Gaia, a friend of my 9-year-old daughter Meg, thrusts a gorgeous bunch of beautifully wrapped flowers into my hands outside their school.

“This is for you,” she said.  “Because you’re going.”

And going we are–or at least, some of us.  Katie, Meg, and our two cats are going back to Boston.  My mother and I will be staying on in England over the summer so I can continue to blog and do research on Crich and my great-grandfather who was the writer and painter.

Where did Gaia get the flowers from? I wondered stupidly.  I don’t remember seeing anything nearly as nice at the Coop.

And then I remembered. Of course!  This is England.  Almost everyone here has a garden. When people want flowers, they go outside to their garden and pick a bouquet that’s prettier than anything you can get in the shops.

The fact that my kids are leaving tomorrow and that my mother and I will be leaving later in the summer is very hard for me, which is the reason I haven’t written about it sooner (denial being a not inconsiderable part of my make-up). I have so loved my time with them here.

Katie had her last day at her sixth-form college on Friday;  Meg’s last day at her school is today.  They are returning now because we need to reunite our entire family, and America is where we can be together without visa problems.  Over the summer Katie has to take two summer school courses in our town near Boston, one of which is the infamous course in American history about which I blogged at https://theyearoflivingenglishly.wordpress.com/2012/05/30/us-vs-uk-history-the-long-and-the-short/ .  She’ll need this course in order to apply to colleges.  Meg’s leaving with her because she misses her friends, although she said today that she feels torn between her American friends and her English friends like Gaia.

What a wonderful time we’ve had here–Katie and my mother starting from when they first arrived here, Meg and me since Meg got into a local state school that is remarkably similar to her school near Boston and which makes her happy.  With Meg in the right school, it’s been pretty blissful here although we’ve missed Kathy and John like crazy.

The girls (my two daughters) and boys (cats) will soon be gone, but I’m still here, and will keep blogging.  There are still so many things I want to write about!