We all have different opinions about the sort of person we envisage heading up the bread line. And then we all have a different image of where the poverty line is in relation to our individual wealth. 

On 16th September, 2010, the BBC World Service reported that 44 million American live in poverty, the highest number since the 1960s. “Poverty” is apparently a family of four living on less than $22,000 a year. Obviously, this can’t be compared to a country where poverty means whether you are going to be able to afford your next meal, otherwise is wouldn’t be a real barometer to test the apparent growth in wealth.

But it does sicken me that this is a country of want. Or is it called opportunity. I get the two mixed up sometimes. If you want something, apparently you must have it. There is very little mindset to save, or go without. Especially when it comes to your children, who are very often put on a pedestal.

In these times of relative austerity (and I’m embarrassed to use that term given the experiences of our grandparents during wartime rationing and postwar reconstruction), I would think it polite to just rein the extravagances in a little. You never know when that proverbial rain cloud will burst. 

Hallowe’en is a good example. Children expect piles and piles of chocolate. Adults do not disappoint. No matter that it is bad for them, and encouraging expectation is never a pleasing characteristic. Most houses have mountains of sweet, sticky, chewy delights, and given that you should have grown out of Trick or Treating (can’t say I saw any tricking) by the age of 11, there are a lot of hyperactive toddlers running around.

We were invited by friends to join the Trick or Treating in their neighbourhood, and I must say, despite my reservations, we had a really lovely evening. In England, negativity always seems to prevail, and the reverse can be said about our trans-Atlantic brothers. This is true even to the extent that an American friend will tell you about an up and coming event that will be “awesome”, but only three people show up, and there is more atmosphere in a funeral parlour. I’m being unkind, but you get the gist. In England, teenagers roam the streets, before, during and after the 31st October, pelting houses with eggs because the tradition of Trick or Treating has given them jurisdiction.

In the States, the event is conducted with a little more class. The fun is that little children get to dress up and everyone pulls together in a community-spirited event, meeting on street corners and front lawns to coo at the pint-sized monkeys (Madeleine’s costume), tigers (Tilda’s), witches and ladybirds. It doesn’t even matter what the children wear as long as everyone joins in the spirit.

I still can’t stand the thought of children begging from door to door, but that isn’t how it is seen. If you don’t want to take part, you leave your porch light off. And the time for Trick or Treating is restricted to a few short hours during daylight, as dictated by the local council. How civilised. Goodness know what would become of you if you knocked on a door on the wrong day. It’s unheard of. American’s like their rules, and generally people like to stick to them.

One American tradition that is not conducted with such class is election campaigning. Campaigning seems to go on for months and months. We received so many recorded messages from candidates and their supporters that we don’t even answer the home phone any more. We can’t even vote, so it is a particularly ridiculous and pointless exercise.

The messages I particularly object to, whether by phone or TV, are anti-campaigning. For example: “You shouldn’t vote for X because he is known to be linked to gang crime and your children will have no future.” For all the praise I can heap on this country for its positive attitude, I can heap as much scorn for the nasty, factless tripe that is aired. This may be a country of free speech but I would have thought that as a country of litigious intent, there would be some attempt to stem the slander and libel. Or maybe it is all true. I’m afraid the only change in behaviour it has stirred in me, is to turn the TV off and close my ears. 

So the weather is now turning a little chilly. Looking at the UK temperatures it seems to be about the same at the moment, around 0-5C. However, the wind chill has to be factored in. It’s only the end of November and I’m already having to build up my courage every time I go out. It’s mainly the hassle factor. You don’t want to wear your coats in the car (Mam’s voice in my head from childhood days: “Take your coat off so you’ll feel the benefit when you go out.”), and you can’t do the children’s seatbelt up with them on anyway as they are too bulky. But then when you park and you need to get coats on it starts to feel like a military operation. It’s all an experience of course, and as people start to put up some pretty spectacular light displays, it’s also very pretty. Do you know there are companies dedicated to putting lights up and down each year? There’s a house down the road that looks like the gingerbread house. The festivities start at Thanksgiving and finish at the end of January.

I wasn’t really sure what Thanksgiving was going to be about really. Obviously, traditionally it was for the founding fathers to give thanks to Native Americans for providing shelter and food (before they then shoved them off their land and into reserves). Today, for most people it is still about food. Platefuls and platefuls of beige food; turkey, sweet potatoes with marshmallows on top (just wrong), chicken noodles, bread, stuffing with a colourful dollop of cranberry sauce (well, you need some sort of fruit or vegetable), all followed by a huge piece of pumpkin pie and mountains of gelatinous desserts welded together with high fructose corn syrup.

