The Road to England — A New Beginning Across the Atlantic

After years of waiting, Jim’s orders for England arrive — and life turns upside down.
Between movers, memories, and one unexpected scorpion, the journey becomes more than relocation… it’s a rebirth.

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🎙 How Did We Get Here? — a podcast about the choices, cracks & crossroads that shape us.

How Did We Get Here? — real stories about the choices, cracks, and crossroads that shape us.

Transcript

Five years. That’s how long it took for one piece of paperwork to catch up with destiny.

Three days after we arrived in Louisiana, I walked into the orderly room and filled out a simple form — a request for England. Not a big moment. No ceremony, and the fact that my wife reminded me that life wouldn’t be worth living if I didn’t. Other than that, it was just another line on a clipboard.

Then life happened — the kind that fills the gaps while you’re waiting for the next chapter. Kids, friends, long hours, quiet evenings that turned into years.

I was working in one of the Air Force’s newest programs, an overseas mission, so we knew the orders would come eventually. We just didn’t know when. And that “when” showed up while I was in Arizona, training for three months. I was able to make it home for the holidays.

The one drawback from being away for so long was that our youngest, who was under a year old, was Daddy’s girl when I left… and she was no longer when I returned. That, in itself, was a hard pill to swallow.

You’d think the hardest part of leaving would be saying goodbye to people — which it was — but it wasn’t the hardest. The hardest part was finding homes for our dogs: Fred, Henry, and George.

The UK’s quarantine laws were strict, and adding to that the cost of transport and kennels, as much as we would’ve loved to take them, we just couldn’t.

One of my buddies from base took Henry and gave him to his parents. Years later, when we reconnected, I heard he’d lived a long and happy life. George went to another good family. And Fred, our little fighter who’d just survived parvo, and as I knew she would, my wife found him the perfect home.

That was the part that hurt the most. Dogs don’t understand orders; they just know you’re gone. They’re family. And losing them broke our hearts.

When the day finally arrived, the moving trucks looked like something out of a movie — huge, loud, and efficient. The crew packed every dish, every book, every memory into boxes while we stood there watching our life disappear into cardboard. And when they drove off, the house was quiet. Just echoes and the sound of the girls laughing down the hall.

Louisiana is known for its creepy crawlies, and we’d seen our share — the snakes, the bird-eating spiders, the blue-jumping spiders, and the tank ants. While I was doing the final inspection to make sure nothing was left behind, I noticed a small black thing in the middle of the floor in one of the kids’ rooms. Upon closer look, it was a black scorpion. And I knew right then and there — it was time to go.

We all piled into our beat-up Mercury Lynx, the same car that had seen it all, left it parked at the airport, turned the key off, shut the door, and walked away — like closing a chapter mid-sentence.

The flight was long and exhausting, but the girls were troopers, and it wasn’t their first time in the air. Somewhere over the Atlantic, as the cabin lights dimmed, it hit me: we were leaving everything familiar and heading straight into everything unknown.

But for us, England wasn’t really the unknown. It was home — my wife’s birthplace, her family waiting, and for me, it had always felt like a second home. Sometimes new adventures are exciting, not scary. This was one of those times.

Stepping off that plane was like walking into a history book. Every street, every building, every accent carried a story older than anything I’d ever known.

We stayed first in a bed-and-breakfast — creaky floors, floral wallpaper, tea served in fine china — the kind of place that smelled like time itself. Then temporary housing, where we met Roxanne, the smartest little Scottish terrier you could imagine. She became part of the family before we even realized it.

When permanent housing opened up, we moved into a cozy two-bedroom row house in Cambridgeshire, not far from Cambridge itself. The mornings smelled of chimney smoke and wet earth, and neighbors waved like we’d been there forever. The girls settled quickly, and once I learned how to drive on the wrong side of the road, I did too.

Every weekend became an adventure. A4 to the M4, straight into London. Buckingham Palace. The Tower of London. Big Ben. The Crown Jewels. Churchill’s War Rooms. I was like a kid in a candy store of history.

Within six months, I’d seen just about everything there was to see. Just about.

Before long, I turned into a weekend tour guide. Whenever new folks arrived on base, I’d say, “Come on — I’ll show you London.” I walked them through those cobblestone streets like they were mine — because in a way, they were.

Looking back now, sometimes we think we’re filling out a form. But what we’re really doing is setting the wheels in motion for the rest of our life. That form I filled out in Louisiana wasn’t just paperwork — it was the beginning of a road that would change who I was as a man, a husband, and a father.

This is How Did We Get Here — a podcast about the choices, cracks, and crossroads that shape us.
 I’m Jim Richmond.
 And I’m still here for a reason.
 Maybe you are too.