Snapshot: My American childhood
I often wonder how much of an influence early childhood experiences have on our lives. I was born in America to British parents, who had moved there for work. Life was good. We had a nice house and garden and a car. In this photograph, I am dressed up in my two-year-old’s finery, cuddling our cat Tiptail.
However, while my dad thrived on the challenges of life in a new country, my mum struggled to fit in. After five years, they made the difficult decision to move back to Britain and its shaky job market, to be nearer to family.
I have no memory of those brief years and only a handful of photographs to go with my parents’ accounts of what it was like. I was brought up surrounded by tales of other countries, though, and must have inherited my dad’s wanderlust. My aunt married a Canadian and moved to the west coast of Canada before I was born, and my grandma had married an Indian man and lived with his family for a few years before ill health brought them back to the UK. As soon as I was old enough, I took my first steps abroad, initially to Germany, then to America, then finally to Japan, where I now live.
Living in another country is quite unlike my childhood imaginings, though. This picture seems to show an idyll: blue skies, large grassy lawn, pretty clothes, family pet. The reality must have been very different and it is only now, as I struggle to bring up my own children in an alien culture that I finally understand the challenges.
If my parents had stayed in the UK and I had been born there, would I now find myself settled in England rather than Japan?
I find it comforting though, to think that wherever my kids settle, they will still have to cook, clean, shop and work; the daily grind smoothing away the differences. I look at that photo of me in the garden in a different country with our cat, and look at myself now with my little garden and, yes, family cat, and realise that, in the end, life is the same wherever you find yourself.
Heather Takano
Playlist: When kickboxing turned to kissing
It Was Always You by Maroon 5
“Woke up sweating from a dream / With a different kind of feeling / All day long my heart was beating”
People are often impressed when I tell them that I met my boyfriend at a kickboxing class. I walked into that sports hall with no makeup and my hair pulled back. I did not expect to be immediately attracted to anyone, yet I was. I distinctly remember sitting opposite him on numerous occasions and thinking: “This is going to happen.”
Before anything serious materialised, he became my best friend. We walked together, laughed together, exercised together and ate out weekly together.
The need to be around each other has always been impossible to ignore. Text messages turned into lengthy emails and long conversations. Nine months later, I blurted out that I really liked him. Much to my dismay, he had no idea that this might be the case and gently let me down. The need for us to be together must have been infectious, though, because even after this little outburst, we continued our friendship as if nothing had happened.
I don’t know when it really changed for him, but one chilly October night, there was something in the air and he initiated our first kiss under a beautiful starry sky, and things progressed from there.
You might think that dating your best friend would be easy – after all, you have done a lot of the hard work. But it is easy to underestimate how much training you have to undo. We were used to a platonic relationship and all of a sudden it was dating and romance. Things changed.
His sister shared Maroon 5’s It Was Always You with us. That song came out at just the right time. It could have been written for us. Everytime I hear it, it puts a smile on my face.
It has been about two years since we met, 15 months since he turned me down, 13 months since he surprised me with that first kiss and I estimate about 80 restaurants for our Tuesday night catch-ups, now dates.
These days, instead of ending our night and driving home separately, we return to our home and I don’t think I will ever get bored with that.
Zoe Ashbridge
We love to eat: Mum’s cream cheese and jam muffins
Ingredients
Raspberry jam
Full-fat soft cream cheese
English muffins, toasted
I was incredibly lucky to spend the early part of my childhood living in the idyllic Wyre Forest. What may have seemed terminally uncool as a party-seeking teenager was quite the opposite as a young child. My sister, 18 months my junior, and I would roam free, building dens, bike-riding and swimming in streams.
Sundays were always a day spent outside, but there was something incredibly comforting about returning on a Sunday evening for high tea. I have vivid memories of coming through the back door on blustery autumn evenings, discarding coats and jumpers, and settling down at our big dining table.
The highlight of these teas were my mum’s cream cheese and jam muffins, which were somehow decadent yet homely; sweet yet savoury. I am certain there was an array of other delights on offer, but the muffins were the firm favourite. Once the last muffins had gone, we had the thrilling reward of Sunday evening family television, most memorably the original BBC Narnia adaptations.
Now, as a father myself, these memories inform my ideals for my son, Arlo. We, of course, live in a hugely different world, but the balance of outdoor play and indoor pursuits, sweet treats and savoury goodness continues to shape and fulfil our lives.
Ivan McDouall
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