Homesickness, and the uniform face of facebook

I have been feeling a bit homesick, experiencing a nostalgia for an 'Englishness' or a place in England which I can't quite pinpoint. We've moved about so much that it isn't one location which I crave. Instead there is an accumulation of sights and sounds and smells that create some kind of essence which, to me, is England. Of course, in small doses, there is a pleasure to be taken in homesickness: it allows you to muse upon things that you wouldn't ordinarily notice and to carefully construct the details of your rememberings which are, by their very nature, more perfect than any reality.
Specifically, I miss:

• the sound of the dawn chorus. For a couple of years we lived on the edge of a RSPB bird reserve in the Lake District. In terms of birdsong, it was probably the equivalent to having an apartment next to a recording studio on Abbey Road.... We slept with the windows wide open and, each morning at this time of the year, we were treated to a symphony of song. It is possible that there were mornings when I complained about the volume, but now I miss it. Here we have cardinals which shout 'theodore' and jays which just shout, there are blackbirds who are too big and need singing lessons, and there isn't a song thrush to be seen. It's reaching a point when I might have to search out one of those prototype digital radio stations which only play birdsong. They always seemed pointless to me before, but now I think that I understand. 
• the smell of English rain. I almost feel that I ought to apologize for this one, having watched the forecasts of the English weather over the past year, but I really miss English rain - that soft damp drizzle which creates pearl drops over one's coat, which dampens one's cheeks, and which smells damp and earthy and full of the promise of spring. Boston has big, brash American rain which falls in an urgent way, as though it has an important job to do and then, when the job has been completed, stops. There is no in-between, no halfway house, no subtle differentiation between downpour and damp. I grew up in Lincolnshire where the rain pours, siles, drizzles and mizzles. In Cambridge, it just rains. 
• the look of spring. I miss the subtleness of the English spring: the steady progress from the whites of the snowdrops through the yellows of the daffodils and aconites and forsythia and the fields suddenly filled with dandelions. There are snowdrops under the snow in a few Cambridge gardens, and finally I understand that they might be called snowdrops not because they look like snow, but because they endure beneath the snowdrifts. There are tulips in the local florists that have been imported from Holland. The leaves of daffodils are visible in patches where the snow has melted. I know that when the New England snow melts there will be a week - maybe two - of spring and then the temperatures will ratchet up towards summer. In England, it seems to me, there is more time to look at the spring. Here in Cambridge, we just look forward to the summer. 

I miss climbing over the back of my garden fence and running across the Fells and seeing no-one, just a few sheep, the occasional hare, and a lone red deer; I miss the stretch of Tynemouth Longsands where the sea meets the sand in a new way each day; I miss the take-for-granted history of Lancaster and Edinburgh and London. There are many, many things that I don't miss about England, and many things that I would now miss if were to leave Cambridge. But for a few days now, I have been missing something essentially English. 

I debated whether to publish this blog, whether to be this honest about how I've been feeling. I have about 300 readers a month now for a blog which was initially intended as a means for keeping family and friends up-to-date. It's expanded from that to broader musings of what it means to be an English woman in New England. I love writing and many people have enjoyed reading what I've written: people I know and people I haven't yet met have contacted me to talk about things that I've seen, done, thought about and to share their experiences and thoughts. Other people - friends and family members - have defriended me from Facebook for expressing views that are different from their own. When you see people face-to-face, one can tailor one's presentation of self to fit with what another person wants to see - I wear a slightly different 'face' for different groups of friends and family members. When you exist virtually - through facebook, through blogs - it is not possible to tailor oneself to suit the views of everyone who might read what you say. My grandfather used to say that you could please all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you could never please all of the people all of the time. He'd say those words in a rich Lincolnshire dialect which you probably don't hear in Scunthorpe anymore, let alone in Massachusetts. And then he'd put down his newspaper and go out into his garden to feed his English-singing birds. 

It's possible that I've been feeling homesick for an England that doesn't exist anymore. Perhaps it's all the more pleasurable because of that.