Nearness, Distance and Knowing

My ex-sister-in-law came to Bath last week to look at flats she’d asked me to line up for her. It’s like my dream brief, pretending I’m Sarah Beeny or Kirsty Allsopp or something (only a bit nicer).

It really does seem about time I should just start calling her a friend though — labels can feel oddly formal for people you’ve known across decades and different versions of life. We tore around the city for a few days looking at everything imaginable, from up by the Circus to Bathwick and then onto Oldfield Park, before finally settling on Newbridge and then, to her credit — and somewhat to my surprise — she was decisive. An offer has gone in on the last one we viewed and it looks very much as though she’ll soon be living here, after over 20 years in London, overlooking a part of the city not far from where her nephews live. There’s something rather lovely about that — the quiet gravity of people slowly orbiting closer.

I’d be lying if I said it didn’t make me pause for a moment, though. I’ve mostly known her in holiday contexts, those softened pockets of time where everything is slightly brighter and easier. Real life is different, as it should be, and I suspect we’ll both find our natural rhythms once geography is no longer the main event. Still, any shift in the map of your life, even a happy one, asks you to notice where your own edges are.

On our first day of tramping about we retired to said nephews’ house, where we spent the afternoon embossing the remaining books from my dad’s library before one of his closest friends comes to collect them. It’s careful work, repetitive and quiet, and it has a way of slowing your thoughts whether you intend it to or not. There’s something deeply steadying about tending to a person’s books — especially when that person is no longer here to read them. It doesn’t feel like giving things away so much as helping them continue their journey.

The next day I headed out to the mountains of southern Spain, partly to see someone from an old part of my life and partly, if I’m honest, to see what I felt when I arrived. Sometimes you don’t know what you’re carrying until you change altitude. The mountains were just beginning to show almond blossom after a brutal winter for this part of the world and, while it was still quite cold, within a few days the slopes became pale with it against blue skies, the air clear enough to make you breathe properly again. It should have felt entirely peaceful, and in moments it did. But it also brought into focus a few things I’d perhaps been skirting round.

There are relationships in life that belong more naturally to one chapter than another. That doesn’t make them bad or false or wasted; it just means time has moved, as it always does. And I realised, as I contemplate a dinner ahead on my final evening, that I don’t actually know whether this will be the last time I see this particular person or not — but strangely, it doesn't feel dramatic. Just honest. Some connections loosen quietly rather than snapping, and sometimes the kindest thing to do is let them.

This morning I walked up into the high Alpujarras, where we scattered some of Dad’s ashes last year. He had always considered this part of the world his spiritual home, and the place we settled on overlooked a house he had restored by hand many years ago. I hadn’t expected to find anything there after all the winter weather, but I did — pale fragments against the earth, unmistakably him. I sat down next to him in the wind and the tiniest amount of sleet and talked to him for a while, as if he were just out of sight rather than gone. I’ll admit there was a bit of ugly crying at times, but then I told him about the mulberry tree that’s coming, about the orchard, and about the community who’ll help plant it. I told him how much I loved him and how much I hoped he was at peace. When I stood up again, it was the calmest I had felt in days.

So with my final night ahead, the storm that will rage on into tomorrow is at present in a lull. There is a lovely pot of marigold, lavender and rose petal tea beside me. The house where I’m staying is owned by a woman after my own heart, and after a slight miscalculation on the dosage of her nettle tea earlier in the week — which resulted in a bit of a histamine reaction — I feel I now have the balance just right, along with a little space to think. Tomorrow I’ll head back to my family, arriving for Valentine’s Day, to a home I suspect will be suspiciously tidy and a very good man who will almost certainly be waiting for me and plotting something delicious for later. There are worse ways to return.

It seems a lot of things are quietly finding their place at the moment — people, plans, memories, even feelings I hadn’t quite named yet. Not all of it is neat, and not all of it is comfortable, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t right.

Sometimes nearness is a gift.
Sometimes distance is.
Learning which is which might be the real work.

But in the meantime, that dear man had better have bought some lovely wine to go with that dinner. There’s only so much introspection I can handle after a dry week. I am a landlady after all. 😄