Roots and Wings

Today is a big day. The base bids for the year are out so we will find out whether another move is on the cards. Will the pilot still fly from Gatwick, or will it be new house, new school, new friends? That is assuming he stays with this airline - if not it could be Abu Dhabi or Hong Kong.

I'm used to it now, we have moved so much. I am used to hitting the ground running armed with an A-Z and locating schools, doctors, dentists, supermarkets - all the things that map out the family's everyday existence. Life goes on wherever you are - for anyone who hasn't seen The Mom Song on YouTube, do take a look. Sound familiar?

We met the people who have moved into the cottage next door last night - interesting tales of working with Marco Pierre White over champagne and armagnac made a lovely change from the usual tea/bath/bed routine. Charming and childless, they looked on with mild horror as the two-year old ran laps around their garden singing 'Bum bum! Bum bum!' with the relish of Emily Lloyd in 'Wish You Were Here'. They both were born and have grown up in this and the neighbouring village. The furthest move it seems was Winchester briefly before returning to the Meon valley. This always blows my mind, meeting people who have stayed so close to home. The husband told amazing tales of being sent off into the fields with his brothers and a packed lunch and being told not to come home til six. That sounds like my kind of summer holiday. Now there is so much traffic in the village I wouldn't let mine cross the road.

Yet this is how my parents met - they grew up in the same village, where the Scottish and Welsh sides of the family came together during the war (a lot of Celtic seething goes on), and met playing tennis. Several aunts and uncles and my ninety-two year old grandmother still live there. When I hug her now, she barely comes up to my waist (I am freakishly tall for our family of petite dark women). She lives in an old castleated nunnery and sleeps with my late grandfather's shotgun under the bed, refusing all mention of bungalows and sheltered housing. She first saw him fly fishing in a stream near her family's woollen mills - it was love at first sight because he looked like Errol Flynn.

Perhaps it is because so many of us now meet through university or work instead of family that we are all so far apart. Our families now stretch from the west to east coast and there is no one close by to drop the children with for a few hours. We are a generation of nomads - were it not for email and Facebook I would have lost track of so many friends now in America, India, HK, Singapore. I think it makes life interesting, keeps it challenging and fresh. I long for somewhere to unpack the boxes, somewhere that is home but that could be anywhere. I think the children will need a sense of place and roots. For now at least it feels like change is in the air. Everyone we know seems to be travelling apart from me, not least the pilot (Mexico, Aruba, Liberia in the next couple of weeks alone). My mother-in-law gave me a card once - it said something like 'There are two things you must give your children - one is roots the other wings'. I think that is something good to aim for - roots and wings, as much for us as for them.