For the most part, people get two days holiday and given there is very little holiday time here (some companies force employees to accrue holiday from day one), this is a very important family time. 

We were lucky enough to be invited to a friend’s house in Carmel, Indiana. Day one we spent at her aunt’s house, where 20 guests enjoyed a turkey dinner. Day two we spent at the host’s house, where 35 guests enjoyed a turkey dinner. Each time, before dinner, we all gathered together, grace was said, and people were invited to share what they were giving thanks for. It was nice to see families joining together like this, even if we’re not religious. Then after the meal people would get out their guitars and start a sing song. I think what it mainly highlighted to me, is that we are very formal in the UK. I can’t imagine having 35 guests for dinner on such as casual basis, but everyone brought a dish, we used paper plates so there was little washing up, and the point was really about sharing time in the same place.

Now on to Christmas.

In four weeks time we are due to board a plane taking us East. I said I didn’t like the cold winters and Andy has obviously taken my dislike for extreme hatred and arranged for us to live in Dubai. Not sure I can complain about -25C there.

So another adventure is on the horizon, but first I need to reflect and make some parting observations of our American life.

The topic of weather is usually a good and very British place to start.

It’s true we did have a very long, and cold, winter. October felt almost British with its fresh cool air. The air conditioning was a distant memory and within a week the heating was warming our toes. Friends had told us that Chicago starts to batten down the hatches for winter on Labor Day at the beginning of September. August had been very hot and we thought it was premature. Perhaps it was our fault that the weather changed overnight – we did go camping after all – the rains fell down and the jumpers were pulled out of the cupboard. 

Talking of getting in the spirit of things, people do like to celebrate everything here. Corpses were hung from trees, bones were shoved into the ground (not yet frozen) to resemble disturbed graves, huge inflatable skulls adorned street corners. And I’m not really sure what we were supposed to be celebrating. Death? Being alive? All a bit strange if you ask me.

Before Hallowe’en there is autumn, or fall, to celebrate. Hurrah, the hot weather is over and we’re now in fear of frostbite. Does no-one remember how horrible it was last year? So autumnal wreaths are hung on doors, sheaths of corn are tied to mailboxes, dried corncobs are dangled from eaves. No harvest festivals though, so not a celebration of Earth’s fruits.

After Hallowe’en you can decorate your house for thanksgiving, generally turkey-based paraphernalia. This is the biggest festival in the calendar and very much focusing on food. 

Of course there are the baubles, lights and tinsel of Christmas and New Year, and then everything is strangely quiet. Having been mildly distracted by the pretty lights I begin to feel relieved that I didn’t have to keep up with the neighbours’ decorating competition. We don’t have all the gubbins and stuff required to turn our home into a gingerbread house. Of course, people have massive basements here so storage is not a problem. 

January, February and March were very dark months. I thought spring would be around the corner and I could attempt to decorate the house with flowers. Strangely enough they don’t seem to celebrate that, but St Valentines is a big deal. All the children send little cards and sweets to each other. It’s more about appreciating friendship than a romantic display, and that’s an idea to be lauded. Could do without the sweet giving though. I’m writing this in August and I still haven’t let the girls eat last year’s stash of Hallowe’en candy yet! 

Spring didn’t come at the end of March. Or April. At the end of May, my brother and his girlfriend came to visit and we had tickets for a Cub’s game at Wrigley Field. I had three coats on that night and was still so cold we abandoned the game after the seventh inning and retreated to the warmth of a pub. The month was so wet. Grey curtains of water were a frequent sight. Even in June I was still waiting for Spring but finally came to the conclusion that we had missed it. Mam and Dad came to visit and the weather was a little unpredictable. Some nice days, some cold days, some wet days and a few hot days. Generally, summers are too hot and humid to spend any time outside and after dark you get eaten alive by mosquitos the size of small birds. Winters are brutally cold, so you risk getting frostbite before you’ve managed to get the children out of the car, but it’s generally dry. Sledging, or to use to local term, sledding, is fun if you can find a day not too cold, but don’t try and make a snowman, because you need English snow, which is wet and slushy.

Size is apparently what matters here. Everything is very big. Of course the obvious reason is the amount of space available. It’s like when you buy a bigger house and you don’t have enough furniture, but when you move to an even bigger house, your original house is full of stuff. That’s America. It just keeps expanding in every way to fill the available size. Here are some examples:

Houses are bigger. We are renting a house that has three garages. We don’t have three cars. The garage itself is as big as a modest UK house. We have three bedrooms (plus an upstairs living room), but a basement we could rent to a couple of families.

