Leaving (part 1) : mother.

Today I'm heading back to London from the sleepiest, most Dibley-esque, village in Devon. I didn't grow up here - my parents moved to Dibley about 2 years ago - but its peace and quirks have sucked me in and I've quietly accepted it as a replacement to my beloved Somerton, albeit lacking a unicorn.

So today I leave the quiet and return to the everbusy, but it's not so much that I'm thinking of as saying goodbye to my mum. Of course, saying goodbye for a couple of weeks isn't a big deal - we talk more often than is normal (I've been told by my younger, more independent, sister) and it never takes long for London to push me back towards the quiet.

But in a couple of months (visa permitting - it's becoming my version of Insha'Allah), it's going to be a longer goodbye, where conversations are scheduled around a rather uncooperative and immobile Time Difference, and where it costs extreme amounts of time, money and carbon-guilt-points to see eachother (not to mention the American Work Ethic, which often only gives 2 weeks holiday a year - Jeremy's been told I'm taking unpaid leave) .

In many ways it feels like I'm swapping one heart-ache for another. My mum and I are unusually close and the thought of being away from her makes me want to cry into my lukewarm fairtrade coffee.


But Jeremy and I are going to be building our own family - no, no children yet - more a 'family' in terms of him, me and a bookcase. (He's giving me a bookcase for my birthday which is far more symbolic than he realises - at long last my beloved books will have a home.) And well, I can't really pass up on Love and happily-ever-after, for living nearby to my mother now can I? Love me as she does, I think she'd tell me to get a life within a week.