Staying Connected
How technology has cut down distance...
We came into this knowing there would be distance.
The kind that comes with being away for a long time. Falling out of the rhythm of people’s lives, slowly becoming more out of the loop, watching things move on without you. That’s what a move like this used to mean. You left, and in a lot of ways, you were gone.
A close friend of mine spent time as a kid moving across Europe in the 1990s and his stories feel almost foreign now. Talking to people back home was a phone call and was expensive. Updates came in batches, not in real time, and there was a genuine sense of separation woven into the whole experience.
Fast forward 30 years of internet evolution, and it has made our experience very different.
We set up email addresses for the girls and they have loved getting emails from teachers, family and friends back home.
Group chats are still buzzing with the same weekend plans and random threads we would have been part of at home. Neighbours send whatsapp messages with pictures of the flowers blooming in front of our house. And somehow, despite being on the opposite side of the planet, I knew exactly how miserable this year was for Leafs fans.
We’ve watched Jays games and the Masters through a VPN, and there’s something unexpectedly comforting about hearing voices you’ve listened to for decades.. We’re here in Melbourne, but those sounds make it feel like things back home are still running on schedule.
You don’t fully appreciate how much the world has shrunk until you stop and think about what this same year would have looked and felt like in the 20th century.
All this closeness has been appreciated, and it also has had an interesting unanticipated benefit.
Pretty much every time we get on a call with someone back home we are asked broadly ‘how’s it going?’ It sounds like a simple question, but the honest answer covers a lot of ground, somewhere between exciting, hard, and occasionally not what we expected, sometimes all in the same week. Trying to actually answer it, rather than just saying it’s been amazing, has meant slowing down and figuring out what we actually think about this experience…. what’s stuck with us, what we’ll carry home, what this year has really been about underneath all the logistics and the adventures.
The girls have had their own version of this. When our families visited, they each made a point of getting one-on-one time with them, not just to connect but to genuinely ask how they were finding it all. The girls opened up in ways they sometimes don’t with Julie and me, sharing the harder parts alongside the highlights. There’s something about being asked sincerely by someone who cares about you and has known you for years that makes you stop and actually take stock.
Explaining this experience along the way at unexpected moments has made us pay closer attention to what’s actually been happening here. It’s pushed us to find the meaning in it while we’re still living it, rather than waiting until we’re home and trying to piece it together from memory. When we think back to why we came, that feels like exactly the kind of thing we were hoping for. These opportunities to reflect are helping us make the most of our experience.
Stay in touch :)