My folks

Carol-a Crayon, my friend and partner-in-design, said to me last week ‘you don’t talk about your parents very much…’

I thought about it, and she’s right I don’t talk about them much, but I do think about them. And when I do it’s tinged with sadness and guilt so I keep it in my head.

The simple fact is that I am breaking my Mum’s heart by living in Thailand – or by not living in the UK. I can’t bear to think too hard about them because I know how sad she is about me being so far away and how much she misses me.

(And if I’m honest, it’s not only my Mum.)

I don’t know how my Dad feels because he’s a man in his 70s, and he hasn’t been encouraged to talk about his feelings. I do know that he took his profession extremely seriously, and so did Mum and so they both understand that Husband’s job is the Thing We Have To Consider.

The opportunity to move overseas for a job – and therefore have some support – isn’t offered to everyone all the time. To live in a culture so different from your own it may as well be the moon, is a privilege. It’s not easy to do and I am proud to have adjusted.

Knowing that I’m enjoying this time in my life, but that it is something that makes some of my family and friends unhappy, is very hard to live with. It’s distressing to know that I am wilfully causing someone pain simply by living my life.

Every time we converse, embedded in the conversation is the never asked question: when are you coming home? Those unasked words reverberate around other words, enquiries, and conversations. I hear it in her tones, bouncing between the lines. Sometimes she might ask ‘Are you able to get home for Christmas/Easter/summer?’ She might ask again a couple of weeks later – in the hope that the answer has changed.

And no, she won’t come to us. She won’t fly.

So I’m going to post about my parents; one at a time.