The garden is huge. The village, and I use that term loosely, of Long Grove has a rule that all houses must have at least an acre of land. We don’t use the football pitch behind our house, and no-one else seems to either. They just mow it. Or more correctly, they pay Mexicans to mow it. Americans have a fixation with neatness and germs, almost to Aryan proportions, which makes sense, given that most immigrants to this area were German or Irish. Interesting clash of cultures. But both beer swilling. Ironically, there are few bars here.

Cars are also massive. My theory on this is not that people actually need big cars (although there are some who could benefit from an appointment with the gym), but they need to be in proportion to their surroundings. The roads are wide, because there is no reason for them not to be. Trucks, sorry, lorries, are the size of sea-faring oil tankers. In order to protect themselves, drivers choose bigger and bigger cars.

A plate of food in a restaurant could feed a European family. People are big. They are taller, and wider. They have bigger teeth. They have bigger voices. Everything seems to be magnified. Groceries are actually quite expensive here, so it is a little surprising that people spend so much money on food, but I suppose once you have an appetite, and food manufacturers have you hooked into an addiction fuelled by fats and salt, you’re willing to pay for satisfaction. Food rules aren’t as strict here. There are more hormones. And when a concerned, and sensible group of people, tried to limit the amount of salt in food there was uproar. Apparently that’s against American human rights. It’s too much of an effort to lift the salt seller and add it yourself, so we all have to eat it. Thanks.

And then there is surprising stuff that’s large. Flowers. The hibiscus here is the size of a dinner plate. 

The weather has been particularly weird recently. Some days it seems even more British than Britain with four seasons in one day. Today it started sunny, then by 9am there were thunderstorms and rivers of rain running down the roads. At 11am the ground was completely dry and the sun was out. The afternoon was cloudy and very humid. The thunderstorms are pretty spectacular, with real force. The storm last Friday was so bad they shut the airport (so Andy didn’t get home from Orlando until 3am) and the build up of pressure in our roof space meant the attic hatch was sucked off. When I first saw it I thought someone had been living in the loft like a stowaway.

Usually the rain is so heavy that it’s practically impossible to go out. Today we managed to get a dry window and went to the playground with the Lake Zurich Moms and Tots group. It was good fun as there was a better turn-out than other events, but the playground was very muddy. Madeleine and I had to wash our feet in a bucket of water when we came home.

The girls have changed quite a bit in the last couple of days. Tilda is cruising and almost standing on her own. She’s becoming defiant in her own way and doesn’t like to be told “no” when pulling at cables and leads by the computer. Madeleine’s accent is half way across the Atlantic. Her pronunciation of the letter “r” is more American than English and she uses American words. She even asked me to put something in the “garbage” the other day. I’m trying to make her speak English at home, but she does have to fit in here. At the playground the other day, a mother asked me if I was British as she thought Madeleine had an American accent and she wasn’t sure.

We getting to know quite a few people, but it’s all rather superficial at the moment. People don’t seem to just “do coffee” here. It’s about doing something to entertain the children. One thing I have noticed is that life at home in the UK is about building for the future. You invest time in your family and friends and create a long-term support network around you. You spend time improving your house or garden. Life here can feel a little temporary. I’m not used to just having fun without feeling guilty (how boring do I sound?). I’m used to ticking off lists, working towards a challenge and moving towards a useful goal. I’m happy to change my attitude and perception of the meaning of life, but life in the suburbs can be a little dull without friends. It’s only a matter of time, and we’ve met some nice people. It’s just an effort to make the invitations and be the organiser all the time.

One thing we did enjoy this weekend was getting both girls on the back of our bikes. Tilda seems to enjoy the experience although she is less convinced about wearing a helmet. She hates her sun hat so I’m not surprised. We cycled from the house into Long Grove. It was lovely to get out and about, although I hadn’t appreciated how heavy the bike becomes with a little parcel on the back. You only need to do a couple of miles for a good workout!

Living in America
“Two countries separated by a common language.” Was George Bernard Shaw right? I think it's true. Living in America, we are in effect learning a new language and even if the words are the same, the pronunciation is different. We say shopping trolley, they say shopping cart. We say lever (lee-ver), they say lever (erm, lev-er), but from the sound of it you would never know the word was the same. I hate to say it but the American pronunciation is more phonetic and therefore easier to read. Madeleine, our four-year-old, is more adaptable than us and takes it all in her stride. She is even correcting what I say when we go out, but if she tells me Tilda needs her diaper changing one more time... 

