Some futures take their sweet time arriving. They begin as a name said around the dinner table. Then as a bedroom imagined right down to the smallest detail. Then one day, the life that felt far away begins leaving clues around the house.
Maybe this is how you make a faraway life feel closer. You choose one part of it before it exists, talk about it enough, and before long, the rest of the family is living there with you.
There’ll be many more stories as we make our way to Spain, my lovely friends. The plans, the delays, the goodbyes and whatever else happens between here and there. And of course, I’m taking ALL OF YOU along with me.
He is 7 years old, and as far as he is concerned, we are moving to Spain for a kitten.
Not a cat. I have made that mistake enough times now to know better. Every single time I say “you can get a cat when we get there,” Hudson looks at me with the patience of a much older man and corrects me. A kitten. He has already named it. Snowflake. Chosen months ago and never once wavered on, for an animal that does not exist yet, in a country he has never been to.
We have never had a cat here in Thailand. We have always been a dog family. Two of ours died in the last couple of years and we are down to one small girl who is about 14. She is staying at the bungalow with someone to care for her, because a 14-year-old dog does not belong on the other side of the world, and because we will be back often enough to see her.
So the kitten is not just a kitten. It is the thing on the other side of the goodbye.
His father has promised him an Iron Man bed for his new bedroom, which is convenient, because Fraser is taking a break from work when we land and will need something to build.
That is Hudson’s list. A kitten and a bed.
My list looks different. Schools. Residency. The empadronamiento you cannot get healthcare or a school place without. Which documents need translating, which need an apostille, which will be asked for twice by two different offices in a slightly different order. Every expiry date for 3 people across 4 countries, sitting in the binder I built because I once lost my son’s vaccination booklet and had to rebuild it with AI.
Two lists, same move. I have been assuming mine is the serious one.
I am no longer sure that is true. My list is about arriving. His is about what happens after we arrive, which is the fun part, really. He is not preparing for a relocation. He is preparing for a life, and he has already decided what will be in it.
He has been extraordinarily patient with us. We have pushed our flights back more times than I want to write down (ok 5, but who’s counting?). Every time, he has absorbed it and moved on, and every time I have thought the thing everyone says, which is that children are resilient.
I want to be careful with that sentence. Resilient is a word we use about children when the alternative is admitting they had no choice. He has been patient because we are his whole world and his whole world keeps saying “not yet.” That is not the same as being fine, and I do not want to hand myself the compliment.
What has actually made the waiting bearable is the school.
We had believed there was nowhere appropriate for him on Koh Phangan once he finished kindergarten. Then we found a school that has been here since before we arrived 15 years ago, tucked behind one of the island’s busiest cafés, known to almost nobody. His class has 6 children in it. It costs very little. He loves it.
His report card came a few weeks ago. He is doing well in science and English. And his teacher gave him an award for being the Empathy Emperor, which I would take over the academic results any day of the week.
I have thought about that award a lot since. Because if there is one thing this life gives a child, it is practice at reading a room he did not grow up in.
That school is the reason I have not lost my mind over the delays. If he had been miserable, or treading water, every pushed-back flight would have cost something I could not get back. Instead the waiting has been useful to him. I got very lucky, and I know it.
The reason we are going at all is him. I was unhappy on the island for years and said very little, because I believed my boys were happy. Then, at not quite 4 years old, off the back of complaining that there was nothing to do here, Hudson asked me: why do we have to live here?
I have written about that day already. The day I knew we had to leave Thailand is the fullest version of it, and it is still the piece that gets the most replies of anything I have published.
That question started with research into Waldorf schools in Europe, which led to Valencia, which eventually led further down the coast to the Costa Blanca, where I have found a Waldorf school in Altea that I cannot wait to walk into. A school I chose because of a question my 3-year-old asked me on a sofa.
So here is where I have landed on getting a child ready to move abroad. You cannot prepare him for the paperwork, the offices, the months of not-yet. That is your job and he should not carry it.
What you can give him is one specific thing to walk towards. Something small enough to hold in his head and concrete enough to believe in. A bed shaped like a superhero. A kitten with a name and no body yet.
We have the flights. We have the school. I have the binder and the folders and the 4 bureaucracies.
He has Snowflake. Honestly, I think he’s packed better than I have.
I’d love to know what your child, partner, or even you have chosen as the one thing waiting on the other side of a move. A yellow kitchen. A school with trees in the playground. The bakery you’ve already found on Google Maps and mentally visited a 100 times. Tell me yours in the comments. I’m excited to know what’s making the future feel close enough to touch.
If this is your season too, come and sit with the rest of us. Everything in the Living Room, the playbooks and the Global Peace of Mind Binder live behind a paid membership, and it is what keeps me writing the honest version of this.
It’s 25% off until 31st August 2026 so this is a very good time to come in and make yourself at home.
P.S. A lot of you are landing in new countries soon (!!!), so save my 1st 48-Hours New-Home Triage Plan. It walks you through the first 48 hours, from feeding your jet-lagged body and sorting the essentials to finding one local route and creating your first tiny “we live here now” ritual. Save it before you fly. I’m going to do the same ;)
Thanks for reading, my lovely friends.
Next Wednesday: he is British, born in Scotland, raised in Thailand, sounds Canadian, and when I asked him where he is from he said “Scotland? I don’t know.” More on that one soon.
I’ll see you next Wednesday. Until then, stay cozy.
KKxx
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.