Ok, I believe in redemption

This is a man you'll forgive and forgive,
And help and protect, as long as you live . . .

He will not always say
What you would have him say,
But now and then he'll say
Something wonderful!

The thoughtless things he'll do
Will hurt and worry you
Then all at once he'll do
Something wonderful!

. . . A man who needs your love
Can be wonderful.

Rodgers and Hammerstein's The King and I, "Something Wonderful"

Just wanted to express my gratitude for a few signs of hope this week. It makes it easier to believe my Someone is searching for me when I see other men searching too.

Men!

But I can't spell it out for you,
No, it's never gonna be that simple.
No, I can't spell it out for you.

Colbie Caillat, "Realize"

As a single girl, every once in a while I get little glimpses into the single male psyche in regards to love and dating. Sometimes it's touching, surprising, and inspiring. Other times, like the instance prompting this article, it's confusing and extremely frustrating.

Guys: Ask. Girls. On. Dates.

"It's not that simple," whines the collective male spirit.

It's not that complicated either.

I'm frustrated for all the times I looked at a handsome, upstanding young man and thought that if he really knew me, if he could open his eyes and just SEE me, for crying out loud, he would realize that we'd be beautiful together. I'm frustrated for all the time spent carefully conversing with a guy, making him laugh, asking him questions, listening attentively, talking more about him than about me, only to be rewarded with nothing, nothing, nothing for my efforts. A date isn't a random act of kindness, guys; it's repayment, and I feel surrounded by debtors.

Thoughts During a Five-Day Babysit

It doesn't come easy to me,
this talking to kids who are three.
Or getting no thanks for putting them first.
I guiltily long to be free.

I put little Zoey to bed,
left stories and songs in her head.
The door is half open, the hall light is on.
I flop on the ground. I am dead.

A plaintive voice sounds in the hall.
It's Isaak's turn now, after all.
Resentment and guilt weigh me down, pull me up,
and into his bedroom I crawl.

As I read him The Cat in the Hat
in my heart I am terrified that
someday I'll read this to a son of my own
loathing the work I begat.

I tell myself it's not a sign
of how I'd feel if they were mine.
But this practice motherhood's lonely and dreary,
and being a good mom is still just a theory,
I can't even think straight, I'm dirty and weary;
This has to be something divine

because otherwise nobody in their right minds would ever do it.

Getting a Drink in Bath

I was looking through my pictures of Bath to finally get a slideshow set up for my travelblog (check it out!) and came across this picture. I had this article in mind when I took it. It's a statue that was set up by the Temperance Society of Bath during Victorian times, and its caption reads, "Water is Best."

I found this terribly funny because at the time I had been on my feet for hours and hours, was very thirsty, and knew very well that water is harder to come by than alcohol here. There are no public drinking fountains in Bath (or in most of England). Bath is famous for its water, but not the drinkable kind; the vile-tasting, minerally, hot springs kind. For 50p you can get a glass of it at the Pumphouse next to the old Roman Baths.

I didn't realize this when I set out on my first day of adventure in Bath, sans water bottle. I tried to hit all the guided tours and just thought there'd be drinking fountains in the public, touristy places. When I never saw one, I headed back to my hotel. There was a sink in my room, so I figured I'd just have to head back there to get some of the tap water a couple times a day. There were cups in the tray next to the sink, so I filled one up and took a sip - and promptly spat it back out. It was disgusting. Tap water was out.

I remembered that I'd seen some fancified bottled water on my refreshment tray. Two bottles of "mineral water," one "sparkling" and the other "still." I knew I'd tried sparkling mineral water and hated it, but what on earth was the still kind? Why would they posh up the bottle for plain old regular water? I shrugged and opened the bottle, took a swig, and hooray, it tasted like nothing!

They only replaced that bottle once a day, and it was only a couple glasses' worth, so the rest of my water I got from restaurants where I went to have lunch and dinner. That's where I discovered how much more waiters prefer that you order an alcoholic beverage than anything else. Order water in America and some waiters will give you the impression that you're a cheapskate, but in England they think you might be insane. Then they bring it to you in a fancy bottle and charge you pretty much the same as a glass of wine for it, or they'll bring it in a glass, still charge for it, and you have to tackle a waiter to ask for a refill.

In between meals, I went thirsty, which made it harder to walk around seeing the sights. If you ever go to Bath, stock up on water wherever you can find it. Carry water bottles in your purse/backpack! Then you won't be tempted like I was to climb up this statue and put your mouth to the girl's ewer.

Talking Like a Brit

We only lived in England for three years, with only the three oldest of us around, and Ryan was the only one who went to school and developed a distinct accent, but for as long as I can remember we kids have tended to burst out into all forms of British speech, usually when we were feeling particularly silly. I like to say I can pull off the accent because my linguistically formative years were spent on British soil, but we've all been pretty good at accents, born in Ipswich or otherwise. I think you've got to have a good ear to do it, to recognize a different sound and fit your mouth around it. We were always good at making goofy noises.

So the British accent has always been a part of my life. As a child in dress-up clothes, I'd adopt it as part of my regal bearing. I'd affect it as the voice of a crotchety old sea captain. And, for fun, one of my old roommates and I would pretend to be Londoners whenever we went grocery shopping. ("I used to live near Ipswich," I would say truthfully to the cashiers who asked.) And then there are so many different British accents--Cockney, Yorkshire, Northern, Scottish, Irish, etc--it was fun to try and sound them out. One of my fuzzy-round-the-edges dreams about coming to England was to sit in an English pub eating fish and chips, hearing all kinds of British accents sounding off around me, and to join in them and fit in perfectly. I was excited to see if I could fool a Brit into thinking I was British too.

