LEAVING HOME

I sit here bereft. Mag­gie, my part­ner, is equally rud­der­less and raw. Our son, our sec­ond child, seven months old when we moved to Cat­alo­nia in Jan­u­ary 2001, flew to Am­s­ter­dam today to set­tle into his stu­dent ac­com­mo­da­tion be­fore be­gin­ning his uni­ver­sity de­gree.

We are proud, re­lieved, ex­hausted, lost; lost for how­ever long it takes to rec­on­cile to some man­age­able de­gree. Thoughts dart back and forth through 24 years of par­ent­ing.

We were two, then three, then four, then three, now two again. Well, no. Fam­ily for­ever, but it just feels like that right now in the still air and deeper quiet of a home be­calmed.

Cat­alo­nia, this place, our farm Mother’s Gar­den, has been about fam­ily. We came seek­ing time, to be. We are ful­filled, fun­da­men­tally, to the in­evitable point of al­ways hop­ing it would never end.

Part of our rhythm has been to switch off, to spurn new tech­nol­ogy to an im­por­tant de­gree. To wit­ness a silent, heads-down fam­ily or group of friends all on their de­vices is sad be­yond words. Yet, yet, yet…. In bal­ance, to be able to see and sense and share mo­ments with our daugh­ter while she has been in Lon­don, cour­tesy of an app, is the an­tithe­sis.

Fur­ther, this wa­ter­shed pulls us. It forces us to face an­other truth.

It is time to let go of our home, this kind­est of houses, this chal­leng­ing, fruit­ful, wild and won­der­ful land. The sum of it all – the farm with vines, olives nuts and fruits, the char­ac­ter­ful masia, the casa rural that has brought the world to us – need new, young life. We need to ac­cept we can­not achieve and sus­tain all that we could twenty years ago.

Not the right time to make such a de­ci­sion. I hear you. But we made the de­ci­sion some time ago, wait­ing for now, up­hold­ing the home­stead for the sake of our son and our­selves until this mo­ment.

The biggest ques­tion now is how, more than when or, in­deed, where or what next.

This place is like a tall ship, a chal­lenge to sail, but it has car­ried us to count­less price­less mo­ments and ful­fil­ments. And the peo­ple of The Pri­o­rat are so much a part of that jour­ney.

We shall see which way the wind blows, first fig­ur­ing how to sell.

For the mo­ment it helps to write it down, to tell you.

For our Cata­lan son em­bark­ing on his stud­ies in Am­s­ter­dam, the de­bate on Cat­alo­nia will come soon enough, no doubt. He is join­ing with stu­dents from across the con­ti­nent and be­yond to study global pol­i­tics. The Eu­ro­pean dilemma of po­lit­i­cal pris­on­ers is cer­tain to sur­face. It surely must. But first he will have a ques­tion for them. How much do they know – how much have they been told and un­der­stand – of what is hap­pen­ing here?

There has been time for us to dis­cuss this, to talk on so many lev­els of life, feel­ings and causes, be­cause he has taken a gap year be­tween in­sti­tute and uni­ver­sity. He has worked, pon­dered, weighed and grown and we rec­om­mend such a pause – a chance to take a breath and stand at the cross­roads and con­sider very care­fully the next step. Less haste more speed at a crit­i­cal time of choice in a young life.

……And we have had him home.