If you spent a few decades putting down roots away from your birthplace, as I did, chances are good you planted your children in foreign soil. Well, foreign to you. Home to them. When they are young, you can bounce them between transatlantic grandparents and cousins without batting an eye. The family travels together and it’s fun. It’s when they are adults and you no longer dictate where they go it becomes infinitely more complicated. They are much harder to herd in the direction that suits you best. They mutter things like, ‘Need my own space’, ‘My spouse wants to live there’, ‘I have a life of my own, you know’, and other such nonsense. ‘Kids,’ I say with an eyeroll.

Anyway, now the kids have minds and travel documents of their own, you must decide which tree to build your empty nest in, your adopted home or your birth home. Your youthful decision to travel the world and settle elsewhere, taken when you were so young and with such disregard for future consequences, really comes back to kick you in the frequent flyer points. Can you return home? Can you live in a different country to your children? Should you even try? And what happens if you have children in multiple countries?

Well, this is what happens:

I haven’t seen my son and daughter-in-law for almost two years. They live in Seattle. That’s 4,704 miles from where I live on Exmoor, but who’s counting? (Apart from me, who feels every mile like a pebble under a sleeping bag.) But good news! They are visiting England next week. And they are bringing not only themselves, but the Edie Bauer throw blankets I adore but can’t purchase in England. See? Kids in America are good for some things.

Blankets aside, I say my children are ‘visiting’ but I’m not sure this is the case. They are returning to England after a couple of years in the US. Before that they were in England for several years. And before that they were both born and raised in the US. My son has dual US/UK citizenship. My US citizen daughter-in-law had the right to remain in the UK but gave that up to return to the US for graduate school studies. They may or may not return to England after graduation. So, are they ‘visiting’ or ‘returning home’? Are they tourists or former residents or expats or immigrants or … what?

My daughter lives in England now. She, like her brother, was also born and raised in the US, with dual UK/US citizenship. She decided to relocate to England at the same time Hubby and I returned, right at the beginning of the COVID pandemic. During the most difficult of global times, she’s made a life in London. That’s 282 pebbles under a sleeping bag from Exmoor. Luckily, when the trains actually run, it’s a relatively easy task to meet up. But can I relax in the knowledge she’s relatively close by? No.

I spend way too much time wondering how my daughter feels about her place in this world. Is England home for her? Forever? For now? Is America calling her back? Forever? For now? When my daughter returned to the US for a friend’s wedding last week, my pulse raced a little. Will she find she misses her old life/culture/roots enough to return to live in America?

When we are all together in England next week, I will LOVE having my children close by. I hope I don’t waste precious time probing how my son feels about each country, consciously or subconsciously inflicting my own needs on his? I hope I don’t pressure my daughter in some way to stay here if she really wants to go elsewhere?

This is the dilemma of the expat. We have feet – or empty nests – in two worlds and are constantly juggling emotions and logistics and distances and finances and coming up with more questions than answers. We struggle to justify decisions about who we leave behind and who we move closer to. At times the guilt of choices made to either increase the distance or decrease the distance between family members is excruciating. Having struggled with it for so long myself, I can’t help but wonder if I’ve inflicted more potential heartache on my dual citizenship children than I have increased their opportunities in this global landscape. They, too, have to to take sides – of the Atlantic – and that process will follow them through life. It’s hard.

I spent thirty-six years in America and will have been home on Exmoor for four years on June 1st. I wrote my first novel, Dunster’s Calling, during my last years in the US. It became a salve for my hiraeth – a Celtic word meaning an intense longing for home, combined with a sense of loss for a home that may not exist anymore. Dunster’s Calling follows Sam, a British expat living in America, through domestic upheaval that leaves her recalling her old life in England and questioning her place in the US.

As I wrote Sam’s story, I fought my own intense battle with hiraeth, simultaneously questioning whether it was fair to my American husband and US raised children to desperately want to come home to England. Was I doing them any favours by dividing the family, even though, as adults, my children had full control over their choices and had already left the nest?

Hiraeth is right about one thing: My English home of forty years ago doesn’t exist anymore. How could it? But I love the home I have found on Exmoor at this time in my life. If I were writing Sam’s character now, she would approach relocation decisions with far more confidence. But it could easily have worked out differently. I could have looked at my life in the US and wondered why I walked away. I am acutely aware that I have inflicted these same quandaries on my children. Where should they live? Where will suit them best, suit their own families best?

It’s not all bad though, is it. How lucky are my children to have the choice of two countries in which to move around freely? If the decision was mine, we all know what I would advocate for. Everyone on English soil. But should I? Both the US and the UK seem intent on inflicting political wounds on themselves that could impact my children’s futures. I have told them, I cannot advise them on where they will be better off, more likely to afford a home (either owned or rented), where they are more likely to be safest. I just don’t know.

In the end, it’s not about where my children will be financially better off, or closer to family, or safer. (The Ukrainian refuges I hosted for several months all wanted to go home and that was far from safe.) No, it’s all about heart. Where does their heart belong? Where wraps them in a sense of warmth and comfort? Only they can answer these questions. For me, my heart is on Exmoor. But my most important place is supporting any choice my children make.

I’ve had this magnet on my fridge in various homes for almost the entirety of my children’s lives. It’s chipped and cracked and glued and faded. It’s been on display and packed in boxes and retrieved from boxes and glued together. More than once. But it remains a poignant reminder to me that my children control their own destinies.

To our children we can give two things: one is roots, the other is wings. Let’s hope I gave them strong roots AND strong wings.

Dunster’s Calling is available from most online retailers. You can find inspiration for the book, reviews, and links to purchase on my website at www.traceygemmell.com