A Taste of Home

Don e-mailed me Friday with his cellphone number. It seems another guy who works for the Company (who we got to know while we were in England) has a company-paid cellphone, but he's been sent to the states to corporate headquarters, leaving his phone behind, which was passed along to Don. His e-mail said that he believed he could receive or place calls internationally to or from this phone very cheaply. There was an unspoken encouragement to call him on it.

Saturday morning I answered the phone to hear Don on the other end. There were traffic noises in the background, so I asked where he was at.

"LIVERPOOL!" he responded smugly. He had gotten the weekend off and had taken the opportunity to head to the coast. He added that he was trying to find all the places the children and I had visited so he could see the same spots. He had visited Albert Dock, been to the Maritime Museum, seen some of the same boats in the harbor, and was sitting on a park bench. He said he looked for the statue of Queen Victoria at the sight of the old Palace but hadn't been able to find it yet.

He was very pleased. We spent three months in England and all Don got to see of it was the route from our house to the office, London (over the one week they gave him off after Christmas), and an evening in Chester. He worked 7 days a week, roughly 18 hours/day for 3 months. While the children and I toured England, Don worked. It was an act of sacrificial love. He was willing to put in those kinds of hours so the children and I could experience England.

Now, he's there for 2 weeks, and is finally getting to see a little of the country. He also told me that a co-worker that was there (living in an apartment in the same village as our house) when we were and that picks him up for work every morning and returns him at night had agreed to pick him up and take him to church in Culcheth today. Don called my dear friend, Anne, who asked him to come to lunch with her family at her home after church. So he got to see all our friends at New Church, then spent the afternoon with Anne, Andrew and Christine at their home.

He needed to do some shopping - to start knocking away at the long list I gave him of things to bring home - so he and Anne walked to Sainsbury's (the store in Culcheth where we did all our grocery shopping), picked up a few items, then parted company with Anne. From there, he walked to our old neighborhood and knocked on the door of my friend and neighbor, Kim, who happened to be home. He got to visit with Kim, Kevin, and Daelyn's playmate, Sam, for a while, then he and Kim took a quick run to the Co-Op (so he could scratch more items off my list) and Kim took him back to his hotel.

I asked him if it felt familiar.

"It was like coming home after work, Patti," he said. My heart leapt. I miss England and my friends so desperately. Hearing the names of our old stomps and thinking about Don walking those same old roads again made me choke a little. Often, on the way home from work, and very often on Sunday night, Don would run up to the Co-Op for me to pick up milk. There he was, on the same road, the same path, heading home.

Our old house is up for sale. I guess the owner hasn't been able to rent it out, so he's decided to sell it. While Don was in the cul-de-sac, one of the children that used to play with mine saw Don.

"Did you speak to Louis?" I asked.

"Yep. And I think he knew who I was," Don said.

"Why? What did he say?"

"He asked if Daelyn could come out to play!"

Ah, England. Not much has changed, apparently.

This evening, I tried to call Don on his cellphone. My calling card, which had over an hour left of calling time when I called his hotel on Thursday, jumped down to only 7 minutes of calling time. So much for cheap incoming international calls. I think I'll stick to the landline.