Keeping Your People Close From Far Away
Picture a woman named Maribel, sixty, who moves abroad and leaves behind four close friends, a sister, and two grandchildren aged six and nine. On her second night in the new apartment, she sits on the bed with her phone and realizes she does not know how she will keep any of them.
She decides that a good intention will not be enough, so she gives each relationship a rhythm. Every Sunday at ten in the morning her time, she reads a chapter of a book to her grandchildren by video. On the first Friday of each month, she calls each of her four friends in turn. Once a month, she writes her sister a letter by hand, and her sister writes back.
It adds up to 52 Sunday calls, 48 friend calls and 12 letters in a year. The calls cost nothing. Twice a year, she flies home, once at the grandchildren’s school break and once in the autumn. Together with gifts, that is about $2,400 a year, which she puts in her budget as $200 a month.
The time difference is the hard part. Her friends are asleep when she is having lunch. She writes the times for each person on a card: when they are awake, when they are busy, when they like to talk.
Some things change. One friend drifts, and she lets it be. Another, who barely wrote before she left, becomes her most regular caller. In her second year, her nine-year-old begins to send her drawings of the book characters, and she tapes them to the refrigerator.
Maribel finds that a fixed day helps. A relationship that has a day in the week tends to survive, and one that depends on remembering tends to fade.
You might say that distance changes things, and it does. Some friendships grow thinner and some grow deeper. Neither is a failure of love, and a few of them may end gently. You could decide ahead of time which ones you want to carry and which you are willing to let rest.
You could write a list of the people you most want to keep, and beside each name one rhythm: a day, a time, a way. You could add the cost of flights home to your budget, since it may be the largest line after rent. You could also ask each person what suits them.
Our calculator describes the cost of living where you land. It does not include flights home or gifts, and those may be worth counting.
How do you keep your people close from far away? Tell us in the comments. Someone reading may be about to leave theirs.
Tell us in the comments