In America it’s a casual drive. In Britain it’s basically a weekend commitment. We did Stonehenge and Bath as a day trip—meanwhile people in our life were complaining about a 1½-hour drive for a beach day.

I still haven’t called. I’ve been trying to figure out why.

It's the end of May here in the United Kingdom. The evenings are getting longer, that particular British gold light that stretches past 9pm like it's trying to convince you summer is real and permanent. And somewhere in the back of my head, I'm aware that back home, Memorial Day just passed. That somebody grilled something. That somebody drove somewhere. That people I used to know went about the whole ritual of it without me.

It's not the big holidays that catch you off guard when you live abroad. It's the specific ones. The ones with a smell to them.