My first reaction to being in a British-speaking country was euphoria. Every time I heard someone using the accent, I wanted to grab the nearest person, grinning like an idiot, and say, "Did you hear that? Can you believe people really talk like that?" I turned on the TV and laughed at commercials for stupid things narrated by perfect British voices. While Americans will save the British accent for high-end automobiles or fine wine or chocolates, here Lord Fustypants sells toilet paper! Lady Straightlace invites you to try this insurance comparison website! They actually say words like "jolly" and "chap"!

In my eagerness to ply the accent with natives, I came across a bit of a conundrum. The Camerons, old family friends, picked me up to stay with them for a few days, and they knew perfectly well that I was an American. Would it be impolite or come off as cockiness to speak to them in a way they didn't expect? I decided to stick with American for the Camerons. When I got settled in my flat, I decided to go with British. The couple who maintain the place (and the adjoining bed and breakfast), Mark and Kay, also know I'm American, but I decided to risk them thinking I'm screwy for the sake of perfecting the lingo. After all, I talk to them more than any other English people.

It's become a bit of an oh-what-a-tangled-web-we-weave. I can't revert fully to British because now I go to church, and the ward here is about half American (military, mostly), half English. Of course everyone asked me where I was from, and of course I didn't lie, so I go with American speech there too. In other day-to-day encounters with people in stores, shopkeepers, and local townsfolk, I usually stick to British, unless I feel like I might need more help (like at a train station in a four-leg trip to Bath). Then I go for American, with a little extra dose of wide, lost-looking eyes. Then if a conversation with a stranger lasts more than half a minute, sometimes I can't remember whether I started out in British or American, or I'll realize I need the American advantage, so I sort of switch in the middle. Fortunately, it's all English, one way or another. I wonder if anyone notices it as much as I do.

After I stopped feeling giddy every time I heard a real British accent, I began feeling embarrassed. I'd spent my whole life seeing the accent as a novelty when yes, duh, that's perfectly ordinary stuff to people here. I felt like it must be obvious to every Brit how much of a naive, gawking American I was. And then for some reason it became harder to distinguish the different accents, like being here blurred my sense for it, and I listened to myself trying to speak the local accent, sometimes coming against words I wasn't sure how to say, if people even used them here. Like "guy," for example; such a basic, oft-used word in the States, but it sounds horrible in British and I haven't found a good replacement for it yet. Was I ever really as good at this accent as I thought? I wondered what Mark and Kay thought of my attempts to talk British with them.

Through it there were signs of hope. A few weeks ago I went to a YSA gathering for the rebroadcast of a CES fireside with Elder Holland. It was really nice to meet young singles my age, and I spent some time talking to a particularly interesting fellow named Jonathan. His accent was different from the others; a very laid-back British, drawled out slowly because otherwise the words would slur together. It was a perfect match for his dry sense of humor. Anyway, we talked about accents and he told me that he thought I'd been from Britain from the start of the activity, when I was introducing myself in my regular American accent. "And when you said you were from Albuquerque, I tried to think where Albuquerque was in the UK," he said. So I guess some of my English intonation is carrying over into my American. I talked to him in American and he wasn't quite convinced I was from there. ("Do you hear these rs?" I said, exaggerating them for him.) I pulled out my regular British accent for his inspection, and he laughed and said it was perfect Cambridge.

"I can do some other ones alright, like Scottish or Cockney," I said.

"Do Cockney!"

I took a minute to summon the vowels, then just said a few things, "Oy'm a good girl oy am. 'Ellaw, 'ow are you doing tiday?" It was hard, but for the first time I separated this accent out. It became Cockney, by itself, instead of the mash it used to make with other variations sometimes when I'd practice it in the States. He laughed with amazement, and I felt quite proud of myself.

Most of the time I'm ignored, English or American, but there have been a few times I've talked to people in both and found out I'd fooled them. On the tube through London, coming back from Bath, I talked to a sightly drunk Australian chap who squeezed in next to me in the full car. I started chatting in a British accent, but when he asked me where I was from, I told him I was an American and switched. "Hey, that's pretty good, I couldn't tell," he said.

When I was in Cambridge the other day, a handsome young man selling punting tour tickets came up to me and made a sale. He walked me down to the ticket office to pay for it, and we chatted a bit, me in my best Cambridge accent. "I'm actually an American, did you know that?" I said.

"Really? No, I couldn't tell. Where are you from in the States?"

I should have used my American accent on the actual boat, because the man punting it was really beautiful and maybe I'd have gotten more attention from him. But I still haven't discovered whether the American accent holds any of the fascination to Britons that the British one has to Americans, so maybe it wouldn't have made a difference. Are Britons fascinated with anything? They are so staid compared to Americans that it's hard for me to make them out sometimes.

Aside from the accent itself, there's the intonation, the vocabulary, and some different phrases and syntax used here. I think I'm picking it up some. I used the phrase "eat it," as in eating an expense, with Mark and Kay the other day and they were baffled, so I'm learning which idioms I use are American. Then sometimes I'm baffled. Why "Strictly Come Dancing" instead of "Dancing With the Stars," or "every little helps," with no "bit"? Overall, though, I am pretty much used to the accent. I still notice it more than probably the everyday Brit does, but I've passed for one so many times that it's not a big deal. Sometimes I don't want to bother with it and just speak American. Sitting on the plane to England, grinning every time a British voice came over the intercom, I never thought I'd feel that way!