Sunday football

Watched football yesterday. Typical Sunday afternoon really.
Except we watched it on my husband's lap-top set up on the kitchen table. 'Cause we watched American football. Like you do on Sundays. Like we used to on Sundays in the fall.
Except we're here now. And there is no American football. At least not the team our son wanted to watch.
So he got up and made it his mission of the day to figure out where he and his Dad could watch our old home team, the Washington Redskins, play. It took him hours to figure it out, but he found a place on the Internet they could pay to watch it.
Even though he'd be the first to admit the Redskins suck now.
But still, that's what he wanted to do.
He put on his Redskins jersey, like he always did on game days.
He forgot other stuff back in Washington where he was staying. But he remembered his Clinton Portis jersey.
It broke my heart watching him sit here in our kitchen in London with his Redskins jersey on, watching American TV on the Internet. It felt wrong.
They had fun though. The Redskins won, so they were happy, whooping it up, cheering.
I worried we were making too much noise for our downstairs neighbors.
We had dinner.
After the game was over, we just kept watching, all of us transfixed.
It felt so familiar, the sound of American television. The sound of fall in the States.
No country does fall like the U.S.
All of a sudden, my husband must've realized what we were all doing -- how comfortable we felt doing it, how familiar it was to all of us, him included.
He turned it off and switched on the BBC World Service instead.
I could be wrong, but it felt to me like we all wanted more America. Even him.
Not surprising. It was home for so long.
But now, it's not. Not even for my son anymore.
By a wonderful fluke, a good high school friend of his is in town tomorrow. He's in a band and they're touring England.
My son's going to meet him.
Thank God.
Tomorrow, I won't have a broken heart.