"Your children are where?"

What? It's only been a month. I think I was planning to talk about what my family thinks of me staying here, so, here we go.

Sending your kid to school in Europe makes you look really good, especially if it's grad school. When I was still in school, people would ask my parents what their kids were doing, and they would say "Oh, one's in school in California and the other's in school in England," and people would find that interesting and tell them how lucky they were to have ambitious, hard-working kids.

It seems, however, that once you finish school in Europe, you're supposed to say "Well, thank goodness I can go back to the States now; I certainly miss fountain sodas and Wal-Mart and my extended family," and go home without any argument. Apparently, you aren't supposed to say "No! I'm not going back! I like it better here! You can't make me leave!" and begin applying for residence permits. Now, it seems, people ask my parents what I'm doing, and they say "She's decided to stay in England and look for jobs," and people totally look at them funny.

It gets worse for them when you add in David, who's staying in California for another year to do a Master's. Now they have to say, "Well, our son is in school in California and our daughter lives in England," and people start eyeballing them, as though they had said "We kept our children chained in our basement for 18 years, and one day we accidentally left the door open, and they fled in opposite directions and we haven't been able to recapture them." I'm no longer increasing their social status, I'm making people think they're weird. I have to admit, David and I find all this hilarious, which is probably not nice of us.

The other thing is, my mother suddenly has empty-nest syndrome. It's just peculiar. When I moved back home for a year so I could work on scamming an archaeology program into admitting me, she was very displeased. Then, when I got accepted, she did most of my immigration paperwork so she could be sure I was actually leaving. I'm not saying there was actually a foot on my ass at that point, but she had at least metaphorically tossed my suitcases onto the sidewalk. And I clearly remember that when David and I were both at USC she was really happy about us having finally moved the hell out. And then I get home two months ago and she's started scrapbooking, and keeps trying to talk me into considering moving back to the States, without saying anything directly (for example, I'll ask if they can bring me Almond Joys the next time they visit, and she'll say "so you miss those! But not enough to move back?"). I don't know what happened. A few weeks ago she actually said, "Maybe I should have had a third child! Maybe that one would have stayed with me!" as though she wouldn't have run out of patience and shipped the hypothetical third child off to college in Australia by now.

So, to summarize - I've stopped making my parents look good, and now they just look weird, and also, they miss me. To their credit, they've been amazing about the whole thing. I certainly gave them plenty of warning, but I don't think they believed I really meant to do this until I started that struggle with my latest visa application that lasted for several weeks. They miss me, but they still visit all the UK job sites and send me job leads, and fund my Museum Association membership, and edit my CV for me so I can find a job and stay here and continue to cause them to get looked at funny. They rule.