How far would you go to be with the ones you love?
Hauling our lives across an ocean twice a year is what we've settled on

I don’t have time to write a proper post this week because, well, this:
My husband Erik and I have made the, let’s say ‘eccentric’, decision to try and split our time between Nijmegen and London, our two-year-old in tow. During the Covid pandemic, we had one of those ‘what’s it all about’ moments and the answer was being with loved ones.
For Erik and I, this means two different things. Literally everyone who Erik has ever loved lives in Nijmegen or within a short train ride away. For me, having traveled a lot during my formative years and with my brother’s family in the US, I have important people in several continents. But I’ve realised that, if anywhere is really ‘home’ (which it isn’t), it’s London. That’s where my parents still are, living in the same terraced Victorian house in East London where my brother and I grew up.
Having our daughter Esmeralda (Essie for short) has finished the job that Covid started. For me, being close to my parents, having Essie connect with her London roots and experience some of the ethnic and social diversity that formed me as a person, has become non-negotiable. This means enduring multiple periods of intense stress, havoc and general mayhem each year, and trying to stay cheery and diplomatic while Erik has an aneurysm about how we are spunking our pension money on frivolous trips to one of the most expensive and, I quote, ‘the filthiest city in Europe’.
We have agreed to do everything in our power to split our lives in this way until Essie reaches school age. After that, the horizon ends. The topic of home schooling is a lightening rod between Erik and I, but so are both the options of permanently living in either London or Nijmegen. So we are kicking the can and praying that we find some answers along the way.
Anyway, there’s enough material in here for about 10 articles, as these are all things I’m spending much of my mental energy wrestling with. The personal meets the political in so many ways here too, including:
What are these things called ‘nation-states’ whose borders and bureaucracies restrict our movement and keep us away from the ones we love? (I’ve written before about the construct of the nation-state, here.)
Why is everything so damn expensive?
What is the school system actually for, who is it really serving, and is it right that we are all constrained to its schedule (in the Netherlands, home schooling is not even allowed except in rare exemptions, and in countries where it is legal, it can be unaffordable, stigmatised and prohibitively difficult to arrange).
What roles did our socioeconomic system, capitalism, play in the Covid pandemic in the first place?
But we are leaving in two days so, like I said, I don’t have time to explore any of these angles right now.
I’m hoping your comments will give me some leads to chew over in the moments when I’m not desperately trying to entertain Essie by pretending my fingers are people and giving them entire story arcs on the journey.
See you on the other side xx
Leave a comment! Did Covid make you reassess your life priorities? Have you tried living between multiple countries? Are you raising a child in a very different context from the one you were raised in? Thoughts on home schooling (please be gentle)?
Loving your posts Laura and getting a peek into your life since we last saw each other eons ago. I’m now out of the ‘filthiest’ city and in super-clean Berkshire - but have retained my love of filth. 😘
Oh no she's still on Dutch time haha! Hopefully it settles soon! Have fun settling in :-)