Thursday 20 December 2012

DISTANCE
Distance is still the most difficult part of my relationship with my grandaughter and her parents. All visits are a major action, and cannot occur for too long (all adults get 'testy', our home is left with no one there and everything else in our lives is on hold) or too often. Thus maintaining relevancy to our grandchild is not easy. Skype conversations still occur every week, but when a child communicates with her grandparents as computer images set on the table or the floor in front of her, after a while they are just not really a part of her life, and how can she remember all the ways they played, walked, ate, laughed and talked together when there? She must surely lose faith in them a little, do they really love her if they leave for such long periods, and actually live so far away?
     After visits, there is a time of grief, when suddenly all the playing and hugs stop and the grandparents cannot be willed back, until they and her parents decide when they can come again, and she knows it will be another long long time before she will see them in person, again. For a small child, 3 or 4 months is a long, long time.
   
    What is actually strange about our time, is the seeming normality of people moving hundreds and thousands of miles form their home neighbourhoods, for work, to 'be free', to explore, to get away from their families or other difficult situations, to go to the right school or job, etc. This is the mantra of our time, and we have all benefitted greatly in some ways from it. We spend, then, so much time with people who know only our present selves, not the larger picture of who we are, how we came to be us today. But, we do not count the losses of this, or if we do, we then bury that as something we cannot afford to see very clearly in order to be a part of the distance-is-good world. The best violins ever made were made in a small town, in a casual workshop behind a home, where the maker did not ever travel very far. But those circumstances can lead to severe problems of isolation too, if the isolated community does not get to know themselves, learn how to work together. Today it is easier to leave, to start again, to believe a different job will be better, a different school will be smarter, a different set of friends or 'family' will be more understanding. Sometimes it works. Sometimes problems are carried forward, and the deeper knowing of one another has been temporarily lost and may not occur again for a long time. The truth is that only your parents and childhood extended family and friends know how you came to be who you are today. The question is, is that important? It may be less important than preventing a worsening of problems that were intractable.
     I guess this last paragraph is not about my grand daughter so much as how we came to be so far away, and why it is considered normal to be so. I know grandparents whose grand children are close by, and who actually almost sneer at me and others whose children are far away, as though they are special because their children who could have moved away did not; thus, the parents/grandparents are better people for this. I do feel badly, I am vulnerable to the messages. When I visit, I can only be the best Mum and Grandmum I can be, however imperfect we all are.
Janet

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