Nicola Jones shares about finding a new home in the Bay Area.
I was 32 years old when I flew from London to San Francisco in early 2000. I was coming here for a job, a great job, even though I’d never been to California and didn’t know anyone here. I remember looking out from the small window of the plane, out at the Transamerica Pyramid rising up from the city to its dominant point, at the thick fog blanketing the bay, at the stately lines of the iconic bridge, and feeling a fizzy excitement at the adventure ahead of me.
I thought of it like that, a short, at most medium-term, adventure. Two, perhaps three years. Not a life. But in the end, that’s what it turned into. A wonderful life. I met my American husband at a party that first Christmas, we married a couple of years later and then had our adored son. And yet still, I yearned for my home country.
And so, eventually, my son went off to college and I thought “now, now I can go home.” I was lucky enough to have a small flat in the eclectic part of west London that I loved. And I thought that I would gradually transition my life to being there full time. But a funny thing has happened over the past few years, I’ve realized that this, the Bay Area, is my real home.
Not my “birth” country of England. The friends I have made and chosen and cherished for so many years while living here, they have become my home. And my family. A few things have changed now when I look out of the window flying back into SFO; the TransAmerica pyramid no longer looms so lofty. But other things are the same as they were when I first arrived. And me, well, I no longer feel the fizzy excitement of embarking on an unknown adventure, instead I bask in the warm glow of coming back home. With a Perspective, I’m Nicola Jones.
Nicola Jones is a writer and former lawyer who lives happily in San Mateo.