long distance

today i got an email from a friend's mother. i've known her for 15 years.
she moved to a tropical island in america to be with her second husband. she has been running an organic farm (mainly alone) and has done very well some years, even speaking at conferences in las vegas, and the product she produces is a gorgeous organic green tea. unbelievable quality and lemony grass rolling around on the tongue.  this year from what i have just heard was not so successful.

perhaps because of this she is feeling a little less satisfied with her own productivity and success in her relocated home. which, i might add, is a bonafide tropical paradise.

as for me: currently, i love someone on the other side of the world. 
as for her: she told me she regretted moving to this island to be with her second husband, and said, given a second chance, she would not repeat the decision. NO MAN IS WORTH THAT ISOLATION, she said.

family is the glue that binds us together. travelling is awesome, and then we come home.

i know she's right. i started thinking about all the women who have been taken from their homes in their teen years and relocated to farmland in the freezing cold wherever the fuck and were thrust into new lives as human work horses. cooking, boiling cast iron pots, washing all the filthy unforgivably stinking workmens' clothes, builiding meal after meal from lousy game and potatoes from the yard. whatever.

my life would be nothing like this, yet fundamentally like this. supporting a man and his work by my own. living in his world, forsaking my own (to create a new one) and settling for stunted communication with my hilarious and supportive family at home- infrequent visits and phone calls and smiling through a computer screen. snuggling with my mom once a year. seeing my future neices and nephews through the eyes of a stranger.

maybe it's not natural to be uprooted from ones own environment. even for love.
i'm thinking about this today, and it's good when someone who knows you makes you think.
an older woman, a mother who has seen and done more and built and lost friendships and lovers and husbands and homes and jobs and now, is feeling like she has lost a lot of herself.
relocation is oftentimes pain.

love is so thrilling to find.
when will i draw the line?