I do have to say that, aside from being so thrilled to be driving (and competent again) in the USA, I felt really out of place having gone back there after only a year and a half away. Things that I guess I had gotten numb to from living with them every day (kind of like boiling a frog, isn't it?) just were really jarring to me on our visit, and I found the people to be kind of loud and in-my-face.
I also picked up a weird vibe, people kind of dashing forward maniacally. It's kind of hard to explain. It very much reminded me of right before the crash in 2008 - people were seeing with a very narrow field of vision, socially/economically/politically. I had lunch with people who were talking about how others at the table should put their money in this "wealth management company" that invests in real estate... (uh oh).
I have always felt comfortable here. The Daughter reminds me that we will never "fit in" and "be Scottish" but that's ok with me. I kind of float along wherever I end up, and I like it here. People have been very nice, when I've had my limited interactions. (I'm pretty much non-social, but I do get out.) I wonder if we'll still be here in a few years, though. So much still up in the air. Still, I'm enjoying it while I've got it!
We were talking the other night, how we kinda wish there was somewhere to go back to. Sometimes dealing with all this "new" is just draining, and the Daughter has had it was all the "salt of the earth" types she has to deal with at work. (I hate to break it to her, but people are pretty much the same everywhere. She's just been sheltered in academia for decades and not had to deal with the General Public.) She has even convinced me that the Cascadia Subduction Zone can be accommodated. Unfortunately, the healthcare issue cannot, and the current political climate in the USA cannot. So there is nowhere there that we can go, even if we wanted to leave here (which I don't). In our case, the scales still say that we're better off here.
I'm not quite sure what it would be like to "feel like I belong" to a place, really. I've moved a lot in my lifetime, so, aside from that 20 year stint in Cali, I've never really put down roots. Didn't actually there, either. It was just where my work was and so that's where we lived. Then again, in the States it's gotten all pretty homogenous, so one place seems very much like another. I think that's why I like it so much here. It's not the same.