This House Aches

I'm home alone, although not in the sense that of being a child attempting to fend off retarded burglars, you understand.

No, I'm home alone in the flat while my wife and daughter are 120 miles away starting a new life in Lincolnshire. I'm doubly home alone because I had booked this week to work on a major project report from home, away from the hustle and bustle of the office. Lucky old me, I chose a week when the gas board had chosen to dig up our entire street to replace the gas main. As you might imagine, it's very condusive to hard work.

Hang on a minute, did I just say that K___ and Olivia are starting a new life away from me? Yes, I did. Fortunately, it's just short term, whilst the flat gets a bit of work done on it, and then put on the market. This is another factor contributing to the piece and quiet around here; my mother is decorating. My mother is an excellent decorator and has done so professionallly. Every so often , she's interupting me to ask whether I have x or y tool anywhere.

It's a situation that is not made more easy by the fact that my mother has taken the news that we're moving away extremely badly. My mother is a strange person. She has a lot of good qualities, and I can think of many people that have seen her at her best and would be quick to praise her from the heavens. She also has some less good ones, including the fact that she appears not to understand that it doesn't matter how justified a person might be in feeling aggreived at something, it is quite difficult for others to form a view, or even rectify the situation if nothing is said and they are unlucky enough to be incapable of reading that person's mind.

Not least of her less good qualities is her neurotic insistance that if we go and live somewhere else, that's it, the family is torn apart for good. I imagine that many of those who read this will be thinking, '120 miles? That's nothing!' - particularly the Americans, who probably drive that distance to work each morning. My mother seems to feel that car journeys of more than two miles are a feat of near-impossible human endurance and that she cannot possibly be expected to suffer them to come and visit. This is not a new thing, she's been like it for years, but it is nevertheless a major pain in the ring.

Fortunately, this doesn't rule out us coming to see them - something we're entirely happy to do - which solves the problem, surely? Ah... well... now... No, apparently it doesn't, because having someone to stay (even if it is your own family attempting to ensure that you have a good relationship with each other) is inconcievably traumatic.

Oh, for fuck's sake... It gets even more ridiculous than this, but I won't go on.

My mother is gutted that we're going. We understand that; we knew she would be.

My mother is gutted that we're going but even she understands why we want to move somewhere where we can afford a really decent house, and where K___ has been lucky enough to find a job that will pay her more money, give her more responsibility and which has in turn been lucky enough to find her, because she's capable of improving it beyond their wildest possible dreams. She understands all this, yet she seems to be putting up obstacles and objections to her seeing us and Olivia.

Of course, as phenomenally ridiculous as this is, I do understand why she's being like this, that it's a defence mechanism, but it seems so obviously irrational that I can't work out why my mother, a highly intellegent person in many respects, seems incapable of seeing this and doing something about it. I have no desire to lose contact with my family, not even my currently infuriating mother, because even if many do not, I do know and appreciate her myriad good points.

Meanwhile, my dad, who is also gutted that we're moving but who is more than prepared to drive to Lincolnshire, and would be happy to have us in the house, is placed in an invidious position.

I go to bed each night in my suddenly empty house, knowing that we have made the right decision for our family but hating the situation I am now in, and knowing that time and distance will discover that it is perfectly possible to still be a family over the miles, albeit a differently-shaped one than my parents may have envisaged.

It will all work itself out with time, but for now, it isn't moving fast enough.