The Lost Art of Connection (still in progress)

Another ‘Experience Exchange’ has begun here at Roots, between pairs of adults who wish to take a few steps in someone else’s shoes. As the intermediary in the first few weeks, I am again humbled and inspired by the task of gathering and exchanging the thoughts, passions and stories of the people who have been paired with strangers who live quite different lives to them, across our society.

Through the things they discuss in the written and recorded materials we exchange between them, their life’s journey and their relationships become tangible, recognisable and intriguing. Memories are triggered for them as they wind their way through our guidance, and they package tantalising, insightful and honest morsels of their identities to share with their exchange partner. Some can be seen to already have a surprising amount in common with their partner despite a cultural, gender, generational or geographical difference and other pairs appear to be from different plains entirely but share a similar warmth, humour and keenness to connect and share.

Reading the responses and preparing to exchange them, as Roots’ intermediary, is more emotional a task than I ever recalled it was. I remind myself repeatedly that I am the carrier pigeon and not the exchange partner. I want to write to them all, ask them questions, and tell them what their stories spark within me. I want to explain why their favourite book is important to me too and that I’d love to hear more about how they found it. It isn’t that just I am, uniquely, drawn to these kinds of gentle interactions, we all love to listen with curiosity to stories and have our memories ignited, but working from home, as so many of us are, can be lonely, even in the town of my upbringing where I know so many people. This new ‘WFH’ life, spent mostly in my house, day after day, is a profoundly anti-social one and I’m missing connection, myself. I don’t yearn to share an office with a huge body of others again anytime soon, but it focuses the mind on what kind of connections we are still able to make now that we’ve all become a bit rusty, and that opportunities to find new, in-person connections have become a bit thin on the ground.

Last week I remembered, with some rust evident, how to make good, solid small talk, on the line at our local football club. My son has been at running clubs on a Monday night for years. This involves me, traditionally, sitting in a cold car alone, alongside a load of other parents alone in their cold cars, watching the runners when they are close enough, reading our books and listening to the radio. This, after sending our children, one by one, through a Covid-related, coned-off, barrier area to be hand-gelled and clip-board-registered. There is no space for parents and carers to easily interact around this session. Arlo decided to try football last Thursday, so we arrived at the new place, wandered about until we had been directed around about 7 different groups of small football players and, finally, I found myself with a few adults I recognised from the school gates. ‘Do you want a pint?’ Asked one of the dads as I approached the edge of the pitch. ‘A..sorry…a what?’ I replied, assuming I had misheard. ‘A pint, the bar’s open, do you want anything?’ Now, after 6 years of having to pretend that I am a clean-living, off-duty triathlete at running club, I am now expected to have a pint on the edge of the pitch at football club. Some parents were pairing their pint with a cheeky roll-up.

A whole new world. I’m not glorifying the drinking of alcohol at a children’s sports club, however it might appear, but the big hitter, the thing that really emerged for me there was that this was a place at which we were ALL expected to connect and engage with each other, as a community, and that is indeed what happened. I had a very weak half a shandy in a very bendy plastic cup, the others had one, singular pint a piece and we watched our children play football (in a quagmire) together. We all laughed at a story that another parent told; so hard that I had to wipe my tears and blow my nose on my child’s Harry Potter face-mask. I refused to kick the ball back on because I had my new suede boots on, so another carer dove in front of me like Peter Schmeichel and booted it back into the game. It didn’t matter. Connection and community feel amazing, incredible, like a big, furry, warm hug and I had forgotten that I had forgotten.