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| Life as an acronym |
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Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Chris Cork
It was only recently that I discovered that we -- as in the family unit I am most intimately a part of -- live our lives as an acronym, moreover one that is recently coined and currently in vogue (some acronyms have a short shelf life and it remains to be seen if this one will survive.) We are LATs. We are Living Apart Together. I discovered this while scanning the social and showbiz pages of an English-language paper. They were carrying a piece on the dysfunctional lives of assorted ditzy celebs that flitted around the world with little attention to the traditional dyadic structure of family life. Children got adopted almost willy-nilly, family size and shape seemed determined by where on the scale of celebrity one was -- with A-listers having the pick of the international crop of unwanted babies willing to suffer the indignity of being called 'Packet' or 'Bungle' or any other quirky name that the adoptive parent believes adds individuality -- but in reality adds up to a life-time of cringing embarrassment for the unfortunate child. The oh-so-boringly traditional ideas of getting assessed to see if the prospective adopters were actually the right kind of people to be given the life-time care of a child were out of the window. Likewise, any consideration of the lifestyle of the rich and famous, and whether it was really a good idea to have peripatetic parents who lived a life in the public eye as good adoption material. I looked at the tales on offer…and then had one of those 'ouch' moments that said I had seen myself and my family through another lens.
Those celebs we all love to gawp and scoff at for their follies and foibles were not a million miles removed from where I and my own family live our lives. We have been married for almost 15 years, have no natural children of our own but are parent to a 21-year-old young woman who started life as a street-child in Karachi and who is deaf and dumb; and a two-and-a-half year old girl who we adopted from within our extended family here in Pakistan. We live most of our lives continents apart as my wife has a good job with a pension attached in the UK and I look after the Pakistani end of the family by caring for my elderly father-in-law -- and my work is all here and not back in England. Did we plan it this way when we set out on the path of married life? No we did not, but then it was never going to be a conventional marriage anyway. There were the age and the cultural differences, not to mention matters of faith -- she believes and I don't. But it worked from the outset, not without its ups and downs. Still, it seems durable enough for all that.
And, having laid our own lives alongside the celebrity template and found surprising similarities, I did that to many of the families I know here, who are most certainly not rich and famous, nor are they educated or multicultural. They are for the most part ordinary families who are LATs by force of circumstance rather than by choice. They are the families where the earning hands are out of the country, in Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Malaysia or one of the European countries. They come together perhaps even less frequently than do we, and some I know spend years apart. The absent partner may not be out of the country -- but they may as well be for those who have fled the countryside for daily-wage jobs in the cities, with wives back in the villages caring for the children and the elders. There are not just a handful of people living like this; there are millions. Here and across the subcontinent there are LATs everywhere adapting to a world that has reshaped the family and how it lives its life. Life as a LAT is changing the role of women in society, and children are learning that Dad is not always on hand for advice and guidance. For some, the experience is a living nightmare, a ripping apart of traditional bonds. For others it is a liberating experience, empowering in ways they never believed possible or desirable. A female acquaintance living in Karachi had recently entered LAT-hood, albeit temporarily. For her, it was at first lonely and frightening but it was also -- and quite quickly -- the creation of space to do other things or do the same things differently.
Right now, we are having 'together time' and the house is full of noises that were not there before, voices that were far way or faces that were on a video Skype call are today in the next room, across the pillow or out in the garden. We catch up fast because the connection was never cut between us, only stretched thin. Other lives from other places bump up against one another, and there will always be 'gaps' as our lives no longer overlap all day every day. Perhaps this is what makes our LAT-hood different to that of others. We choose to do it this way. We have moved past the idea of 'one another' as property -- I do not 'own' my wife in any sense nor she me, but this does not lessen our sense of commitment or partnership, nor lessen our care for the two children in our stewardship. The oldest will soon be making a life of her own, setting up a business doing bridal make-up and hairdressing for the huge Asian community in our home city in the UK. The youngest -- we have decided that we will not put her into the Pakistani education system so she goes to nursery in England, speaks the outline of three languages and will grow up to be a woman in a world where LATs may have been replaced by another acronym. And my wife and I? Well we have decided to be GOTs…and when time and circumstance allow, we will Grow Old Together.
The writer is a freelancer and management consultant. Email: manticore73 @gmail.com
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ISSN 1563-9479 
