If anyone read the first couple posts and noticed the bit at the end about the author: “I live in DC. My wife and kids live in Tucson. Everyone says the internet made the world smaller. We’ll see,” you may be wondering what that’s about.
In early 2012, I left Tucson and went back to DC to earn a living. At the time AJ was 13 and Haley was 15. It was a (yes… yet another) sad time and a hard time. It had come about rather quickly, over a period of a couple of months really, when I realized that I was not practically employable in Tucson as a newly graduated PhD at anywhere like the salary I had achieved working for the Government six years before. I found opportunities in the DC area and off I went.
I decided to write a blog to capture the experience of trying to remain close virtually. I made one post, entitled “Leaving.” Since I’m going to wipe out that blog, I’ll re[post it here rather than link to it:
As I start this new blog, I begin with a purpose. This is to be a blog about the realities of life apart for a family that wants to stay together. I will live in Washington, DC while my wife and two kids stay in Tucson for the next 29 months, when the kids finish high-school. About 45 minutes ago, I was dropped at the curb. We said a lengthy goodbye and everyone laughed as they tried not to cry. I am now sitting in the Tucson International Airport, making use of the free wifi to start this blog. The connection is good, but not good enough to stream the video that introduces WordPress. I note that the three other people sitting in the airport at this “computer bench” are all using Apple products: two Macs and an iPad. Interesting.
Right now we are planning on using a combination of Verizon Android phones, a couple of Kubuntu computers, and a pair of Windows 7 netbooks as our windows on each other. Skype has been tested and found to work. We have an excellent Logitech C910 camera for the computer at home and all of the other devices have built-in cameras. The Logitech camera provides a very nice video and audio signal, and it worked out of the box with Kubuntu, though it was necessary to go into Kmix and set the camera to be the preferred capture device in order to make the microphone work. It really does make a difference to be able to see who you’re talking to; so much of communication is visual. I will have my first Skype “in anger” when I arrive at the hotel this evening. Hopefully A.J.’s soccer team wins their games today to claim their first tournament win of the year.
No matter how this experiment in family-at-a-distance goes, there’s no substitute for a hug at point-blank range. In sixty-two days I will be back for my first visit.
There was one other draft in there, but I’ll condense the rest of the story. For the next three years, we lived together, virtually, through a Skype window. Whenever we were both home, Skype was open. Julie and I would occasionally have an evening glass of wine together, sometimes share family dinner, and on weekends we would all watch soccer. Mostly though, we just left the Skype window on and open, and ignored each other, much as we had done when we all sat around reading, knitting, and watching TV as a family.
That probably sounds strange, but it worked really well. For three years, we created a 6″ hole between my bedroom and the house in Tucson. At any time I could go to that hole and say “Hey, what are you guys doing?” and they would come to their side of the hole and talk back. This dynamic alleviated the pressure to keep talking that usually comes with phone and video calls, and made the interactions more low key and normal. It wasn’t a panacea and for sure we grew apart over that period, but it definitely helped.
I’ve often thought that this was a really good idea, and I suggested it as an approach for people who were supposed to be forming remote work groups. I don’t know that it’s caught on any of those places, but maybe during the quarantine it will come about spontaneously in enough places to catch on.
Afterward 