Being so far away from family might in some ways be beneficial

Not being able to get home to the UK this past year has been hard but technology has meant that in some ways it has given me a chance to reset the relationships that mean the most, writes Holly Baxter

There’s nothing like an all-pervading sense of doom to encourage us to look again at our relationships (Getty)

Being thousands of miles across the ocean can do wonders for your family relationships. I know that makes me sound like an ageing misanthrope with three divorces under my belt, but hear me out. While I’ve been living in a 300 sq ft box in Brooklyn and the rest of my family has been scattered around England, I’ve found out a surprising amount about my siblings and parents. There’s nothing like an all-pervading sense of impending doom to press the reset button on relationships you might otherwise have let drift apart.

When lockdown first began and it became obvious that we wouldn’t have the wedding we’d planned or be able to get back to the UK for an extended period of time, my biggest worry – beyond the nightmare-inducing thoughts of mass family death that come in the night and everyone pushes to the back of their consciousness each morning – was that my niece and nephew might forget me. My niece was five when we left the UK and is on her way to seven now; my nephew had only just been born. We’d expected that at our wedding, Niece would be a stumbling little flower girl and Nephew would be a beaming little babe-in-arms. Needless to say, Niece is now an energetic, homeschooled sofa-destroyer and Nephew is a Buddha-like bruiser who stumbles drunkenly around in the background of Zoom calls, screaming “BA BA BA BA BA” into a hand-me-down Barbie hairdryer.

At other times, I’d go for a wander round deserted shopping areas and emptied-out skyscrapers while having long conversations with my dad about philosophy

Through the wonders of modern technology, I have been able to watch these two little hurricanes grow up and change over the past year and a half. My sister, who is disabled, has been doing a lot of heavy lifting: her partner is an essential worker who’s out of the house for long shifts every day, and having a seven-year-old and a two-year-old vie for your attention throughout that time during lockdown is no mean feat. In an effort to help Niece burn off some of that energy, I’ve been sending her daily “challenges”: jump up and down ten times and explain why you’d rather be a fish than a bird; do a forward roll and a plank and count to thirty-three; see how long you can pose for on one leg. Of course, no seven-year-old worth her salt would let adults get away with that without demanding something back, so E and I now often find ourselves pulling out the yoga mats of an evening and doing mermaid poses, touching our toes, trying out the splits, and talking about the benefits of dinosaurs over unicorns. I’ve done a couple of gymnastics moves I don’t think I’d attempted since year 4, and E has stretched the absolute limits of his highly inflexible muscles.

Elsewhere, my mum has been forced into the world of technology, and now insists on FaceTime calls only. Although that’s also had its, er, challenging moments – “What’s that in your teeth? Show me your smile from the side again, it looks wonky”, “I don’t know if that lipstick suits you”, and “Your bathroom taps need cleaning, FYI” are some personal highlights – it also means that I’ve been able to immerse her in my New York life without her even having to visit. During full lockdown, when there was nothing to see – and really, nothing to say – I would walk around the park with my phone and show her community-minded graffiti art, socially distanced picnics, cherry blossoms at the side of the road, the Manhattan skyline as seen from the Brooklyn Bridge. At other times, I’d go for a wander round deserted shopping areas and emptied-out skyscrapers while having long conversations with my dad about philosophy, photography, American culture, and memories he had of travelling to the States that I’d never heard before in my life.

My family is what polite people call “complicated”: out of four siblings, not one of us shares the same set of biological parents, and each of my parents has been married three times (and counting). Keeping abreast of what’s happening in everyone’s lives can be exhausting in normal circumstances, where everything keeps changing and no one has time to stop. This year, despite the fact that few of us physically saw each other, I had longer conversations with my siblings and various parental figures than I’ve ever had before. On Christmas Day, for the first time, I had back-to-back Zoom calls with every single member of the family (with shared Zooms for the ones who like/know/tolerate each other).

I’m not going to pretend that the last vestiges of my lockdown-wasted muscles don’t sometimes dread what Niece is going to come up with when she sends me a WhatsApp video for the morning beginning: “Now, Auntie Holly, do I have a challenge for you!” But on an emotional level, it couldn’t be a better morning alarm.