold…
The Liver Building, Liverpool
I don’t know if those internal prayers will be answered in the way that I would like. It’s quite possible that they won’t, and I’m ok with that. I don’t linger in the yearning for long. I want to keep my heart supple and open to whatever the latter half of this year might hold. Instead, I choose to keep saying, “thank you”, for this moment that I am in. Gratitude is what finds me in these very ordinary days of early morning wake-ups, school runs, grocery shops and laundry cycles. I’m so grateful for the opportunity to have un-extraordinary days in a place that I absolutely love. I’m trying not to hold on too tightly, and at the same time it’s also hard not to when so much of your heart is at home in a place and its people.
