The summer we decided to separate
Ironically there was to be a summer many years in the future that we actually did separate but at this point in the story this was a temporary episode
When I wrote this blog post several years ago it was a love letter to my husband and how spending time apart while he worked on renovating our holiday home was tough. It also chronicles how it was quite helpful as it made us realise how much we missed each other over our summer apart. As the years went on though those separate summers changed in tone as I got more than used to him being away - I started to actively look forward to it. And slowly, very slowly we ultimately grew apart with a bit more permanence. Was that to do with our french house - probably not, but it did give us an outlet for distance that other couples simply don’t have.
The story however does not end there as eventually I suppose I will get to in writing this newsletter. SPOILER We do eventually get divorced (almost) but as we’re visiting this with modern day hindsight I’m giving away the plot really. And readers, we eventually also get back together. Maybe I’ll move this onto paid for subscriptions in order to tell that bit of the story!
For today this blog post from 2013 was about why and how Peter and I spent our first summer apart as he worked on the french house trying to make it more habitable and spending quality father/son time with our eldest son (now aged 19 and at Uni).
Next newsletter I may get back to talking about renovations and paint colours.
February 17 2013
‘And ever has it been known that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation’ Khalil Gibran.
It was the summer of 2010. Before Kate and Wills got married. Before One Direction existed and when I thought I’d never find a guy as great as my husband. It was the summer we separated.
The school holidays yawned ahead of us like an eternity. Weeks of telling Arthur, who was now 6 nearly 7, to turn off electricals and go outside and kick a ball about. Then remembering that we live on a relatively busy London street and have a postage stamp sized garden, oh and its not Poplar in the 1950s. As Peter was to be sole carer of the children over the summer while I went clipping off to work each morning in inappropriate footwear, he began to hatch a plan.
What do you think about me taking Arthur to France for the whole summer and you staying here with Sebastian?” he mooted one morning over breakfast. Six whole weeks apart? The longest we would have been apart in over ten years. I wasn’t sure. I’d miss him. I’d miss Arthur. I’d be looking after Sebastian ON MY OWN (you may not have met him, but let me tell you he makes the kid in Home Alone look under-resourceful). I’d have no one to work the sky plus if it broke!
Most of all, isn’t it weird to think it’s OK to spend that long apart. Does it mean our relationship is somehow flawed if we are able to live comfortably with only Skype to communicate? We’d been married for 11 years at this point and while there were elements of resigned comfort in our relationship – we get quite excited when there is a BRAND NEW episode of Midsommer Murders – I like to think we are also more in love now than when we met drunkenly at a party fifteen years earlier. (He has no recollection of our meeting – in fact the only thing he claims to remember about said party is that a transgender porn star was there – he’s right but it was Los Angeles in the 90s, there was a transgender porn star at most parties.)
But it made sense. We had all that space in France, a wood, fields and about ten broken bikes leaning up against one another in a barn. In London, we had a Victorian terrace with an urban decked area complete with olive tree and seating area that we had done pre-kids.
And so it was agreed. Seb and I would stay home with Yvonne our amazing neighbour agreeing to look after him until I got home from work in the evenings. Peter and Arthur would spend one feral summer, wearing the same pants for days, existing on bread with Nutella and making plans for an enormous treehouse they would one day build in the forest.
Seb was really too young to care where Arthur and Daddy had gone, and besides I took him to Shoreditch House most weekends with Uncle Richard and he got sole attention, ice cream and swimming in a rooftop pool, what’s not to love? Our Shoreditch summer was so enjoyable that we forgot to miss our actual family. My new alternative family who drink cocktails at midday, spend hours shopping for fresh flowers and hang out in private members bars DID have a certain allure….and besides, my boys overseas were happy. Eating their body weight and gaining around 6lbs each, their skin the colour of stewed tea (could have been tan, could have been lack of hygiene) and their smiley faces over Skype telling me of trips to Bricot Depot and the time Arthur found a salt n vinegar crisp the size of a saucer!
But on the day we landed at Pau airport, reunited for a two week holiday, the sight of their (dirty) faces through passport control made me realise the best thing about being separated for the summer. The realisation that you can’t wait to be reunited.