Down, Under

When I was little we lived in Margate. It was a big sprawling family with countless relatives all over south east London, mostly older. But our favourite cousins, two sisters the same age as us, lived just up the road in Maidstone. Childhood I misremember as one long hot summer of sandcastles and crazy golf, chalked hopscotch, apple-scrumping, bikes, roller skates and Walls ice cream. Later we moved further away but holidays were still spent together, whispering in the dark about boys, smoking behind the shed and trying to work out how to stop mascara from clumping. A small brother and sister had arrived in our respective families by then, but we mostly ignored them, used them to run errands or tormented them for our casual entertainment, as is customary.

Fast forward 25 years and my sister and I each had a baby and a toddler. We got together as often as we could, probably every month or two. Birthday parties, Easter Egg hunts, paddling pools, Christmas, snowmen. Just like we did with our cousins, that’s how it was going to be. It would get easier, of course, when the children were a little older. We lived on the same train line, they would be able to travel to and fro. They were firm friends, the four little cousins, and once they were out of nappies and into school, the opportunities for fun stretched out before us. We both bought big houses, to fit them all in. Then my brother had his son, so even the little errand-boy and fetcher of Dairylea Triangles and squash was now in the picture, just as soon as he’d learned to walk.

Life was good. We booked - many months ahead, for the summer of 2007 - a small chateau in France for weeks and weeks. It had a swimming pool, it was next to a vineyard, there was even a little theatre inside it for the children to do their shows. We were all going, mum and dad, the three of us and the offspring. It would be the first of the unending summers just as we remembered them.

Except we never went.

My sister and her family snapped up a chance to emigrate to Australia and were gone by the spring. It probably saved their marriage. My brother’s two year old son developed a neurological degenerative disorder and in six months became completely disabled. He can’t speak, or eat, or control his movement - or travel far. My parents were devastated. So was my little branch of the family.

Today my sister arrived back in the UK with my niece and nephew for a visit. We will see them a couple of times in their hectic schedule as they race around trying to see all the people that want a corner of their company. I’m not in touch with her life in the same way as before, nor she with mine. We knew one another’s friends, each child’s trip to the doctor, lost tooth, new bed, difficult teacher. We had endless drivelling chats on the phone and sent each other books and bits of make-up and odd unexpected things like toast. We had covert boozy lunches in London and knew all one another’s secrets. Skyping on the family PC isn’t the same.

Sure we have been snorkelling together at the Barrier Reef and watched the New Year’s Eve fireworks over Sydney Opera House. But there’s no time anymore to just hang out for days at a time with nothing to do, and the girls are worrying that they will be shy of their cousins, aren’t sure they want to sleep all together in the big room like we planned.

With parents who are not getting any younger, and a nephew with a life-limiting condition, every time the family gets together now is tinged bittersweet. Will this be the last time? Will the next time we are all sitting like this be for an emergency rather than just for fun? Or worse, will one of us face a crisis without the others there?

I am trying to work out how to enjoy the weekend without wishing for more.