If I was in the UK now, this would be the time I'd be staying with my sister and spending some quality time with my niece and nephew. And it makes me very sad that I'm not doing that. Especially because I haven't seen them in person now for 2 years. As I'm sure any grandparent also knows, the window we have to spend time with a niece/nephew or grandchild is very limited. Before you know it, they are teenagers and then off to college - and you're just an afterthought. I already feel that distance between myself and my niece/nephew widening - I don't know their interests, we have increasingly less in common, I don't really know them. And that's unfortunate. We've maybe had a couple of video calls this year, but that's not enough and is no substitute for actually seeing them in person. I guess I only have myself to blame for living on the other side of the world. But the fact that I don't have children of my own, and will never have children of my own, does make me really appreciate and enjoy the few interactions I do have with them. We play some video games online together regularly, which is fun - but I can already feel my niece pulling away from that (not my nephew yet thankfully!). Perhaps because I've watched too many American sitcoms, I kind of hoped that we might have a big family excursion to somewhere like Disneyland one year, where all the extended family (uncles, grandparents, etc.) are there and we all have a jolly good time. But I don't think that's ever going to happen, for lots of reasons. So I guess I just have to make the most of the few scraps of interaction I manage to get with them before they get older and move on with their lives.
No comments:
Post a Comment