Living abroad by Emma Brockes

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https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/if-youve-made-a-life-abroad-coronavirus-gives-homesickness-a-new-edge/ar-BB1akhKb

The Guardian

If you've made a life abroad, coronavirus gives homesickness a new edge

Emma Brockes
10/23/20

If you've made a life abroad, coronavirus gives homesickness a new edge
The longest I have gone without seeing England is two years, a hiatus taken after the birth of my children, when I couldn’t face the flight. I must’ve missed the place: I remember bingeing old episodes of Inspector Morse as if they were home movies. But like everything from that period not directly involving babies, I can’t quite retrieve the memory. Besides which, my homesickness was mitigated by one major factor: people came to visit me.

No one is coming to visit this time. For many of us with family living further than a drive away – particularly those living abroad – the advent of the holiday season marks the 12-month anniversary since any of us went home. It is one thing to stay away because you can’t be bothered to travel, and another to have that option removed. Technically, it’s doable; a few friends in New York have cracked and flown to see their parents in Britain, factoring in the two-week quarantine. But for most of us, even if we can overcome the fear of exposure on the flight, the restrictions on arrival aren’t practical. What’s the point of trekking home if you can’t see anyone when you get there?

The strange thing is that, viewed from New York, Britain doesn’t look like much of a destination at the moment. While the third wave rages across much of the US, in New York, a city still in shock from its experiences of the spring, virus numbers are low and, for the time being, stable. The schools aren’t back full time and no one’s throwing dinner parties, but some semblance of normal life has returned.
Or rather it has if you ignore the fact that no one with sense will be going home for the holidays. For those with young children, the months have clicked by, and with them a growing feeling of absence. Zoom doesn’t fill the gap where a grandparent should be, and one wonders how long it will take before the relationship is damaged. A year is a long time in the life of a five-year-old who refers to her own recent toddlerhood as “the olden days”.
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For adults, the sense of loss is less tangible but perhaps more alarming. It took me a moment to identify
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dental patients in the city reporting serious jaw strain. Every day, he said, patients came in complaining of cracked teeth, jaw pain, excessive grinding and other expressions of stress, most of which came out in them while asleep, and far in excess of these complaints before the pandemic.
• Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist