Distance Makes the Heart Grow Fonder
By Joe Barker
Oh, woe is me! The normally lovely wife of my best Bangkok buddy has stabbed me in the back and accepted a job in Europe without any consideration for my feelings. It may be great for them: closer to home and better paid with a more relaxed and family-friendly lifestyle, but I call it downright selfish; doesn’t she realise that I need Oliver in Bangkok? Who else will pop round for coffee when I need some help with childcare? Or take me climbing so that I can vent about the petty but oh-so-overwhelming trials and tribulations of my privileged parenting experience? Before this shocking betrayal, I could rely on Oliver to meet me and the kids in the park, where he'd let Marty chase him around and then happily chat over the shrieks of my attention-seeking monsters. Best of all he'd nod and say, “This age is tough; it gets easier,” which was just the kind of reassurance I needed. To make this mammoth change without even so much as a consultation process seems wrong; surely I've a right to appeal to someone before the move can be finalized?
Oliver assures me that we'll still be friends and that he's only a phone call away, but frankly, what good is that? I've already got enough European-time-zone friends who I constantly fail to call. I don't need another person's messages to feel guilty about not replying to; nor do I need another friend who I plan to call when I wake up, only to find that by the time it's morning in Europe, childcare has eroded my energy and enthusiasm and the call is postponed until tomorrow—a tomorrow that in reality never actually comes.
Homegrown friends
I hope it comes as no surprise to learn that I have friends in the UK—friends who, given how I tend to ignore them most of the time, may well be surprised to learn that I treasure them. They might also feel that if I really treasured them I would be nicer to them, perhaps by remembering their birthdays and giving them little gifts, rather than treating them to backhanded compliments and months of silence. When I moved to Bangkok, I knew I was terrible at keeping in touch with people. What I was shocked to discover was how much worse many of my friends were: if I didn’t send a message every six months or so, we’d probably never speak. Of course, I’m assuming this is because they’re terrible at communicating and not simply that they’re hoping I’ll eventually learn to take a hint…
When I do manage to communicate with my UK friends, it invariably brings me a bittersweet joy. Joy as I delight in renewing our friendship, but sorrow at the distance between us. Parenthood has only strengthened these mixed feelings.
I've lost count of the number of times I've sent despairing messages after a disastrous day of daddy duty, safe in the knowledge that they’ll reach a sympathetic ear and that tomorrow I’ll wake up to find messages reassuring me that parenting is tough and that today will go better. Reassurance that my children will start sleeping through the night, or stop biting or pooping on the floor or hitting each other. Until I asked some friends, I thought the nightmare that is brushing Marty's teeth was unusual, but apparently it's not uncommon to require two parents to hold down a wriggling, toothbrush-resistant child, nor to spend twenty minutes of sweat and tears for a measly twenty seconds of ineffectual brushing. Ours are not the only toothbrushes to have been hurled across bathrooms, nor are we the only parents to temporarily abandon toothbrushing in the interests of family harmony and the prospect of ever leaving the house again. Being able to share my parenting problems with my friends has made me appreciate them even more.
But the bitterness to my joy comes from realizing that I don’t get to parent with my friends. Much as I appreciate their messages, they are a very poor substitute for standing shoulder to shoulder with them at the swings or drinking coffee together while our children dig in sandpits and hit each other with sticks, just like we used to do.
Breaking the ice
When I arrived in Bangkok, I realized I needed to make new friends, but how to go about it? What I needed, I decided, was an icebreaker—something to get conversation started. After careful consideration, I thought, Perhaps a child would help? After all, parents are always chatting to each other at the playground, or going for coffee, and sleep deprivation makes them much less discerning about who they'll talk to. Now obviously I didn't need my wife to point out that we weren't going to have children just to make new friends, but when, a few years later, I found myself with children, I thought, Hurrah, at last I’ll be able to make some new friends. Alas, it turns out that my children aren't that helpful for making new friends. I may get chatting to parents at the playground, but any conversation is invariably curtailed by our children dragging us in opposite directions. If I do end up standing next to another parent while pushing Alice on a swing, her excited screaming is so loud that we're reduced to smiling and nodding at each other. Then, just as I'm plucking up the courage to suggest a playdate to my potential new friend, I'm dragged away to deal with a toilet emergency and by the time I return, they've snuck away.
First friends
But you're not reading this to hear me whinging about the difficulties of making friends when you're naturally curmudgeonly and antisocial. You want to hear about Marty and Alice's friends. Given my un-predisposing nature, it is not unreasonable to fear that my children will prove similarly unskilled in the art of making friends. Certainly, Marty's reluctance to respond to the cheerful “hello”s of the local taxi drivers, and Alice's tendency to burst into tears whenever strangers smile at her, suggest they've inherited my social graces (or lack thereof). But despite this genetic hindrance, they’ve made a few friends.
The girls next door are a few years older than Marty, and they've been playing with him since he was a baby. Many an afternoon has been spent running and screaming around their apartment block as they attempt to teach Marty some complicated new game. I can only assume the building is very well soundproofed, or we’d surely have long since been banned from the property. While the girls love Marty's visits and have been very tolerant of his loudness and reluctance to follow their instructions, Alice has quickly become their favorite guest as she totters up their driveway with a huge smile on her face, emitting slightly quieter shrieks of excitement.
If the girls next door are out, Marty and Alice love to visit the nearby building sites, and they've been adopted as mascots by most of the local builders. This means they've spent a lot of time clambering into diggers, exploring partially constructed houses, and whiling away the hours with buckets and spades in the builders sand. I'm not sure if their help is why the neighbor’s house is three years behind schedule, but the joyful time spent playing on the building site has been some compensation for the drilling and hammering we've been subjected to.
Whether they will prove as successful at making friends at school as they have been with the local stallholders and taxi drivers remains to be seen, but Marty can always be relied on to find a smile for any children who have exciting-looking toys he wants to play with, and Alice has learned well from her brother and will overcome her aversion to strangers if they offer her a high five. Meanwhile, I remain hopeful that once they start school, my children will finally help me make those new friends I’ve been searching for, and then Oliver’s desertion will sting a little less.
About the Author
Joe and his wife Diane moved to Thailand in 2018. Since the arrival of their son Martin in 2021 and daughter Alice in 2024, Joe has been a stay-at-home father. The whole family enjoys BAMBI playgroups and Thai beach holidays.