So I am now going to the grocery store (supermarket) to find a cart (shopping trolley) and I will buy some eggplant (aubergine) and zucchini (courgette). I'm by no means a forensic linguist, but I do have a theory on how the language has taken different paths. When the founding fathers boarded the Mayflower in the 17th century, French was the official language of the English courts. Those souls who fled the homeland, however, were not from the the upper classes where French was de rigueur. So plain old common English was exported with them.

The English have always had a tendency to look up the class ladder, and in an aspirational way, have copied their feudal masters, dragging French words into everyday parlance. But please don't offer me a napkin to wipe the corner of my mouth at the dinner table. It conjures up images of dirty nappies, nappy being a shortened form of napkin (or could it be that it comes from the word "nap", meaning the hairy side of a fabric cause by short fibres?). In any case I'd rather have a serviette please and stay aspirational.

Talking of those in nappies, Tilda is growing up so fast. I’ve decided that given the increasing number of teeth, and associated biting incidents, that the feeding now has to stop. She is crawling on all fours, instead of commando crawling and can pull herself up to standing. The baths here are half the depth of ours, which makes it easier to get the children out, but also means she can practically get into the bath on her own.

Her bottom two teeth arrived on the same day, and a couple of weeks ago she got her top two teeth through on the same day. She had been very grouchy, with a cold and a cough too. I took her to the paediatrician (the children see paediatrians – spelt pediatrician- rather than doctors here) and found out she has an ear infection. She has been given an antibiotic called Amoxicillin, which I keep hearing as “epoxy resin”. Just as long as I give her the right one!

We’ve met our neighbours, having hosted a drinks party. They seem very nice but we are the youngest by quite a long chalk. The area is great, and each house has a massive plot of land, but the main problem is that it can be quite isolating. The Chicago suburban plains stretch on and on. We can’t walk anywhere from the house and that means that you are always taking the children in and out of the car to drive them somewhere to be entertained. Life can be very easy as there is lots to do, but I would like the children to be able to entertain themselves rather than expecting things to happen for them.

Madeleine is starting to settle in well at nursery. She has lots of friends and is kept very busy for the two days a week that she goes. The day is structured with circle time, individual time and play time so there is a balance between learning through play and just playing. Biased as a mother is, I can say she is very bright, and shocks me with some of the observations she makes and the knowledge she has. There is some benefit to the constant question “why?”, even if she is driving me crazy.    

We moved into the house in Eleanor Drive, Long Grove, IL, on the Monday (1st), arriving early to greet our air freight. It was while unpacking our four metres cubed that I realised what a spectacularly poor job of packing I had done. I thought I’d put things aside for air freight that didn’t actually make it, and unpacked items which will be redundant for the foreseeable future. For example, why would I need a booster seat for Madeleine without a chair to put it on? And how many dinners can you cook with only one saucepan but no sharp knives? I can only think that either the packers put things in the wrong box or everything I was using until the last possible moment, i.e. all the useful stuff, has taken the long route via ship. We’re managing pretty well though with our camping chairs and child-size table. We bought a futon from IKEA, which was so hard we required an emergency shop to buy a foam topper (memories of the children’s story The Princess and the Pea pop up here), and Madeleine has a new bunk bed “just like Patrick and Tom” (her cousins) as she keeps pointing out. Still, kind of feels like we’re treading water for the time being.

The snow has also made it difficult to orientate ourselves. When we arrived there was more than a foot of the stuff. It was quite icy so Madeleine (and me too if I was careful) could walk on top. Everything just looked white. The view from the house to the back garden was lovely, as the snow was completely unblemished except for funny waddle marks from wedded feet. Madeleine, Tilda and I went out into the garden to investigate, but I immediately felt guilty – were we allowed to walk on the snow? Or was there some rule of which we were ignorant. Householders are forbidden from putting up fences and washing as it spoils the view, so maybe the same logic was applied to virgin snow. There seems to be a lot of rules here. I get the impression that Americans like things to be spelt out for them; rules give boundaries, rather than limitations and restrictions. Basically, if you apply common sense you should be ok. In that case, I think it was ok to walk on the snow. So we did. There was a skid mark where the duck had landed and we followed the track as he walked in a circle and flew off again.

