The to-and-fro of Love

A reader asked how to handle the separation of moving away from “children”? It’s a fantastic question because it’s a heart-issue for so many people who move here. For me, six years later, I know that I never resolve this one completely.

Camping on Brier Island with Emily and Larry and me.

When you love someone – a partner, offspring, relatives, friends, you want to be near them, right? Everyone has to work out that problem of separation themselves and I have yet to find an easy way.

You have to settle for Skype, phone calling, emailing, chatting and as many back-and-forth visits as you can afford. We’ve been super lucky that our kids are good communicators so we are in touch often.  They have been here enough that they know the terms of reference when we talk about village life and people. We have a genuine interest in their life paths so we are always available to listen. Sometimes we Skype and we all drink tea and show each other what we are working on. I can’t wait until someone invents a transporter machine so we can have cups of tea together.

Skyping from Vancouver.

Skyping from Toronto

But how did we get to the point where we could move away? For starters, we viewed it as moving to. Moving to a place where our spirits and souls could thrive. We had devoted 30 years to parenting 2 beautiful souls and the time was overdue for me and Larry to find a community of creative types in a beautiful rural setting. We tried finding “Bear River” in Ontario, but it didn’t appear for us.

Skyping with Jesse

Our kids both love the vibrancy of living in cities.  They indulge in their creativity when they visit us here and view Bear River as a lovely, but temporary retreat so it’s unlikely they would ever move here. And for us the need to be here in a rural setting is very strong.

Skyping from Germany.

We miss each other, we love each other, but we are all where we want and need to be right now. And all of us are pretty happy with our choices.

Jesse cuts metal and creates some jewellery.

Parting gift.

We  love our thirty-something year old kids, and we love spending time with them. Distance and missing them can hurt. That’s a difficult part of parental love.  But it’s also important for us to let them separate and to establish their own lives and identity.

Christmas view where Jesse and I sat in the snow and talked about life.

I wish I had a better answer, but I don’t. Certainly your end destination must meet some profound unfulfilled needs to fill the gap of distance from family.

The To and Fro of Love  can be bitter and can be sweet.

Poem and Painting about Emily leaving by street artists Skafte and Shishkov.