Untied State of Ambivalence
"The stranger who comes home does not make himself at home but makes home strange." --Marion Zimmer Bradley It's an old theme in literature: a young person leaves home to sojourn in other parts of the world or, if it's science fiction, on another planet, another star system, perhaps a different time or dimension. After a prolonged absence, the protagonist returns, transformed by the experience. Not only is he or she a different person, but through those differences, the home town or planet is also changed. I left America in 1988 to be a student pastor in Cheadle, Cheshire, a suburb of Manchester, England. I went with my wife, and while we were there, we had a child, Sarah, who will forever carry the distinction of an irregular birth certificate. (And no, she does not have dual citizenship; that possibility was shut down by the British a few years earlier to keep foreigners from having babies in Britain just so they could come back and take advantage of Nation...