My daughter has emigrated

by Lisa Mitchell-Ross

My daughter has emigrated, moved to another country far away from me—3482 miles away according to a certain ‘stalker app’. And yet I can’t complain (much) because I did exactly the same to my mum and she did the same to her mum.

Winding all the way back to 1964, my mum and dad set out to South Africa with a very young baby daughter and also expecting me.  They stayed abroad for the next 13 years, in Zambia, Western Australia and Namibia.  I can only imagine how brave that was and also how difficult it was for those left behind back in those days without the technology we have today.  Nowadays, as soon as you have access to the internet, you can send a message to say you have arrived safely—back then it would have meant a very expensive phone call if you both had access to a telephone or the long wait for a letter to arrive. Telephone calls were reserved for important or urgent news, day-to-day life was exchanged via airmail and would take several days if not weeks to arrive. My mum often told the tale of how she would have an argument with my dad, bare her soul and her grievances to her sister in a flimsy blue airmail letter, in the smallest writing possible as space was at a premium, and then pop it in the post. A few weeks later a matching blue airmail letter would arrive with her sister agreeing that he shouldn’t have said/done whatever caused the argument and my mum would struggle to remember what it was all about as the air had been cleared and all was hunky-dory in her life again!

When it was my turn to spread my wings, initially it was to Paris as an au pair.  Again, the only method of communication was via post or telephone—the latter was more reasonably priced as I hadn’t ventured quite so far afield and most homes had a landline, and the former was not restricted to the thin airmail sheets and now only took a few days to arrive. I had an arrangement with my mum (now settled back in the UK) that every Sunday at a certain time I would go to a public phone-box with my carefully collected change and call her for a catch-up. It was her only sure way of knowing I was safe and well and the calls always ended with a flurry of hurried goodbyes as the phone used to beep that I had run out of change. Letters were also exchanged regularly with my younger sister—mine adorned in stickers for her and hers invariably enclosing a picture of her hamster!

A few years after my stint as an au pair I again left the UK for sunnier climes—this time to Kenya for two years with a brand new husband. We took with us one of the new-fangled word processors—effectively a typewriter with a screen so you could type documents, save them and print them off. My letters back to the UK were all typed out and we waited eagerly each week for the arrival of a flimsy blue airmail update from my mum and my lovely new father-in-law. I half-wonder whether the airmail sheets were a generational thing or simply a cheaper way to keep in touch?

After a few years back in the UK again we once more upped sticks and set off, this time with a 3-yr old and a 1-yr old daughter. I didn’t know it at the time but thanks again to the modern ‘stalker app’, I now know it was approximately 3480 miles away, to Abu Dhabi. As soon as we arrived our first purchase was the most up-to-date method for keeping in touch, practically instantaneously—a fax machine. Wonder of wonders, so long as you had a phone line you could write a letter, place it in the machine and it miraculously appeared across the world on someone else’s fax machine. In retrospect, it was all a bit of a palaver—you had to dial the number of the receiving fax machine, listen to all sorts of beeps and clicks as the phone line connected, and then press send once you got the dial tone but it was still magical knowing that Mum was standing at her machine collecting the letter you were standing at yours sending. I remember teaching her to use her fax machine (without the eye-rolling I get from my daughters now when I ask them to explain some modern tech to me!) and leaving a sheet of written instructions next to the machine: 1. Write letter 2. Place FACE DOWN on the fax machine, etc. She soon got the hang of it and beside writing letters was able to exchange drawings with the grandchildren she must have missed so very much.

Fast forward a couple of years and we had the advent of the email—effectively paper-free faxing. The first home computers were dial-up—you still had to connect via your phone line and connection was very slow. Another downside was the loss of a handwritten letter from a loved one—so much so in fact that it was now my mother-in-law who took over typing out weekly updates as my father-in-law couldn’t type and, being several years older than her, was very possibly unwilling to learn the new technology.

And then finally, the world wide web. This changed life beyond measure. Email was quicker and much more efficient. SMS followed very quickly on its heels and although initially restricted to just your own locality the day came when you could send a text across the world and have a ‘chat’ with friends and family. There were allowances you had to stay within so texting wasn’t as busy as it is today and often was limited to the highlights with a promise of ‘I’ll email you later!’. You could also send photos via email or text—no more printing them out and popping them in an envelope. Skype was introduced too where you could see each other and actually talk computer to computer—again a little frustrating with the time delay between computers but introducing the opportunity to actually see someone as if they were in the same room.

And now several years on? My daughter has emigrated, moved to another country far away from me.

BUT, we have WhatsApp, unlimited texting, FaceTime, with faster connections less of a frustrating time delay but somewhat dependent on a good service (living in the sticks doesn’t help there!), voicemail—when she has a lot to say and can’t be bothered to type it out—Facebook and Instagram to keep everyone you know up-to-date with the events in your life and enable your mum to see via photos what you are up to, and also good old-fashioned (relatively!) but vastly improved email where any document or photo can wing its way across the invisible wires.  We are now so in touch with the world that we are almost never out of touch.

Reflectively though, today’s communication is somehow more ethereal—I have a few of those flimsy airmail letters written by my grandma to my mum, with the handwriting becoming smaller and more cramped towards the end of the letter as she realised she was running out of space. I have saved letters and hamster pictures from my little sister. I have the last few treasured emails from my mum which I was able to save before changing email account. The faxes didn’t stand the test of time as the ink gradually faded. Photos these days are not saved in physical albums as they were when they developed or printed out. And daily chats are wonderful but how likely in year to come are we to scroll back through reams and reams of WhatsApp messages? Maybe I should write my daughters a letter every now and then? One thing I do know for certain—I’m looking forward immensely to an actual visit next week and a hug! ■

Adventure

Back to the start