So we met Eric and Sarah Catherine today for lunch and hangtime. They've returned from a two-year stint in London with Eric's job at PWC.

They are dealing with reentry issues, not least of which is what seems for all the world like a version of the archetypal journey of the hero. If you've never been subjected to Joseph Campbell, it goes a l'il somethin' like this:

1. Home community discovers a great need or impending disaster.
2. Help and/or requisite knowledge to heal the land lies beyond the borders of the familiar home community.
3. Our hero decides to go get that help/knowledge/Holy Grail/Golden Fleece etc.
4. The hero crosses the threshold of initiation into mystery and the unknown.
5. The hero performs various feats of derring-do, gains the favor of the gods etc., and more or less labors in obscurity, finally gaining the sought prize knowledge/item/etc or addressing the threat to the home community. In the process of seeking that outcome, the hero has been changed, irrevocably.
6. The hero returns to the home community, where he is no longer as he left. Sometimes he is praised; other times he is seen as a threat; still other times he is simply misunderstood and ignored.

Basically, some trips out are one-way tickets. You may save the Shire, but not for yourself, as Frodo says.

I don't know how well that applies here, but I think E and SC are feeling a lot of displacement, particularly since they are returning to old environs and finding themselves utterly changed.