I Moved Back to Texas and Forgot How to Live Here

When I started moving back to the US after living abroad for many years, I thought I knew what I was coming back to. I was American, after all. This wasn’t exactly a move to an unfamiliar country.

Then I packed 45 boxes of dishes.

Yes. Forty-five.

At the time, this seemed entirely reasonable.

We had lived in Dubai for many years, and we loved having people over. When we entertained, we used our good china, ceramic dishes and serving pieces. The nice things weren’t saved for some mysterious future occasion. Having friends over was the occasion.

So when we packed up our life, I looked at all those dishes and thought, obviously, these are coming with us. We entertain. We’ll need them.

It didn’t take long after arriving in Texas to discover that entertaining here had become a lot more casual.

Disposable plates. Disposable cups. Disposable serving pieces. Things that could simply disappear into the trash at the end of the evening while I stood there surrounded by enough china to cater a small wedding.

I’ve been distributing dishes among friends and family ever since.

There are still plenty left.

But we’ve moved a few times since coming back, and I’m pleased to report that every move has been lighter.

Apparently, You Can Run an Errand Without Getting Dressed Up

This took some adjusting.

In Dubai, running a simple errand still meant getting properly dressed and putting on makeup. I could be going somewhere without even intending to get out of the car, and I’d still get ready.

It was just what I was used to.

Then I came back to Texas and slowly realized that the grocery store did not require an outfit.

Nobody cared.

I could run out because we were out of milk without first considering my hair, my makeup and whether I looked presentable enough to possibly be seen by someone I knew.

There is something wonderfully liberating about that.

Although it did take me a while to believe it.

Then There Was the Gas Pump

There are certain skills you don’t realize you’ve lost until you’re standing in front of a machine everyone else seems to understand.

I had to relearn how to pump my own gas.

There is no graceful way to stand at a gas station figuring out something the person at the next pump is doing without even looking.

Insert card. Choose this. Press that. Which grade? Remove nozzle.

Right.

Of course.

I knew that.

I just hadn’t personally needed to know it for a very long time.

I Missed the Honking

Drive-through had a slightly different meaning at some of the local cafés we went to in Dubai.

You drove up.

You stayed in your car.

And you honked your horn.

Someone from the café would come outside, take your order and bring it back to the car.

It sounds terribly spoiled when I write it down now, but at the time it was simply normal life.

The same went for groceries. Someone would help take them out and put them in the car for you. These were little conveniences I barely thought about while I had them.

You notice them rather quickly when you don’t.

I learned to load my own groceries, pump my own gas and generally accept that sitting in my car and honking was probably not going to produce a cappuccino.

My Daughter Was Learning a New Normal Too

I wasn’t the only one adjusting.

My daughter was in high school, so she was trying to figure out her new world at an age when fitting in already feels enormously important.

Where we’d lived, the kids wore uniforms to school, which made everyday dressing wonderfully simple. Outside school was another story.

Parties and outings could feel like a fashion show. Designer clothes weren’t unusual, and sometimes the teenagers were wearing things borrowed straight from their mothers’ closets.

Which meant that I somehow had to keep up with other mothers so my daughter could occasionally keep up with their daughters.

My wardrobe had become a lending library.

An expensive lending library.

Coming to the U.S. meant she had her own set of things to relearn—not just clothes, but how teenagers dressed, socialized and went about everyday school life here.

We were both figuring it out at the same time, just from very different angles.

Moving Back to the US After Living Abroad Meant Relearning Home

One of the strangest things about coming back was realizing how many habits I’d picked up without noticing.

For years, I had been a working mom. My children would get home before I did, so we had someone helping manage our home and doing the cooking. It was simply how our household worked.

Coming back meant I had to learn some of that all over again.

Cooking regularly. Planning meals. Managing the house myself.

And here’s the part I didn’t expect:

I loved it.

I genuinely enjoyed cooking again.

Maybe it was because I was doing it at a different stage of life. It wasn’t something I had to squeeze into the end of an already long workday. I had the time to think about what I wanted to make, spend time in the kitchen and enjoy putting a meal together.

Of all the things I had to relearn, that one turned out to be a gift.

And Then Everything Got Quiet

Dubai always seemed to be awake.

The streets were full of cars. People were coming and going. There was movement outside at almost any hour, and late at night the city could still feel very much alive.

Then I came to Texas.

At a certain hour, everything seemed to go quiet.

I remember noticing it because it felt so different. The roads emptied. The neighborhood settled down. There wasn’t that constant sense that something was still happening somewhere.

At first, it felt strange.

Then, like so many other things, I got used to it.

Now I can appreciate the quiet too.

Coming Home Isn’t Quite the Same as Going Home

I think that’s the part of moving back that I hadn’t anticipated.

When you move somewhere completely new, you expect to feel out of place for a while. You expect to learn how things work.

But when you’re returning to your own country, you assume you’ll simply slip back into it.

I didn’t.

I’d been away too long. Life here had changed, but so had I. My daughter was becoming someone new in the middle of it too, and we were both doing that at the same time, in the same house, without a map for it.

Some of the habits I brought back with me slowly disappeared. I stopped feeling that I needed to get completely dressed up to run an errand. I learned my way around a gas pump again. I got used to quieter nights.

Some things I was very happy to rediscover. Cooking became something I loved rather than something that needed to get done.

And some things are apparently going to take a little longer.

There are, after all, still dishes in my cupboards looking for new homes.

Maybe by the next move.