{"id":2582,"date":"2011-04-20T16:29:46","date_gmt":"2011-04-20T23:29:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.peakepro.com\/?p=2582"},"modified":"2011-04-20T16:29:46","modified_gmt":"2011-04-20T23:29:46","slug":"adieu-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.robertpeake.com\/archives\/2582-adieu-america.html","title":{"rendered":"Adieu, America"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

“You don’t have to dislike a place to leave it.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

–my wife<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"
American soldiers on D-Day<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Last weekend, we drove down to Seal Beach to say farewell to my wife’s aunt. Her parting gifts to me were a bottle of champagne, two sleeping pills for the flight, and a small pin with an American flag on it. She met her American husband in England not long before he shipped off for the D-Day landing on the beaches of Normandy.<\/p>\n

I imagine it is always poignant to leave one’s home country. I liken my evolving relationship to my homeland to how I imagine a mother might regard her teenage son. I admire his idealism and energy, robustness and strength, the sense of freedom and possibility. I also notice with chagrin his sense of entitlement and invulnerability. I likewise find it hard to believe reports that he has become a bit of a schoolyard bully, taking advantage of others at times, and behaving recklessly in the hubris of youth.<\/p>\n

I love my country, and will miss it. But I am glad for the opportunity to live in the Old World as well. More than politics, it is the people I will miss, and of course the vast open spaces, encompassing nearly every biome on Earth. I will be glad, though, for a more immediate sense of connection with the continuity of human history. London itself has been continuously inhabited for more than two millennia, emerging and reemerging, phoenix-like, from each collapse.<\/p>\n

And so I say, “so long” for now to the beautiful and complicated place where I grew to become a man. I am not leaving my homeland due to political or religious persecution, or even necessarily to seek greater economic opportunity in another land. I am going because it is time to go have this adventure. And wherever I go, I will be an American.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“You don’t have to dislike a place to leave it.” –my wife Last weekend, we drove down to Seal Beach to say farewell to my wife’s aunt. Her parting gifts to me were a bottle of champagne, two sleeping pills for the flight, and a small pin with an American flag on it. She met …<\/p>\n

Adieu, America<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2584,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,1268,13],"tags":[58,229,243,536,576,779],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robertpeake.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2582"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robertpeake.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robertpeake.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robertpeake.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robertpeake.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.robertpeake.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2582\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robertpeake.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robertpeake.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robertpeake.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robertpeake.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}