Living Parallel Lives

We are back in Cumbria. Living out of suitcases. Living entirely parallel lives.

Our house in Suffolk is still full. Full of our furniture, belongings, clothes… full of everything but life. Pictures hanging on the walls, post on the table, televisions standing, internet and tv subscriptions running with nowhere to transfer them to. Everything is still there, but us.

Meanwhile, we are living, working and attending school in our beloved Cumbria. Back where the late Autumn sun is hotfooting its last huzzah and welcoming early Winter. It really is a sight to behold. Leaves of every conceivable colour wrap the roads and the mountains hang like a masterpiece on the horizon in perpetuity.

We have yet to deliver our daughter to school wearing her jumper however and hockey on Saturday was played in bare arms and legs, despite the horizontal rain, the first we have seen since our arrival. In her 11year-old world, it is perpetual summer. Leaves are for kicking, puddles are for jumping in, the sun is for bathing in, the dark is exciting, the Lakes are for sailing and swimming, the forests are enchanted… you get the picture. Every moment of every day is an adventure, and it’s a contagion. It really is unspeakably beautiful here and I can’t quite put into words how the landscape makes me “feel.” From the first time I visited this part of the world only four years ago, it did just that, it made me feel something that I haven’t felt anywhere else. It is as if I am living in a perennial poem, despite the stresses and monotonies of our daily routines now we have all but moved here and taken up permanent residence. School run, 6am starts with no heating and washing sports kit with nowhere to dry it, has yet to rain on our happy parade. Husband and I have not been well since arriving, but I’ll treat you to that detail in other post. We feel blessed to have this opportunity and are mindfully thankful for it every day.

Our son has just been promoted to “Teenager” and he’s perfectly brilliant at it. Effortlessly nocturnal, obligingly technical, averse to all types of hygiene (with the exception of cleaning his hands, which conversely he washes obsessively) and observes the world through long floppy locks that would cover his eyes if he had not perfected the art of flicking it to one side. His experience of being here is entirely unique, as it is to each one of us, but as a 13-year-old with Autism Spectrum Disorder who is Electively Home Educated, his world is entirely self-directed and idiosyncratic. This journey is one being very carefully and delicately managed for our son’s sake, especially given the lack of certainties, the extent of the unknowns and the Living of Parallel Lives we are having to experience right now. It is really quite surprising how many times you are asked for your address, or where you live, or where “home” is in the course of a day or a week; I never realised. We went into a town in the South Lakes yesterday and Son asked if he could sign up to what is now our local equivalent of a gaming outlet. With our support and in our presence, we agreed he could. Then came the killer question: what is your address? He paused, stumbled, looked to us and said “I don’t know?”

I had the experience recently. I was on the phone having a formal conversation with someone and was asked the same question. I faltered before replying “I’m sorry, I don't honestly know! Please bear with me” before rooting around for the address of our cottage. The person I was speaking to laughed and offered “You don’t know where you live?”

“No. I don’t know where I live actually.”

And the truth is, we don’t. Our house in Suffolk is full, but empty. We are renting this sweet little cottage where the heating sort of works but we can neither control or override it. Let me tell you now, the sun might be shining but that is very hard to smile through at 6am on a November morning in Cumbria and the heating doesn’t come on for another hour! However, it has everything we need and is a 10 minute drive to school. It is home for now. The house sale is limping through at the speed of a dead snail and we are cautiously and desperately optimistic. All the time, haemorrhaging money. Our new house, which isn’t our house in anything other than the investment of hope and an offer which has been accepted, sits up the road waiting, and as the subject of conversation. Its current inhabitants are living out of boxes, as they have been for the past two months. For deliveries, we put the cottage address. For legal documents we put our Suffolk address. The address given to employers for my new job is the new house.

Upon reflection, I think we’ll agree that this chapter of our lives is the chapter when we have a portfolio of properties. It has a rather more poetic ring to it than being homeless, not knowing where we live or even living parallel lives. So, for now and for the record, we are residing in our country cottage, close to the school. For convenience. And jollies.

If anyone asks.