Madeleine wasn’t as impressed as I thought she should be, being a little preoccupied with wanting to make a snowman. The snow was perfect for this, but when I say she wanted to build a snowman, what I really mean is that she wanted me to make one. Tilda was getting cold so our snowman was pretty short, about the height of a litre of pop, and without a carrot for a nose. In Madeleine’s book this was not a real snowman.

But our chance to put this wrong right has melted with the snow. Despite the depth over the last couple of days it has disappeared with amazing speed. Everything looks very different. What I thought were fields are actually lakes (good job we didn’t walk very far), and everything is starting to get a little colour. We’ve had some brilliant sunny days, mist in the morning as the snow evaporates, and today rain. I’m glad we’ve missed most of the harsh winter and this weather is pretty typical of the UK, but people here must have cabin fever after three months of this. Very depressing.

I do think we’re going to be happy here though. I already love the space. The house is lovely and the people friendly. 

I feel a little overwhelmed by everything at the moment as I can’t make quick decisions based on brands I don’t recognise yet. The UK is small enough that you can shop around and compare and make a decision based on facts. It’s too big here, with too much choice, to do that. There is always something cheaper, quicker, nearer, more convenient, and its best just to accept that you’ve made the best decision you can based on the information you have. There are infinite possibilities, it’s fantastic when you have choice, but you need to put up with the slight nagging feeling that you might be missing out on something else because you haven’t been able to do infinite research.

Shopping around is almost an art form. I suppose that’s because in the UK shops are all within walking distance of each other in the middle of town. Here you drive to everything and unless you can be bothered getting the children in and out of the car you tend to buy in the first place you see. We made the mistake of spending a lot of money in one place to then be offered a 20% off voucher. I get the feeling the prices might be artificially high as there are so many vouchers and it is expected that you will purchase your goods using one. So very quickly I have learnt that your first shop should be a modest one, which enables you to get on a mailing list for vouchers to spend on subsequent trips. Then you have to remember that you have the damn things. And then to add to the problems that everything has different names. Who thought we had the same language. Diaper is a nappy, napkin is a serviette, silverware is cutlery, canker is a mouth ulcer! That one was difficult to fathom in the pharmacy.

The girls are adapting well though, better than us in some ways. Madeleine even told me I was changing Tilda’s diaper. I had to bite my tongue to stop myself correcting her; after all she is going to need the Americanisms when she goes to preschool. At the moment she is determined that everything has a colour. Every question she asks is followed by another question, usually, what colour is it? “What colour is your house?”, “what colour is your car?” are typical ones, but it did create an embarrassing conversation with one lady. It went something like this:

Madeleine: “What are you doing?”
Lady: “I’m waiting for my friend.”
Madeleine: “What colour is she?”
Lady: “Err, um, Korean.” 
Silence.

Little children can be trusted to cross social barriers. Where adults see these barriers as twelve foot brick walls with barbed wire on top, to children they are imperceptible. Namely when Madeleine asked me in a very loud voice in the bank: “Why does the lady have a big, big tummy?”

Granted, it was true, but perhaps the social graces required in polite society are not yet on our daughter’s register.

We landed at Chicago literally with a bump, after a fairly smooth flight. The girls were pretty well behaved, but it is called cabin fever for a reason. Hyperactive and bored babies and toddlers, though, seem to get back stage passes not available to the rest of the passengers. To Andy’s chagrin this meant a trip to see the captain, and even the chance to sit in his chair and press the buttons, after we had landed, I have to add quickly.

For some reason the children suffer with jetlag on the outbound trip and we tend to suffer on the way back. It took them about five days to get over the six-hour time difference, and of course the girls wake up at different times. Tilda started her day, and ours, at 5am every day for four days but has rewarded us with two days of sleeping through without a feed. Could this be the start of my first regular full night’s sleep since she was born?

We spent the first three nights at the Renaissance hotel in Schaumburg, which was, given our previous experience of American hostelry (non-descript motel), surprisingly pleasant. Cool, interesting architecture, which strangely given the sub-zero temperatures relied on water to cascade along flying buttresses. Needless to say the water has been switched off so the building entrance resembled not much more than a multi-storey car park ramp. Would have been much more interesting to have made use of the freeze and created an ice sculpture. The central atrium within the hotel was decorated in modern chic with interesting furniture and a fantastic fireplace with a huge canopy that you could walk all the way round.

So here we are at the start of a new adventure. When everything is new it’s always exciting. My eyes are open. And how you view your new adventure depends on the filter you put on your eyes. Are we stuck in a grey, flat, icy landscape, thousands of miles and several timezones from our family? Or are we about to discover a new way of life? Let’s see.